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Salt Creek network busy rest of year, too
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Updated: June 11, 2012 8:37AM
The spring cleanup along Salt Creek comes just once a year, but organizers meet monthly in LaGrange Park to plan other events, educational outreach and advocacy for clean waterways.
Regular e-mails inform members of the Salt Creek Watershed Network from western Cook County and DuPage County about opportunities to reduce pollution, such as recycling prescription drugs to keep them out of waterways, said Ron Hursh of LaGrange Park.
The nonprofit group also purchased “No Dumping” signs, which Broadview officials agreed to install along an industrial section of Addison Creek, which empties into Salt Creek.
Network members are involved in the planning process studying a new western access to O’Hare International Airport and the Elgin-O’Hare Expressway, Hursh said, because of the potential environmental impact on waterways.
The group also conducts water quality studies and maintains a data base with an analysis of Salt Creek and the DuPage River. Members have developed a model to predict water quality changes based on the removal of a dam at Churchill Woods in Glen Ellyn.
And, the group serves as a sounding board to answer inquires and put people in touch with the right agencies.
“A few years back, we had a call about oil bubbling up in a ditch near Ruth Lake at about Route 83 and 63rd Street,” Hursh said. “It turned out it was jet fuel from a leak in a fuel line to O’Hare. We told them the right people who could take responsibility for that kind of thing.”
