Fall 2001

Blanding's Turtle—threatened and slow—still survives inside Chicago's city limits. Photo by Mike Redmer. Wetland photo by Rob Curtis/The Early Birder.

By Jill Riddell

More than 200 species of birds migrate through or stay and nest in the Calumet wetlands. Indian Ridge Marsh supports the Upper Midwest’s largest rookery for black-crowned night herons, with more than 800 birds making nests and raising young there. Docking slips along Lake Calumet hold the largest nesting colony of ring-billed gulls in Illinois, numbering more than 5,000 birds. Several pairs of yellow-headed blackbirds, a species threatened with extinction in Illinois and in trouble in much of its natural range, continue to raise young in the wetlands of Eggers Woods and Hegewisch Marsh.

Yellow-headed blackbirds—a threatened species—nest in the wetlands of Eggers Woods and Hegewisch Marsh. Photo by Rob Curtis/The Early Birder.

According to Walter Marcisz, past president of the Chicago Ornithological Society, when water levels drop during the often-dry month of August, mud-flats are revealed that become “magnets for shorebirds,” he says. “Depending on the water levels, birders can easily see 16 or 17 species of sandpipers and plovers, yellowlegs, dowitchers.”

The amazing array of bird life in the area around Lake Calumet isn’t new – in fact, the natural abundance of birds, fish, and wildlife have been enjoyed for centuries. In the 1800s, well-off Chicago businessmen built sporting clubs in the area where they could hunt and fish. In the 1950s, Jim Landing, an early activist for protection of Lake Calumet, started birding in the region. He recalls that most of the same birds he saw then are still present today, though in dramatically smaller numbers.

The Calumet region would seem a natural spot for early preservation, but efforts for protection launched by Landing in 1980 were hampered in part by environmental advocates’ lack of hope for the bird’s surroundings. For the other most defining feature of the Calumet region causes traditional nature lovers to turn up their noses: the Calumet area has most of Chicago’s garbage and some of Chicago’s most pollution-prone industries. Toxins and heavy metals abound, leaving bodies of water highly contaminated. Most of the land that isn’t built upon has been used as a dumping ground for slag, a space-consuming byproduct of steel-making. And very little remains of the native vegetation that naturalists tend to seek when setting preservation priorities.

In short, the Calumet area traditionally has been a spot environmentalists were more inclined to describe as a disaster than to single out as opportunity.

Photo by Rob Curtis/The Early Birder.

Today, however, environmental advocates and government agencies capable of protecting the Calumet area view the Southeast Side with fresh eyes. Four factors have contributed to the current potential for a vast network of preserved lands that the City of Chicago is calling the “Calumet Open Space Reserve”: stronger environmental laws, a 20-year downturn in the industry that has resulted in slowed land development, the closing of many landfills, and the concentration of high-quality remnants, such as Burnham Prairie, Calumet City Prairie, and Powderhorn Marsh.
As proposed in documents released in May by the City of Chicago’s Department of Planning and Development (DPD), the Calumet Open Space Reserve will consist of 4,877 acres of open lands to be used for nature preservation and, in some cases, recreation. Of these, 4,186 acres are in Chicago, and 691 are in the near south suburbs. More than a third of the land in the Reserve (1,440 acres) is already protected. Most of the preserved land is in Cook County forest preserves and at Wolf Lake, owned by the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR).

But another 2,977 acres are targeted as appropriate for acquisition, and efforts are already underway to begin buying property. Illinois Governor George Ryan committed $4 million of funds from the Open Land Trust Program for land acquisition in the Calumet area for 2000 and 2001, and more is anticipated. The City of Chicago is in the process of acquiring about two-thirds of Indian Ridge Marsh North and Indian Ridge Marsh South, Heron Pond, and Hyde Lake Marsh through the 1999 Tax Reactivation Program. This land will likely be transferred to IDNR, which is expected to be the major landowner and manager of new properties in the Calumet Open Space Reserve.

The Forest Preserve District of Cook County has recently completed the acquisition of Burnham Prairie, and the city is also likely to receive a donation of Van Vlissingen Prairie in the next few months as part of a mitigation settlement with Belt Railway Corporation, the current owner.

A long-time neighbor of the prairie and proponent for its preservation, Marian Byrnes, notes the cultural and natural significance of this acquisition. “Van Vlissengen Prairie will be an educational resource. There are five schools within walking distance of it,” she says. “And the birds feed there. At the end of May, I see a bird on every square foot of land.”

Private industry is also getting into the act. As the Ford Motor Company lays plans for its new production facility in the region, it will provide funds to reconfigure the north/south-running branch of Indian Creek. Consultants from the US Forest Service have created a design that will transform the present straightened channel into a more natural stream, complete with meanders, ripples, and wetlands. These features are crucial for survival of aquatic insects and fish.

The Chicago Department of Transportation and other partners are also committed to the cause, planning a bikeway along Indian Creek and creating other new paths that will link the various parcels of the Calumet Open Space Reserve. These trails will connect with the Burnham greenway and the bike path along Lake Michigan’s shore.

