Construction Season in Full Swing

Last Friday, I went out to see the progress being made on a creek crossing at a subdivision in Johnsburg. TLC is supposed to be taking a conservation easement on the creek and associated buffers sometime this spring, and I wanted to see the construction activity for myself.

The site is a mess - with all this rain we have had, there is mud everywhere. Deep ruts in the access lane, piles of topsoil heaped in various places. But, the creek water was clear.

Despite the fact that it was raining when I was out there, and it had rained heavily just two days before, the creek water was clear, and I saw minnows (or darters) swimming in the cool water.

The visit got me thinking about construction sites in general. They are a mess. There is no getting around that. The question is always whether the mess is being contained to appropriate locations on the property so that it doesn't spill over onto neighboring properties, onto the public roads, or into natural areas.

To manage the mess, most developers use silt fencing to contain the mud that wants to run-off of the site each time it rains. For larger sites, the silt fences should be combined with things like sediment traps, straw bale dams (to slow flow heading down hills), and even stabilization through seeding with a "cover crop" such as annual rye grass.

Construction sites that disturb more than one acre of soil are required to have a permit from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA). Inspections related to these permits are performed by the McHenry County Soil & Water Conservation District in Woodstock. Additionally, most construction projects of any size are covered by the Stormwater Ordinance for the county.

If you suspect that a construction site isn't doing enough to prevent damage to surrounding properties, or to safeguard wetlands and streams flowing through the construction site, please contact the Soil & Water office at 815-338-0099 x3. If the project is in a municipality, contact the Village Hall about the problem. If the project is in an unincorporated area of the county contact the County's Planning and Development department 815-334-4560.

Westwood Woods Burned

As Spring officially arrived in Woodstock (at about 7 pm Tuesday, March 20th), volunteers successfully finished a "controlled burn" in the wooded area at Westwood Conservation Area on Woodstocks southwest side.

A low line of flames crept steadily across the woodland floor, burning off years of accumulated leaf litter. As TLC land protection specialist Linda Balek put it: "It was just how we like it - slow." Slow is another way of saying "safe"!

In the coming months as woodland plants start to grow, it will be interesting to see if the fire helped encourage the growth of native woodland species.

Volunteer workdays at the site are the fourth Saturday of every month from 9 am - noon. The next event is Saturday March 24th, and features garlic mustard removal, chorus frog song identification, and continued brush removal in the woods.

New volunteers are always welcome. No experience required, we specialize in on the job training!

McHenry Co Enviro Summit a Success

What do you get when you put 40 local environmentalists in a room together for 6 hours?

That may sound like the punchline to a joke, but it was serious business for the people who gathered at McHenry College on March 17th for the inaugural McHenry County Environmental Summit.

Excellent facilitator, Peter Lopatin (who declared himself to be "Switzerland" since he did not have allegiances to any specific organizations), guided the group through several exercises to create a priority agenda for projects that the group of organizations could pursue to advance a stronger environmental agenda in the county.

Peter Benkendorf, Catalyst at Involvement Advocacy, was the event's instigator, working with Maia Tipton from the McHenry County Schools Environmental Education Program, Bill Donato from the McHenry County Defenders, Janet Trafelet from the Alliance for Land, Agriculture and Water, and myself, to organize the event.

About 20 environmental organizations - some non-profit, some government - were identified in McHenry County. Each group was asked to have 1 or 2 representatives at the event. The spirit of the event was to try and build a community of organizations that work together on certain projects in order to help make McHenry County a leader in environmental sustainability within 10 years.

After giving each organization 3-5 minutes to describe their mission, strengths & challenges, the group dove into a traditional SWOT analysis, calling out Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats that the community of enviro organizations faces. The SWOT analysis then led to small group work identifying specific actions that the group could take to advance a common agenda.

Actions Identified included:

- Create an Annual Scorecard for the environment. This could look at air quality, water quality, land protection, development regulations, enforcement of ordinances, and myriad other topics. The idea would be to move the county towards sustainability by recognizing the good things that are happening, and challenging the bad.

- Setting up a local list serve and webforum for environmentalists to share information with each other. Right now there is a lot of information & experience in the community of people and organizations, but no effective way to share that information.

- Working with communities to change ordinances to make conservation design the standard rather than the exception.

