Discuss watershed issues at Jan. 25 meeting

You are invited to attend the Woods Creek Watershed Study Stakeholder meeting from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 25, in the board room at the Algonquin Village Hall, 2200 Harnish Drive.

Algonquin, Lake in the Hills, Crystal Lake and the Crystal Lake Park District have joined together to create a Woods Creek Watershed Plan. Funding for the plan has come from an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency grant and intergovernmental cooperation.

These agencies also recognize that watershed issues are so complex and interrelated that it is essential for stakeholders, including individual landowners, organizations, and government, to work together and help them understand the watershed and initiate projects that improve water quality and enhance natural resources and open space.

We are looking for stakeholders to participate in the watershed planning process by attending meetings, as time allows and providing comments. The process should take approximately 1 year to 1 1/2 years to complete. Stakeholder meetings will be every other month as the plan progresses. The Jan. 25 meeting will focus on reviewing the vision statement, baseline water quality monitoring results, and establishing preliminary goals.

The Woods Creek Watershed, located primarily in southeast McHenry County, is a subwatershed to the Crystal Creek Watershed that is part of the larger Upper Fox River Basin in northeast Illinois. The Woods Creek Watershed drains approximately 9 square miles to Crystal Creek. Large portions of the watershed include subdivisions of homes, commercial/industrial centers, farmland, gravel mining operations, schools, and recreational facilities. Interspersed throughout the urban environment is a natural system of streams, lakes, wetlands, and upland prairies, savannas, and woodlands.

The ecological quality of the Woods Creek Watershed was long thought to be in good conditions. However, intense urban sprawl in southeast McHenry County within the past 15 years is beginning to degrade the water quality within the watershed. Impacts to designated uses are primarily the result of phosphorus, total dissolved solids, chloride, fecal coliform and mercury originating from municipal point sources and urban runoff/stormwater sewers. To see a map of the watershed, visit www.algonquin.org/eco.

For information, visit www.algonquin.org/eco or call the watershed coordinators, Katie Parkhurst at (847) 658-4184 or Michele Zimmerman at (847) 658-2754.