River cleanup could yield new paths
In Naperville, the DuPage River is a celebrity at the center of town, surrounded by comely paths and gardens.
To the north, Warrenville residents are separated from the same waterway by a thick forest.
But Warrenville officials believe the long-awaited river thorium cleanup is a rare opportunity to change that.
As crews move into the heart of town, city representatives are stepping up discussions with DuPage County over a network of paths that would run along the river and could eventually connect to the Prairie Path and Blackwell Forest Preserve.
"We hope to get the paths installed as an integral part of the (overall remediation) plans," said Warrenville Community Development Director Ron Mentzer. "I am optimistic that this whole project is a huge opportunity for that part of town."
As part of a decade-long effort to clean the DuPage River of cancer-causing thorium dumped by a West Chicago factory, crews started work in Warrenville earlier this year.
The city hopes the new path network can be funded from a $10 million pot awarded to the county for remediation of a contaminated stretch of the river.
The proposed paths would be "naturally landscaped" and would run for a half-mile on each side of the river, from Warrenville Dam north to Butterfield Road, Mentzer said.
People haven't been very interested in walking along the river in Warrenville because the water is stopped up by the dam and, as a result, is stagnant and smelly, he said.
Earlier this summer, though, a forest preserve committee approved a plan to demolish the dam.
The proposed paths could supplant another planned project, the county's Urban Stream Discovery Center, which would serve as an educational facility where researchers observe the reintroduction of fish and mussels to the river.
Only a dozen such centers exist in the country, said John Oldenburg, director of the forest preserve's Office of Natural Resources.
The district had planned to build the center on 2nd Street in Warrenville, on a new southern expansion of the Warrenville Grove Forest Preserve, but negotiations with the property owner recently fell through.
The district now is considering building in Warrenville Grove itself or on the Cenacle Retreat House property, also in Warrenville. Bidding for the 42-acre Cenacle parcel is scheduled to begin next month, and the district expects to participate.
"Everything we're working on is kind of hanging out there right now," said Warrenville Mayor David Brummel.
Either way, Oldenburg said construction could begin as soon as 2008.
"They're coming in and they're going to do some damage to clean up the thorium," said Jim Kleinwachter of the Conservation Foundation, which is advocating prairie plantings along the remediated river. "This is our opportunity to rework the river and make it better now."