Tales of Restoration

Seven on-the-ground projects show a region in action,
finding a new way forward, and sharing it with the world.

by Alison Carney Brown and Arthur Melville Pearson

A series of rusted “pickling” lagoons and a wastewater treatment plant once laid claim to 60 acres adjacent to Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, on the western shore of the Burns Waterway. Now the land is graced with marram grass, sand reed, and hundreds of native perennials that welcome wildlife and people to the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk.

For years, National Steel processed steel on this site, leaving it mostly polluted and abandoned — what agencies call a “brownfield.” But Congressman Pete Visclosky and former Portage Mayor Doug Olson championed a new future for the parcel, to be a key link in the Marquette Plan, Indiana’s strategy to “create a liveable lakefront” that is 75 percent accessible to the public. The National Lakeshore acquired the property after state and federal agencies declared it a “clean closure” in 2002 — meaning all hazardous wastes had been removed by US Steel (which owned the property briefly and honored National’s commitment to rehabilitate it). An EPA assessment discovered Jack pine, beach sumac, bearberry, common juniper, and dune goldenrod — all rare in Indiana.

The Lakeshore partnered with the City of Portage to build a LEED Gold-certified education center there, too, geothermally heated and built with nearly half its materials from local sources. The Portage Park District manages the facility. With the support of an Indiana Department of Natural Resources grant, they are working with the school district to develop an environmental curriculum, says Clarke Johnson, parks superintendent. They will also host Indiana Dunes BioBlitz events this summer.

The character of the property informed the park’s design. In the original plans, a parking lot seemed best suited atop disturbed soil where the pickling lagoons once were. Yet between clean closure and construction, a wetland began to reestablish itself there, possibly from seeds on the adjacent National Lakeshore land. So parking was moved elsewhere.

A fishing platform overlooks the dunes, the lake, and the neighboring US Steel plant, an active partner since the project’s inception. “The platform and the riverwalk along Burns Waterway celebrate the coexistence between industry and nature,” says Gregg E. Calpino, JJR project designer. “This is a model of what can happen, it raises the bar, and there are a number of US Steels that could be partners.”

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Just as the Calumet area’s natural areas are fragmented, so, too, were its smattering of stewardship efforts prior to the establishment of the Calumet Stewardship Initiative (CSI) in 2001. Now the all-volunteer group facilitates cooperation among 30 Calumet stakeholders to champion environmental interests. Sharing information, launching a Web site, coordinating volunteer workdays, publishing a newsletter, and raising financial support, CSI’s partner organizations have established strong, ongoing restoration efforts at Beaubien Woods, Powderhorn Prairie, Sand Ridge Nature Center, and several other prominent Calumet conservation areas.

But a recent CSI survey revealed that most of the area’s natural areas remain without a dedicated volunteer stewardship group. So, this past summer, three CSI partner organizations — Friends of the Forest Preserves, the Forest Preserve District of Cook County, and The Field Museum — held a five-month stewardship training course. The course prepared 12 people to be certified as apprentice stewards, which allows them to run volunteer workdays at established workday sites. Most importantly, it lays the groundwork for them to adopt their own Calumet sites in the future.

Larry Unruh, one of the new apprentices, is excited about the training. “I always knew that volunteering in my local forest preserves was something I wanted to do once I retired. Now that I am retired, I’m busier than ever in my new ‘job’ as a volunteer naturalist.”

Laurel Ross, urban conservation director for The Field Museum and co-chair of CSI’s Stewardship Team, believes cultivation of volunteer leadership is crucial to the long-term health of the Calumet region. “We have some really good people taking an interest in the Calumet,” she says. “They work their butts off. They recruit and train others. Our job is to help them get training and resources and then get out of their way.”

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In 1996, a wildfire swept through The Nature Conservancy’s Ivanhoe Dune and Swale Nature Preserve, exterminating its population of federally endangered Karner blue butterflies. For Paul Labus, TNC’s Northwest Indiana regional director, this setback underscores a principal challenge of managing natural areas within the highly fragmented Calumet region. The Karner blue actually needs fire — its host plant, the wild lupine, thrives only in places that burn. “[But] historically,” says Labus, “populations of Karner blues constantly shifted across the landscape. Once you fragment their habitat, you restrict their ability to repopulate areas from which they have been eliminated.”

