Power & Plants

By Debra Shore

With more than 40,000 acres of land in the Chicago region, utility companies are seizing the opportunity for stewardship.

Brett Richer is an extremely rare creature, a biologist at a utility company. He spends most days threading his way through a thicket of regulations and requirements, seeking the prized permit or the favorable lease. Let’s be clear: the business of an electric utility company is the production and transmission of electricity. But as senior environmental scientist for ComEd, which serves approximately three million customers in the region, Richer’s job is to make sure that maintenance activity along transmission lines is as friendly as possible to protected habitats, plants, or animals. “There’s no such thing as a maintenance-free line,” Richer says, “and almost any way we do it, we’re going to have an impact, yet we have found ways to minimize our impacts as much as possible. We have to get a truck back there.” Richer’s challenge is how to do that without, for instance, destroying breeding habitat for Blanding’s turtles.

With 40,000 acres of rights-of-way in northeastern Illinois alone, ComEd owns more land than all but one of our region’s forest preserve districts. Conservation biologists now think that in order to maintain viable populations of most plant species, we need to protect between 20 and 30 percent of land cover as habitat. Currently in the greater metropolitan region, approximately 300,000 acres are protected natural lands. Since protecting more land through public ownership is becoming less possible and isn’t even always desirable, the question becomes: how can private landowners manage their parcels in a way that is beneficial for both nature and the corporate bottom line?

ComEd and other utility companies in the region are taking some promising steps in that direction.

Buffalo Grove Prairie — A Jewel Survives Through Stewardship

Wedged between an industrial strip of factories on the west and railroad tracks to the east in Lake County lie ten acres of original Illinois: Buffalo Grove Prairie. Once part of a much larger 70-acre grassland, which was quite possibly the finest example of grade-A virgin black soil prairie in the entire state, the site was eaten away by development on both sides until only the ComEd easement remained.

In the 1980s, volunteers collecting seed from the site for use in nearby prairie restorations recognized its high quality and value. They prevailed upon ComEd to provide greater protections to the prairie, and the company responded. Former ComEd executive Al Heidecke ordered “Preserve” signs to be posted and proposed a lease agreement with volunteers working to restore the site.

Bev Hansen, a Northbrook resident and leader of the Buffalo Grove Prairie Guardians, has supervised a hardy crew of volunteers on workdays each month since the late 1980s. As with most stewardship groups, these volunteers cut brush, pull weeds, collect and sow seeds, apply herbicide to invasive plants, and remove trash.

Over the years, Hansen has seen ComEd undergo a number of reorganizations and changes, but under Richer’s leadership she sees new cause for hope. The group’s request for a prairie burn had been rebuffed over the years. But Richer understood that need immediately when he started with ComEd three years ago. “We had a great big meeting in late 2002,” says Hansen, “with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, ComEd, and the volunteers — and everybody wanted to know how they could help.” Hansen had her outline of priorities. As a result, Richer agreed to have company crews assist with brush cutting, supported a plant inventory at the prairie, and paid for the prairie’s first-ever controlled burn — four acres — in the fall of 2003 by Pizzo and Associates, a firm that had experience burning under power lines.

A plant study conducted at the prairie in 2003 and 2004 by Barbara Johnson showed the beneficial effects of management, including burning. At one study transect, for instance, Johnson observed an abundance of asters, sunflowers, rattlesnake master, and blazing star. “Such a rich forb prairie is extremely uncommon in the Chicago region today,” Johnson wrote, “and its general aspect differs radically from most restorations, which are often dominated by extremely tall grasses and weedy goldenrods. The highest quality portions of remnant prairies tend to exhibit their richness in diversity rather than in height.”

Using a widely adopted method of assessing the quality of the flora, Johnson found that the average number of species recorded in a test plot rose from 13.4 in 2003 to 14.9 in 2004. “This kind of richness is extremely rare in the region,” she noted.

In a second study plot at the prairie, Johnson found at least one species — two-flowered Cynthia — that had not been rec-orded there before. She also discovered a native orchid, nodding ladies’ tresses, that had not extended to that part of the prairie previously. “These are examples of the kinds of discoveries that the close work of transect monitoring makes possible,” Johnson reported, “especially in areas that have been burned.”

Hansen was definitely heartened several years ago when ComEd denied another utility company the right to put a pipeline directly through the middle of the prairie. Instead, the company had to circumvent the prairie’s ten acres and purchase rights to place a pipeline on private property. “It really illustrated to us that ComEd was standing behind its obligation to protect this prairie,” Hansen said. “Buffalo Grove Prairie doesn’t have protected status with the state, and it never will because ComEd needs the right to maintain its lines,” she adds. “But we want to preserve the integrity of this living laboratory. It’s a tallgrass prairie and it has the right to exist.”

Rights-of-Way and Public Land: An Agreement to Manage for Habitat Benefits

Last year ComEd entered into an innovative lease agreement with the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County (News of the Wild, Fall 2004) for approximately 100 acres of ComEd right-of-way bordered by public lands on both sides. The Forest Preserve District owns land on the south side of Stearns Road, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources owns land on the north side (part of Tri-County Park) and the ComEd easement runs right through these parcels. Now, through an agreement hammered out by all the parties, the Forest Preserve District will manage the ComEd land in a way that will enhance the adjacent areas, while still guaranteeing ComEd access for maintenance purposes when necessary.

“We have four different community types there,” says John Oldenburg, natural resources manager for the district. By managing the ComEd easement as an extension of the natural community — rather than as farmland, its prior use — the district can protect the high-quality areas from weedy invasives and ensure the integrity of the water flows. The district assumes the cost of management, while plants, animals, and people derive substantial benefits. ComEd hopes this will serve as a model for future partnerships with other land management agencies.

