by Charles Goodall

(This op-ed ran in the Champaign News Gazette )

Chris Hausman, president of the Champaign County Farm Bureau, in a November 30 Guest Commentary wrote that citizens following the Upper Salt Fork River drainage controversy “come away with very little understanding about the true purpose of the waterway.”

If that is true, his commentary only adds to their confusion. Here’s why:

Historically, the Upper Salt Fork River was a natural waterway. Maps produced in the 1870’s, many years before the Drainage District was established, clearly show the Salt Fork as a natural stream extending from Rantoul to Homer. The Drainage District itself, in its petition before the Court, quotes a 1925 report of its Commissioners describing the existing condition of the Salt Fork Creek from Rantoul to St. Joseph as a ” a natural stream very crooked and tortuous in its course and extremely shallow, at most places being only a few feet in depth.” Clearly then, the upper Salt Fork already existed, and not merely “for the sole purpose of draining storm runoff from the land.” Mr. Hausman ignores historical fact.

Today, even though it has been channelized, the stream still serves multiple purposes, among them a sanctuary for wildlife and fish. Citizens understand this and want all functions to be accommodated. Just as the drainage function cannot be ignored, neither can it override the requirement to protect the environment, as Mr. Hausman suggests. Nor do citizens assert that fish and wildlife should “receive a higher priority than the proper maintenance” of drainage systems as Mr. Hausman would lead readers to believe.

Illinois drainage law specifically requires the use of “all practical means and measures, including consideration of alternative methods of providing the necessary drainage, to protect such environmental values as trees and fish and wildlife habitat.” Unfortunately, the Drainage District’s analysis and proposed maintenance methods are not suitable for protecting the environmental functions of the river and may not even pursue proper farm drainage goals in a cost-effective manner. That is why Prairie Rivers Network has intervened.

In general, drainage maintenance practices lag behind other public works projects in terms of compliance with environmental standards. Maintenance and construction of roadways and other utilities must comply with environmental protection laws such as the state and federal Endangered Species Acts and other 20th century mandates that accommodate societal concerns. Mr. Hausman ignores too much when he suggests that “if a road becomes worn or a city water pipe breaks, we fix them regardless of the impact those repairs might have on habitat.”

Fortunately, we can have our cake and eat it too. The choice that Mr. Hausman apparently would have us worry about ? the choice between maintaining necessary drainage and protecting important environmental features of the Salt Fork River ? is a not a choice we have to make. We can do both because we have modern maintenance tools such as modeling and analysis of river function, prioritizing and sequencing of maintenance steps based on cost-benefit analysis and guided by feedback, as well as a rich variety of targeted maintenance methods.

Citizens who value the Upper Salt Fork River for its multiple uses ? drainage, wildlife habitat, and recreation among them ? are simply asking that all stream functions be protected. If achieving this goal requires the appointment of new drainage commissioners willing to consider new ideas as the law requires, then we support that too. Citizens’ desire to see the Salt Fork River managed to support multiple functions is not a secret campaign, as Mr. Hausman suggests, but a genuine effort that others can join. It is a clear exercise of citizen rights in a democratic society. State drainage law provides that any landowner that pays taxes to the drainage district has the legal right

to be appointed as a drainage district commissioner. Nowhere does the law stipulate that this is a privilege reserved only for grain producers as some have asserted.

New commissioners can bring a fresh approach to drainage issues, using up-to-date research findings and honoring all mandates of the drainage code, including those protecting the environmental values of streams. This is how to provide necessary drainage while protecting the multiple uses of our streams and making our county an attractive place to live and work. Itâs our opportunity to pass on to our children a landscape thatâs a little healthier than the one we inherited.

Charles Goodall, grain farmer, drainage commissioner, Farm Bureau member and board member of Prairie Rivers Network, can be reached at prairierivers.org.