So it is for many native plants and animals in what isolated islands remain of their habitat at the southern rim of Lake Michigan. That’s why TNC developed a plan to manage ten Core Biodiversity Sites and configure enough connecting links between them “such that they function as if they were part of a larger, more intact landscape.” Combined, the core sites total about 1,000 acres within the Toleston Strandplain Macrosite, a 9,000-acre area named for the glacial period that left in its wake hundreds of parallel beach ridges. Called “dune-and-swale” habitat, the ridges have largely been mined, bulldozed, or otherwise carved up for human use.

As Labus explained, the plan essentially provides context for individual site management plans. “If you’ve got Karner blues on your site, the plan helps you think about connectivity, making links between suitable habitat areas.” Following the Ivanhoe wildfire, TNC spent several years restoring Karner blue habitat at the 47-acre site, as well as at a 204-acre Core Area it manages on behalf of its owner, the DuPont Company.

In 2001, TNC released the first of 250 Karner blues at Ivanhoe as part of a federal program to reestablish populations. While the Karner appears to be hanging on at Ivanhoe, what Labus finds particularly hopeful is that the butterfly has colonized the DuPont site all on its own. He doesn’t know whether the colonizers came from Ivanhoe or some other nearby site. But as humankind rebuilds and reconnects its habitat, evidence suggests the Karner blue could come back.

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To some they’re just big dumps. But to Tom Shepherd, the landfills that dot the Calumet area like ancient mound-culture earthworks are ecotourism gold. That doesn’t mean he, or his fellow board members of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, want any more of them. In fact, the task force has been instrumental in keeping in place a decades-old moratorium on landfill expansion anywhere within the city of Chicago.

But since there is no masking the sight — or occasional smells — of the area’s landfills, sludge ponds, and other waste areas, the task force uses them as teaching opportunities. Since 1999, Shepherd and others have been leading busloads of people on what are known as the “Toxics to Treasures Tours.”

“When groups stand at the base of a landfill, they can’t believe how huge it is, or how stinky,” Shepherd says with a knowing grin. “That’s when we explain how and why we fight so hard to keep them from growing bigger and stinkier still.” Shepherd also finds that the multi-sensory experience renders people far more open to his pitches for recycling and waste reduction.

Then Shepherd leads his charges to places like the Ford Supplier Park. Built upon a reclaimed brownfield, the motor company industrial complex not only provides local jobs, but is a model for using green technologies to filter stormwater runoff, promote energy efficiency, and minimize pollution.

Next the tour turns toward Wolf Lake, Indian Ridge Marsh, the Marian Byrnes Natural Area, and Hegewisch Marsh — future site of the city’s second environmental center. For those who know the Calumet area only from passing by it on the highway, such unexpected natural areas, with their particularly rich diversity of bird life, are a revelation. “When people go home from our tours,” Shepherd boasts, “we want them to remember that we’re not the dumping ground of the city anymore. We’re for cleaner, greener industry. We’re for healthy, accessible natural areas for plants and animals and people alike.”

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In teams of four, students make a transect line in a prairie. They divide the space into quadrats and gather data: What kinds of wildflowers are here? What kinds of plants?

“First it’s textbook science — ‘I read it, I saw a picture,’” says Eva Aseves, an environmental science teacher at George Washington High School. Then the relationship progresses to: “‘Now I’m actually doing it, using tools that actual scientists use.’”

An outgrowth of community advocacy, Calumet Is My Back Yard, or CIMBY, unfolded in 1998 within a couple of classrooms on the Southeast Side of Chicago. Equal parts leadership training, ecology, and stewardship, the extracurricular program added up to an increased awareness and sense of responsibility for the fragile beauty of the Calumet area. When the Chicago Public Schools introduced a 40-hour service learning requirement for high school students, CIMBY was in place to introduce kids to restoration work right away.