Landfills provide a particularly interesting challenge for the Calumet Open Space Reserve. Some still operate, but as the permits for these landfills expire, they are being closed down and sealed. The Illinois Port Authority converted one capped landfill into the Harborside International Golf Course. The plan for the Calumet Open Space Reserve calls for landfills to become open space, and eventually to be planted to native upland prairie where possible. Though no such hills were found originally in the vast flats of the Calumet region, the increased topography will provide additional diversity of habitat likely to attract bobolinks and other birds not presently found.

The city’s Department of Environment (DOE) and IDNR worked together to create an Ecological Management Strategy, garnering input from 200 scientists and other experts. The strategy guides the scope and pace of restoration work in the Calumet area, and DOE is already in the process of implementing the early phases of restoration on some sites. “Ecological rehabilitation has already begun for Indian Ridge Marsh,” says Suzanne Malec, deputy commissioner of natural resources for DOE. “The dredging spoils that were dumped on the marsh helped it qualify for funds from the Army Corps of Engineers for rehab.”

DOE also received $6 million from Ford to help build and provide programming for an environmental education center that will be located somewhere within the open space reserve. It’s intended to provide the sort of programs enjoyed by north-siders at the City of Chicago’s North Park Village Nature Center.

Map: Courtesy of The Wetlands Initiative and US EPA Region V

The Calumet Open Space Reserve was created as an outgrowth of a land use planning effort intended to emphasize industrial redevelopment. Almost 60 percent of land available for industrial development is found in the Calumet area, and DPD’s Calumet Land Use Plan promotes 1,000 acres as ripe for industrial redevelopment. Much of this land was already once used for industrial purposes but has been abandoned.

“The open space component of the land use plan stems from the CitySpace plan [a joint project of DPD, Chicago Park District, and Forest Preserve District of Cook County published in 1998],” says Kathy Dickhut, deputy director of DPD. “We picked up on CitySpace’s emphasis that the Calumet area had the most important wetlands in the city, which made it essential to consider industrial use and wetland protection together when developing directions for land use.”

DPD took the idea of protecting wetlands along with industrial sites and ran with it. The result is that even industrial sites are encouraged to landscape in a way that enhances the natural attributes of the Calumet area by using native plants, implementing ecologically friendly approaches to stormwater management, and by creating environmentally appropriate erosion control along waterways. “Industry is embracing the idea,” says Malec. “We’re looking for incentives for industry to do more in this regard, but one of the best incentives is when I can tell them that [environmentally sensitive approaches] don’t have to extend costs and time. It just requires a different way of planning.”

Gerald Adelmann, director of Openlands Project, believes the city’s plan for the Calumet area will be an important model for industrial parks. “Industrial communities throughout the country and the world are facing some of the same challenges as Lake Calumet,” says Adelmann. “Generally planners have taken a pedestrian approach – calling for new sewers, new roads – but not taking a holistic approach as this plan does.”

Adelmann points out that industry originally set up shop in the Calumet area because of material concerns such as transportation and the availability of raw materials. “While those features are still important, quality of life is key today when businesses choose where to locate. It’s an increasingly important factor in a global economy where industries can go anywhere,” he says. “In the Calumet area, we have an extraordinary natural resource in the heart of a major city. If properly restored, we can create an environment few other cities can compete with.”

This is particularly true when one looks beyond the plan for Chicago and immediate suburbs, and observes the wide swath of green that can be created by linking the Calumet Open Space Reserve with the Illinois National Heritage Corridor to the west and to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on the east. Though the National Park Service examined and ultimately decided against creating a Calumet National Heritage Area for this bi-state region, it’s clear that establishing land and water links between these sites areas are important both for maintaining biodiversity and for attracting eco-tourism.

Photographer Greg Neise captures on immature black-crowned night heron near Lake Calumet.

Visiting the Calumet area also provides an opportunity to rethink nature, and what constitutes the natural world. Most of us have been raised to see factories as ugly blights on the landscape – yet we enjoy the products and standard of living such manufacturing provides.

At Calumet, there’s a chance for visitors to move past aesthetic prejudices against factories, smokestacks, and landfills and to truly view a landscape with fresh vision. “There is a certain majesty to some of the industrial artifacts,” says Adelmann. “And they tell the story of so many people’s lives. Not famous people, but the lives of workers. They also tell the incredible story of the growth and development of Chicago.”

Dickhut agrees. “I like plain old nature – you know, the top of the Tetons thing,” she says. “But I love it when culture and nature mix. The way the landfills loom on the landscape reminds me of Mayan mounds I’ve seen in Mexico and Belize. And they’ll probably be there just as long.”

Copies of the Calumet Area Land Use Plan: Sustainable Development for Industry and Nature, the Calumet Open Space Reserve Plan, and Calumet Area Design Guidelines will be available later this year from the City of Chicago, Department of Planning and Development. Call (312) 744-1074 for more information.