| Wetland
Restoration At Argonne National Lab
Argonne
National Laboratory in DuPage County will begin work on
a wetland restoration project this spring. Argonne expects
to increase the biodiversity of wetlands and their watersheds,
improve surface water and groundwater quality, and maintain
or increase the total wetland area on the Argonne site.
Argonne’s
restoration program also will benefit a wetland that was
previously drained for agricultural use. The area contains
approximately 6,000 feet of agricultural drain tiles that
will be removed to restore groundwater to the area, increasing
the size of a 3.2 acre wetland to approximately 10 acres.
As groundwater returns to the area, native wetland species
will be added, and adjacent upland areas will be planted
with prairie and savanna species. The restored wetland will
be an important part of a larger natural area that includes
oak woodland and prairie communities.
Argonne,
one of the U.S. Department of Energy’s largest multi-program
science laboratories, is operated by the University of Chicago.
Much of the 1,500-acre site was farmland in the late 1940s
when the government acquired it. The Argonne site contains
approximately 550 acres of open land.
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