Woods Creek Cleanup Could Cost $5 Million

Cleaning up the Woods Creek Watershed including parts of Algonquin, Lake in the Hills and Crystal Lake could cost as much as $5 million, according to an estimate revealed Wednesday at a meeting of the Watershed Protection Plan Commitee in Algonquin.  Consultant Steve Zimmerman said sampling shows phosphorous levels are too high in Woods Creek and right now "The lake is acting as a big detention basin to clean the water."

Zimmerman, a consulting ecologist with Applied Ecological Services, said he'd found 150 projects throughout the 9 square mile watershed that would help clean up the creek and the lake.  "Even if we just did half of them we're probably beating the (Environmental Protection Agency) target," he said.

The Woods Creek Watershed is one of the Fox River's 29 subwatersheds, most of which are at least conducting pollution studies.  South Barrington's three-times larger Spring Creek Watershed recently received EPA approval for its cleanup plan.

Zimmerman said the Woods Creek area has two "hot spots" where sediment and phosphorous levels are too high.  One is in Lake in the Hills' older residential areas where detention ponds are lacking.  The other's in Algonquin's commercial and residential area along Randall Road South of Harnish Drive where there's a lot of streambank erosion.

The villages of Algonquin and Lake in the Hills and the City of Crystal Lake and to the Crystal Lake Park District who all control public land in the watershed have been studying it since last November and expect to submit improvement plans to the USEPA by January.

After that, it will be a question of the communities and park district finding grant money to pay for improvements said Algonquin Assistant Public Works Director Michelle Zimmerman.

In the pic: Consultants think repairing streambanks and improving detention ponds, especially in the areas in red will improve water quality in Woods Creek and Woods Creek Lake.