Wilmington residents grapple with Kankakee River flooding

WILMINGTON – Butch Marquardt was at the edge of the Kankakee River on Wednesday morning salvaging the dock and boat lift near his home.

Wearing a life jacket, Marquardt was standing by his pontoon boat in a fast moving river that flooded from torrential downpours in the past week. His dock and his neighbor's along the edge of the river were either submerged or floating.

Marquardt said he can’t get his boat out of the river because of the amount of debris stuck underneath.

“Plus, the current is too fast to try to get it out of there,” he said.

Kankakee River levels near Wilmington may taper off in a week. The river level was at 7.36 feet Tuesday afternoon, but was at 7 feet as of Wednesday, according to National Weather Service. By Saturday, the river level is expected to be at 6 feet.

Harold Damron, Will County Emergency Management Agency director, said the agency has monitored river gauges in Wilmington and further upstream, but they haven’t received any significant reports about flooding.

“At this point, we haven’t had anything significant reported to us. … We’re also watching the DuPage River in Shorewood,” Damron said. “We got a report from early this morning they’re not experiencing issues at this time.”

For Marquardt and his wife, Cookie, the river flooding has been exceptional, especially at this time of the year. Cookie Marquardt said the river usually floods because of ice jams during the winter.

“This is bad, this is really bad,” she said.

The dock for the home of one of their neighbors, Lou Ann Kinney, was twisted into a curve, with a bench attached to the dock standing sideways. Kinney said she hopes to fix the dock, but that won’t happen until the water goes down.

“We’ve never had it this bad,” she said.

According to the National Weather Service, the highest crest – or highest flood – at the Kankakee River near Wilmington in the past 50 years was 13.88 feet in January 1968. More recently, the highest crest was in September 2008, at 8.68 feet.

Damron said homeowners along river shorelines will experience higher levels of flooding than others. He said there haven’t been issues where people needed to evacuate, but he understands how weather conditions have affected homeowners’ docks.

Even though the Kankakee River tends to floods occasionally, Cookie Marquardt said when you love the river, you live there.

“You can’t fight Mother Nature, so you learn to live with it,” she said.