New island bogs down the Chain
A new island has formed on the Chain O' Lakes, and it's causing headaches for Fox Waterway Agency officials.
A pair of five-acre bogs, originally attached to the Chain O' Lakes State Park, broke free of the mainland Saturday and merged in Jackson Bay.
Then, the new island -- about the size of nine football fields -- floated across swollen Grass Lake before getting stuck in the channel connecting Grass Lake and Lake Marie.
"This is the largest floating bog I've ever seen," said Ron Barker, director of operations for the agency in Fox Lake. "This happens now and then, but never 10 acres like this."
The bog and other floating debris throughout the system prompted waterway officials to close the Chain and Fox River from the Illinois border to the Stratton-Bolger Lock and Dam in McHenry.
A floating bog is a mass of aquatic vegetation, not firmly rooted to the lake bed, that rises and falls with variations in water levels. Those bogs can break free in high water or in fast-moving currents.
This bog is blocking water flowing into Lake Marie, Barker said, which could worsen flooding on the Chain.
Lake Marie is not in the main current of the Fox River, which flows from Wisconsin through the Chain, then into the river at Johnsburg. But it is a lake reservoir and stores high water during flooding.
Without that reservoir capacity, Barker said, Chain water levels would rise higher and faster than they are now.
"We basically take a couple of boats and run into the bog, and push it," he said. "We also use grappling hooks and hook it to a boat and pull it across the water back where it came from."
When it's back in position in a few days, he said, crews sink 16-foot-long, 2-by-4 boards through the bog, the water, the muck on the bottom of the lake and into the earth below.
With a 10-acre bog, Barker estimated it will take about 200 boards to keep it in place.
"The bog isn't the only problem out there. We have a lot of problems. We had three full-size willow trees topple over (on the Chain)," he said. "There is just a lot of debris out there that we'll be cleaning up for a while."