One day, Lake Michigan fish large and small may be able to travel all the way from the open waters of the Great Lakes to marshland on the Southeast Side.
For now, a group of conservationists, officials and community members will gather this weekend to mark the groundbreaking for the eventual restoration of Powderhorn Lake, which will be connected to Wolf Lake, creating a link extending all the way to Lake Michigan.
More than 100 acres of wetlands — and in turn fish, birds and flooded basements — stand to benefit from some human engineering at Powderhorn Lake.
“Anything that we can do to turn back the clock,” said Olga Bautista, a community member and the executive director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, which has worked to prevent pollution and protect public health in the industrialized Calumet region.
The project, a collaboration between Audubon Great Lakes, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, Great Lakes Commission and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is part of a larger effort to restore or protect more than 250,000 acres in the next decade.
Powderhorn Lake, near the Indiana border and part of Cook County forest preserves that were once just a piece of sprawling wetlands throughout the Calumet region, was built in the 1950s, primarily for fishing.
“This need to string together a series of parcels in order to create that connection in an urban setting — that made this project a little bit trickier,” said Ryan Darnton, technical monitor with the NOAA Restoration Center.
Today, the preserve includes savanna, prairie and wetland habitat, and is home to more than 200 plant species and as many as 100 bird species, depending on the time of year. Oaks reach up above prickly pear cactus. Ospreys may fly overhead, while marsh wrens clasp on to cattails below.
But the lake is separated from neighboring Wolf Lake — which itself is split by the Indiana Toll Road. Heavy rains and wet springs have led to high water levels in Powderhorn Lake — and flooding for neighboring communities.
The northern stretch of the preserve was once a relatively shallow area, but water levels have inched up.
“We just have more precipitation than we do water draining out,” Darnton said.
With high water, native plants and fish nursery habitat have essentially been drowned out. High water can block sunlight from reaching the marsh bottom, hindering the growth of some plants.
But with a water control structure planned for the northern marsh, water will be able to drain from the lake, allowing for occasional periods of lower water.
“We’re hoping with this project that we’ll bring the lake down a little bit, bring the marsh down a little bit,” said Charles O’Leary, deputy director of resource management for the forest preserves. “It has a lot more room to fill back up before it spills over.”
Through tinkering with water levels, conservationists hope to see the return of hemi-marsh, a mix of wetland plants and open water that’s especially hospitable habitat for birds and fish.
Hemi-marsh is “critical habitat for a suite of marsh bird species that are rapidly declining across the Midwest and Great Lakes region,” said Nat Miller, director of conservation for Audubon Great Lakes.
Fewer than half of the wetlands that once existed in the Great Lakes remain, leaving some of the 350 species of birds that rely on the region in search of a home. Along with habitat loss, birds, like other wildlife, must also contend with the fallout from human-caused climate change, lingering pollution and harmful invasive species. In North America alone, there are 29% fewer birds than there were 50 years ago, a 2019 study found.
Powderhorn also hosts remaining — and rare — dune and swale habitat: sandy ridges interspersed with water pockets. Marsh birds can be found in that habitat, Miller said, but he hopes to see a boost in numbers of the “who’s who of the state-endangered species list.”
As for fish, the return of the shallow northern area can provide important nursery habitat.
“That’ll benefit the fish that come from the big lake,” O’Leary said. “They’ll lay their eggs in the marsh, and the small fish will have all the roots to swim in and hide in and protect themselves in the shallows.”
And the connection will provide new access between waterways. Wolf Lake joins to the Indian Creek channel and the Calumet River, and ultimately Lake Michigan.
“The idea is by creating this connection we’re allowing fish, potentially from Lake Michigan, to get all the way up into Powderhorn Lake,” Darnton said. “The hope is that over time you’ll see a change and an improvement in the diversity of the fish population of the lake.”
Powderhorn Lake is welcoming to species including northern pike, O’Leary said, and another hope is some would move to Wolf Lake and bolster that population.
Along with benefits to birds and fish, the wetland connection will ideally serve as a flooding buffer, especially with climate change fueling more intense downpours.
Some residents living between Powderhorn and Wolf lakes have reported flooding, said Bautista, of the Southeast Environmental Task Force.
“When something like that happens in their neighborhood, it’s catastrophic for folks who don’t have disposable income to recover from a flood like that — even minor,” Bautista said. “We really hope that this might be a way to alleviate some of that.”
But efforts will be in vain if pollution faced by community members isn’t also mitigated, she said.
A data report released this year by the Alliance for the Great Lakes, along with partners such as the Metropolitan Planning Council and Center for Neighborhood Technology, found the majority Latino and Black residents who live in the Calumet Industrial Corridor — bordering Powderhorn Lake — disproportionately experience adverse health outcomes.
“We’ve done all of these things to adjust our community to make it easier for industry to move their commodities in and out, and those decisions have impacted nature and people,” Bautista said.
Construction for the nearly $1 million project, funded by NOAA and the Great Lakes Commission as part of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, is planned to be completed by the end of 2022, at the latest.
Monitoring will follow to see if the restoration is providing intended benefits.
“If we can have low water levels in the early spring, then we can get an immediate flush of vegetation, and the birds will find it,” Miller said.
“Things can spiral out of control pretty quickly for wetlands,” Miller added. But “a lot of the time nature is very resilient and just needs a little bit of a jump start.”
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Wetlands project at Powderhorn Lake will help fish, birds and flooded basements - Chicago Tribune
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