Conservation Foundation tackles health of Fox River, other waterways

The Conservation Foundation has led impactful efforts to enhance Northeastern Illinois’ waterways through education, diverse programs and ecosystem restoration, and has seen improvements as a result.

The foundation has more than 5,000 members and 500 volunteers who carry out its mission of “preserving and restoring open space and natural lands, protecting rivers and watersheds, and promoting stewardship of our environment in northeastern Illinois,” according to its website. The group focuses more of its work in DuPage, Kane, Kendall, and Will counties.

It has a history of doing projects involving several suburban waterways such as the Fox River, DuPage River, Salt Creek and but now even has some connection to work on the Chicago River. The organization currently has a Fox River Initiative aimed at getting the waterway off the Environmental Protection Agency’s impaired water list.

“The Fox River is classified as an impaired river right now, and so that’s one thing that we’re working on,” said Jessica Mino, the Kane and Kendall program director for the foundation. “It’s made a lot of improvements in the last several decades, and it’s a wonderful river to enjoy.”

“We want to prevent chemicals from getting into our waterways from the things that we put on our lawn, and that’s really like fertilizers and herbicides and things like that.”

—  Jessica Mino, the Kane and Kendall program director for The Conservation Foundation

A main issue the foundation is focusing on now within the rivers is excessive chloride levels among other toxic chemicals.

“A big focus for us is winter chlorides or chlorides in general, but mostly from winter practices, and then nutrients, so phosphorus and nitrogen, which are issues nationwide that people are trying to grapple with,” said Jennifer Hammer, vice president of the foundation’s Land and Water Program. “We’re kind of looking at the sources of those coming from wastewater treatment facilities.”

In response to the high chloride levels waterways are facing, Hammer has worked to get both the Salt Smart Collaborative and Winter Chloride Watchers programs up and running to help track and combat these issues.

Hammer co-coordinates Salt Smart Collaborative, which is an organization that serves as an educational outlet aimed at reducing the amount of salt organizations and individuals are using.

“We develop a lot of education outreach materials for residents and really curate information from other resources,” Hammer said. “Chloride values go down in the areas that we’ve been working on this for the longest.”

Winter Chloride Watchers is a program that tracks the amount of chloride across Northeastern Illinois waterways. The program runs from November to May.

“It’s a really nice project where you come to an hour-long training about the impact of chlorides and pick up important kits and pick a site,” Hammer said.

Participants can pick their own testing sites in which they track chloride levels. Sign-up information can be found at theconservationfoundation.org/rivers-streams/winter-chloride-watchers/.

The foundation also focuses largely on the environment their streams are in and educating individuals on things they can do to better help the environment, even from their own homes.

“We have a program called Conservation@Home,” Mino said. “It’s a great way for people to get started because it doesn’t necessarily have to be going anywhere; it’s kind of to say that wherever we are, we can each make an impact. It provides kind of a checklist with some ideas that you can get started within your backyard system.”

Conservation@Home is a free program where individuals are encouraged to make small, environmentally-friendly changes. They can even get free visits from the foundation members to receive advice on things that can be done to improve their backyards or other environment projects, in turn, benefitting the health of waterways.

“We want to prevent chemicals from getting into our waterways from the things that we put on our lawn, and that’s really like fertilizers and herbicides and things like that,” Mino said. “It’s kind of like being conscious about that, but Conservation@Home gives some tips that people can do right at home. Wherever you are, you can do something to support our waterways.”

More information on the foundation and its various programs can be found at https://theconservationfoundation.org/.

Their main office is located at 10S404 Knoch Knolls Road in Naperville.