In 2002, The Field Museum developed the Calumet Environmental Education Program, or CEEP, which builds skills and knowledge in a sequenced approach: Mighty Acorns at the elementary level, the Earth Force program at middle schools, and the Illinois UrbanWatch program at high schools. CIMBY and CEEP now support 17 schools and are involved at a dozen “adopted” natural areas on the Southeast Side.

“At the end of the day, it’s not the course work, it’s the life experience,” Aseves asserts. “Give the students a chance to get involved in their environment no matter where they live and they will come to know it and appreciate it. Wherever they decide to make their home, they will become involved in their environment. These programs create a world citizen.”

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What began as an employee cleanup effort has blossomed into a model, company-supported environmental restoration and education program. In 1991, a handful of employees at US Steel Corporation’s Gary Works began removing trash and industrial refuse from a black oak savanna remnant located on the east side of the 3,000-acre industrial site. Soon they had invited at-risk students to help restore the rare wooded habitat.

To assist their efforts, the employees contacted the Wildlife Habitat Council, a national organization that “helps large landowners, particularly corporations, manage their unused lands in an ecologically sensitive manner for the benefit of wildlife.” Daniel Goldfarb, program manager of the council’s Northwest Indiana–Southeast Chicago office, helped secure funding from the US Department of Agriculture to provide on-site Mighty Acorns classes for two local elementary schools.

Guided by an ecological management plan developed by the council, The Nature Conservancy, Taltree Arboretum & Gardens, and the Dunes Learning Center, students work alongside US Steel employees to remove invasive species from the 20-acre oak savanna area, and to use native plants to reclaim a four-acre area that is a mix of loose slag and sand. One of their primary goals has been to increase the population of Karner blue butterflies by expanding the range of their native host plant, wild lupine.

Based on the success of this effort, US Steel launched a similar effort with local Girl Scouts at its Midwest Plant in Portage, Indiana. “It’s kind of a trickle-up process,” Goldfarb says. “These kinds of employee-initiated projects get company managers to think about managing their properties in a proactive, ecological way. And those companies that are most progressive are now including activities for their employees as part of their environmental management plans.”

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Log by log, minimum-security inmates are reclaiming woodland at the edge of Indiana Dunes State Park. Under a salvage log pile that over the years has grown to nearly three-quarters of an acre lies habitat that the park hasn’t had the manpower to wrestle free. But since January 2006, offender crews from Indiana State Prison in nearby Michigan City have been reporting to work at the state park, trained to restore and enhance the park’s health and beauty. The program is a partnership between the Indiana Department of Natural Resources and Indiana Department of Corrections.

“This program puts offenders back into a real work environment,” says Mark Newkirk, administrative assistant to the Indiana State Prison superintendent. “They go to work every morning, have a lunch break, work for a supervisor, and hopefully get to use some hands tools they’ve never used before. They can learn things there.”

The prison crew has completed several invasive plant removal projects at one special site where the State Park restored a section of Dunes Creek to its natural path, liberating it from a culvert.

That newly “daylighted” portion of the creek proved some of its worth last September, when 16 inches of rain fell over four days. An 800-foot section of the creek that still runs through a culvert under a parking lot spilled over into the lot, causing a 20,000-square-foot section to collapse.

But the natural section impounded tens of millions of gallons of water. “In that 24 to 48 hours, the water could have done a lot more damage. Daylighting mitigated the damage,” says Brandt Baughman, state park property manager. The park and IDNR are considering naturalizing the second section of the creek to flow out into Lake Michigan as it once did. Bacteria levels are lower at the beach as a result of the first project, and a June 2007 survey found 13 different species of fish in the area.

“There’s a green approach and a gray approach to infrastructure,” explains the EPA’s Bob Newport. “The pipe under the parking lot is an example of a gray project.” A green solution such as the daylighting project includes plants that absorb water, remove pollutants, provide habitat, and cool the area. “In both scenarios, water moves from point A to point B, but a green approach can accommodate different flows,” Newport explains. “We have to ask, how was Mother Nature handling the issues before we tried to intervene? We need to design infrastructure solutions that mimic these stable systems.”

— ACB