Carpentersville dam removal key part of Fox River study

Carpentersville is seeking residents' input on strategies to enhance recreational uses along the Fox River at a Jan. 21 public hearing.

It's part of a regional study being done by the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning expected to be completed this summer. The study will play some part in the Kane County Forest Preserve's overall goal to remove the Carpentersville dam on the Fox River.

“The dam would have to be included in any study of how you would want to use the Fox River for recreation,” Carpentersville Village President Ed Ritter said.

Yet, that study doesn't really control what happens to the dam, he added.

“That's not the focus of it,” Ritter said. “There's some different options on the table. One option that I would like to consider, rather than removing the dam, if they just breach the center and then we use the dam as a way to get back and forth across the river. You could really put a bike path and bridge there.”

The village's bike trail is on one side of the river and the county forest preserves on the other.

“The forest preserve is creating trails near the banks of the river on the Route 31 side,” Ritter said. “Eventually we want the two sides of the river joined. This would be a big money saver. It's only a few hundred feet from the dam to the regional bike path. We'd like people to be able to ride their bike from one end of Carpentersville all the way across to the other.”

More than money

The Illinois Department of Natural Resources has targeted the Carpentersville dam for removal, but no money has been allocated for the project at this time, spokesman Chris Young said.

The impact or cost of removing the dam has not yet been determined and will be part of an engineering study later on.

“We are working with the Forest Preserve District of Kane County,” Young said. “We hope to have some sort of a cost estimate prepared for that project soon.”

The forest preserve district owns the dam and would oversee any project to remove it.

“You just can't take the dam out. You have to provide some restoration,” said Monica Meyers, executive director of the forest preserve district. “We're just waiting for the written report that's a culmination of that (Fox River Study Group).”

Carpentersville, Algonquin, the Kane County Forest Preserve District and McHenry County Conservation District are partnering on the river study. The study area goes from Carpentersville all the way south to Elgin's water treatment plant.

Ritter said there are other benefits to breaching the dam versus removal.

“If they breach the dam, then the river all the way back up to the Algonquin dam will also become a nice fishing river,” he said. “How big a breach ... that's going to be the next question.”

Previous discussions

The removal of dams along the Fox River, including ones in Geneva and Batavia, has been discussed for years.

The state favors removal of lowhead dams because of environmental and safety concerns, according to a 2007 report.

In 2011 and 2014, men died in accidents at the Geneva dam. One was pulled over the dam in a kayaking accident. The other was trying to rescue a boy who fell from a rock in the no-entry zone below the dam. The men were overpowered by hydraulic roller effect, commonly called a boil, at the bottom of the lowhead dam.

In Batavia, advocates have argued whether the dam hurts the health of the river; whether removal would increase the fish species; whether the wide flats that would be revealed when the river narrowed would require a lot of maintenance, be damaged by flooding and harbor mosquitoes; and whether it was important to keep the river deep enough to allow motorized pleasure watercraft to use it.

Carpentersville Assistant Village Manager Joe Wade said the planning agency study will not only examine ways to enhance leisure use of the Fox River corridor and surrounding areas, trails and forest preserves; it also will determine whether removal of the dam is a good idea.

The Fox River Corridor Public Visioning workshop is 6:30 to 8 p.m. at the Carpentersville public works building, 1075 Tamarac Drive.