Next steps will be to develop a working group around each of the action items, and to start moving the agenda forward - together!

Participating Organizations:

Alliance for Land, Agriculture & Water

Barrington Hills Conservation Trust

Boone Creek Watershed Alliance

Cary Park District

Crystal Lake Park District

Friends of the Fox (Invited)

Fox River Ecosystem Partnership

Illinois Dept of Natural Resources - Private lands program

Kishwaukee River Ecosystem Partnership

McHenry County Conservation District

MC Conservation Foundation

MC Defenders

MC Schools Environmental Education Program

MC Soil & Water Conservation District

Nippersink Creek Planning Committee (Invited)

PACE

Sierra Club, Illinois Chapter, River Sentinels

The Land Conservancy of McHenry County

The Wildflower Preservation & Propagation Committee

USDA Natural Resource Conservation Service

Burn Season is upon us!

March is typically the start of "prescribed burn" or "ecological burn" season for natural land managers. Fire is the easiest way to manage many natural lands, as it clears out accumulated vegetation and keeps invasive brush and weeds in check.

Unlike native plants, non-native species tend to have shallow root systems that are more vulnerable to the effects of fire. Native plants can easily withstand even an intense burn on the surface, because their roots stretch down 5-15 feet.

I have heard questions raised about whether ecological burns contribute to global warming by releasing carbon into the atmosphere. While there is a carbon release during the burn, the fact is that natural areas sequester (store) much more carbon in the soil through their deep and dense root systems than what is released during a burn.

As much as 90% of a prairie plant's biomass (roots, stems and leaves taken together) is stored under the soil surface in the root system! So, while there may be a short-lived boost in carbon released during a burn, over the course for the following year season when the plants are growing and continuing to build their root system, a much greater amount will be stored in the soil.

Unfortunately, in the unincorporated areas of McHenry County, the decision has been made that while natural area managers can burn prairies and wetlands in March, they cannot burn any accumulated brush piles until open burning season in April & May if the brush piles are within 500' of a residential dwelling.

Pace it off, and you will see that 500' is quite a distance! In my Harvard neihborhood, 500' would be more than two blocks away! This ruling by the Planning & Development department will hamper management of these natural areas. In addition to an IEPA burn permit, the county now requires a county burn permit (which must be applied for at least 10 days prior to the burn), and if there are brush piles on the property, the burn plan must include provisions for protecting the brush piles from burning while the area around them burns.

As more developments are proposed to have natural lands within them, the use of ecological burns is likely to become more common, not less. It is customary during the management of natural lands to cut invasive brush in the winter, and then burn the area in the spring (usually as early as March, but no later than mid April because desireable plants are often growing by then). The accumulated brush piles are typically burned down during the ecological burn. This just makes sense.

I think it is a ridiculous rule! As you can see from the photo at top, burning a meadow in the spring can generate a lot of smoke, just as burning a brush pile can. How is it okay to burn the wetland in March, but not the associated piles of brush in the wetland? Both are part of ecological management of a natural area!

Also, consider this, when TLC conducts an ecological burn of a natural area: we have a permit from IEPA and the county; we notify the local fire department and dispatch; we take steps to notify neighbors; we have at least 6 people to participate in the burn, including at least one experienced burn leader; we only burn if the weather conditions are appropriate (wind, humidity, etc); and we have safety equipment including rakes, shovels and backpack water sprayers to manage any problems.

When your neighbor decides to burn his pile of landscape waste in April, he may only bring along a case of beer. But that's okay in McHenry County, since it is open burning season!

March 6th program a success

On March 6th, TLC and the McHenry County Farm Bureau hosted a seminar for landowners in McHenry County with attorney George Covington, to help them understand the tax laws related to conservation easements.

About 40 landowners or their advisors attended the seminar. Attendees were enthusiastic about the program. The follow-up surveys showed that people found the information to be helpful and the speaker to be excellent.

Farm Bureau provided lunch after the program, and many people stayed for the meal and fellowship.

A note about the Farm Bureau facility on McConnell in Woodstock: they have high speed internet, a projector and large screen, plus a laptop computer which can be used to show power point programs or even to access websites live with the audience.

A big thank you to Dan Volkers, McHenry County farm Bureau Manager for being such a great host for the program. We are hoping to work together on another seminar in the summer to help explain the county's farmland preservation program.