ComEd’s Vegetation Management Department is currently creating a mapping system that characterizes vegetation types on the transmission rights-of-way. With this tool, they can set priorities for new restoration efforts.

Lockport Prairie: A Committee of Care

Lockport Prairie in Will County is a dedicated state nature preserve and harbors the federally endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly and other rare species. Protecting the rare seeps there has engaged a multi-agency team, including the Army Corps of Engineers, the railroad company, the Forest Preserve District of Will County, Midwest Generation, Material Service, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago, and ComEd, which owns a 75-year-old transmission line right at the base of the bluffs from which the rare seeps emerge. “They’re looking to designate this as critical habitat for a federally endangered species,” Brett Richer says, “which means the land will receive as much protection as the animal.”

What’s a utility company to do? “Burying lines doesn’t always get rid of the problem,” Richer says. The answer lies, not surprisingly, in partnerships — corporations and agencies collaborating to make business and nature work. But the bottom line is always a factor.

Stewards of the Indian Boundary Prairies near Markham in Cook County, for instance, have beseeched ComEd for years to bury the transmission lines bisecting those rare sites so that they could be burned more frequently and for aesthetic reasons. In this case, the cost so far has ruled out removal.

Source of Seed: Good and Bad

In northwest Indiana, Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO, a NiSource company), manages 2,200 acres of right-of-way and is converting some to native vegetation. Utility corridors, especially those bisecting or adjacent to protected natural areas, can be looked to and managed as extensions of natural habitat, providing sources of seed for restoration. Or they can harbor harmful weeds, such as teasel, reed canary grass, and buckthorn. “When we look at our rights-of-way,” says Brian Kortum, natural resources specialist at NiSource, “we look at our goals for management and the tools at our disposal. In the past, we’ve traditionally mowed every five to seven years. From a wildlife perspective, that’s not so good.” Kortum says that now, after mowing, crews return the next year to kill tree resprouts with herbicide, thus minimizing the need for mowers to return.

There are other good reasons to reduce mowing, of course, not least because it costs money and degrades air quality. Supported by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, NiSource has partnered with Save the Dunes on one right-of-way to establish low-growing native plants in an area of dunes, sandy wetlands, and sand prairie. In an area near Miller, Indiana, in cooperation with Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, NiSource is managing its property to benefit the Karner blue butterfly, a federally endangered species.

“We want to promote the wild lupine growing on our right-of-way, which is the host plant for the Karner blue. J. F. New has managed burns on our property and is monitoring the butterfly populations,” Kortum added. In addition, a rare plant — Scirpus expansus — found nowhere else in Indiana, survives on a NiSource right-of-way on the south side of the National Lakeshore and Indiana Dunes State Park. Other rare plants found there are small forget-me-not, joint rush, marsh club moss, northern winged sedge, and follicle sedge.

Nicor, a natural gas transmission company, owns 80 miles of rights-of-way in the region and has begun a demonstration project at its facility in Naperville to enhance a wetland area, stabilizing streambanks and revegetating with native plants. Nicor has collaborated with a number of area park districts and forest preserves to develop bike trails and paths along its rights-of-way too.

The Problem with Plants

Not every easement or right-of-way managed with native forbs and grasses is a success story, however. In Cary, Illinois, when some people whose homes abut utility easements complained about the tall plants growing on ComEd’s land, the company caved and mowed the plants down. Clearly there is more work to be done to educate and inform neighboring residents about the value and importance of vegetation management using native plants, but that’s not a job utility companies are traditionally equipped or inclined to do.

Much of the good work and progressive stewardship promoted by one division of ComEd, it should be noted, is undone by the aggressive tree-trimming practices of the company’s contract crews, often to the detriment of both tree health and neighborhood comity. People want electrical power on demand, but they also demand beautiful trees.

Biodiversity Plan: ComEd Means Business

Sara Race, a former organizer of the Mighty Acorns program at The Field Museum, is completing her Masters degree in Environmental Management at Illinois Institute of Technology by developing a biodiversity plan for ComEd. “We want to highlight the work the company is doing,” Race explains, “create relationships with non-governmental organizations, and increase stewardship of natural areas.” For example, the nuclear division of Exelon, ComEd’s parent company, is surveying two sites this year to obtain baseline information of the existing plant and animal life, with plans to survey many more sites over the next two years. “We’re trying to look not only at the negative impacts, but the positive ones as well,” Race says. “Our biodiversity plan will be part of our whole environmental management system.”

Richer recounts with evident pleasure seeing a field of compass plants come up after mowing one site, or discovering a prairie “we didn’t know we had.” He’s looking to scientific research on the carbon sequestration rates of prairie plants to help him make the case for increasing management with native plants. “A lot of studies have been done with trees and the amount of carbon they sequester,” Richer says. “We don’t know as much about prairie plants, which have their biomass below ground and have very low release rates.” To learn more, ComEd has funded a study on carbon sequestration along a right-of-way at Nachusa Grasslands, owned by The Nature Conservancy, in western Lee County, Illinois. Richer is hoping the economics of carbon sequestration — and the offsets through carbon credits that his company may gain — will also drive utilities in the direction of tall grasses instead of turf.

“ComEd keeps telling us, ‘This is what we want,’” says Buffalo Grove Guardian Hansen. “Keeping the prairie healthy is really the best use of the property.”

For information about volunteering with the Buffalo Grove Prairie Guardians, call (847) 272-6211.