Recommendation: Protect and enhance the integrity of aquatic systems

Institutional barriers, from the separation of different policy sectors to disconnected decision making across jurisdictions, hinder the region’s ability to sustainably manage water resources. As a result, water resources are often managed in isolation, missing opportunities for more cost-effective, integrated solutions. At the local level, many communities have separate entities managing water supply, stormwater, and wastewater, each with its own governance structure and mission, with limited connection to land use and transportation planning functions. Additional details about shared services and intergovernmental coordination are in the Governance chapter.

There are many ways to improve efficiency, effectiveness, and coordination of efforts related to flood mitigation, wastewater, water quality, water supply, and aquatic habitats. Better data collection and analysis regarding the condition of our water resources are an important foundation for integrated water resource management and performance-based decision making based on scientific evidence. Updating federal programs is a long-term goal, but the region and state can take more immediate actions to improve coordination and decision making. State and local agencies are seeking such opportunities, including cross-jurisdictional efforts to advance the state’s Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy to reduce nitrogen and phosphorous 45 percent by 2015, and new approaches to finance stormwater management projects, including updates to the State Revolving Fund. A comprehensive water planning agenda and funding program at the state level could improve coordination of water resource management efforts.

As the primary land use and development authorities in the region, municipalities and counties have significant responsibility to integrate water resource management considerations into planning efforts. The region can accommodate new households and jobs while protecting and enhancing water resources with a variety of best management techniques. Existing natural areas, open spaces, headwaters, high priority lakes and streams, aquifer recharge areas, and riparian zones can be protected through land use planning and land acquisition. To maintain and improve water resources, new development should protect natural drainage and hydrology, minimize the impact of impervious surfaces, and provide natural buffers along waterways and waterbodies. At the site-scale, county and municipal development ordinances can encourage or require the use of green infrastructure practices to minimize the impact of impervious surfaces, improve the quality, and reduce the volume of stormwater runoff. Infill and reinvestment in existing developed areas can actually improve water management in older neighborhoods by triggering the installation of stormwater best management practices (see the Improve natural resources through the redevelopment process recommendation.)

Improving the quality of our water resources requires a comprehensive approach to easing the stresses imposed by stormwater runoff, combined sewer overflows, wastewater and industrial discharges, and stream modifications such as dams. While watershed plans are an important mechanism for addressing water quality concerns, they typically lack the authority and funding to achieve significant water quality improvement. To date, the most successfully implemented watershed plans are the result of committed watershed groups that include municipal, county, state, and industry leaders collaborating on broad activities to advance water quality and other watershed goals. The DuPage River Salt Creek Working Group and the Fox River Study Group are models that should be extended throughout the region to invest in watershed restoration that addresses water quality concerns. Also, multiple objectives including open space protection, flood control, high-priority pollutants (chlorides and nutrients), and water supply protection can be addressed through watershed planning, and some of the region’s entities are already doing so, including implementation of the Nutrient Loss Reduction Strategy. Plan implementation requires a number of actions by watershed stakeholders, including open space protection, changes in development and transportation design, gray and green infrastructure investments, and operational changes to asset management practices.

The region’s aging water infrastructure systems — including drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater — are in need of significant investment and modernization. Resource managers should consider an integrated water resource management framework that protects, conserves, and reuses water resources. Likewise, an integrated approach can help guide public and private investment to achieve multiple benefits, plan for appropriate growth, leverage multiple funding sources, and improve resilience. Some water managers, such as Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD), recognize wastewater as a resource, making significant investments to recover nutrients and biosolids from waste streams, direct treated wastewater back into circulation for other uses, and capture excess heat and natural gas as a source of energy. Across the U.S., communities and industries are identifying uses of rainwater and graywater that can reduce both demands on drinking water and volumes of stormwater and wastewater.

In this era of limited resources, infrastructure investment must be strategic, multi-objective, performance-based, and connected to sound planning that upgrades, rehabilitates, and optimizes the use of existing system capacity. Reinvestment in existing infrastructure before expanding these systems is essential to reduce maintenance and replacement costs over the long term, and to create incentives for infill development that helps capture infrastructure costs. When expansion is considered, long-term asset management and maintenance costs should inform decision making, as described in the Incorporate market and fiscal feasibility into planning and development process recommendation of the Community chapter. In some cases, the best approach for managing the region’s infrastructure systems is to identify collaborative strategies for optimizing investments and efficiencies, including consolidation and service sharing arrangements. The infrastructure and service recommendations of this Environment chapter and the Governance chapter include a number of crossover strategies. For example, Encourage partnerships and consolidation, Coordinate infrastructure operations and maintenance, and Develop tax policies that strengthen communities and the region.

Lake Michigan and its interconnected system of lakes and tributaries — the most significant water resources in our region — face unique challenges. Our location on the Lake Michigan shoreline demands collective action to maintain and enhance the health of our region’s main water source and help the state meets its commitments to national and international partners. IDNR should continue to strategically manage the lake, which currently endures significant pollution from urban, agricultural, and industrial sources. Strategies for addressing these challenges include improving stormwater management, reducing combined sewer overflows, cleaning up polluted lands and harbors, and better managing industrial discharges to the lake and its tributaries. Our state’s nearshore and shoreline habitat exists entirely within the Chicago metropolitan region^{{{The Chiwaukee Illinois Beach Lake Plain, the coastline from Kenosha to Waukegan Harbor, has been designated as a wetland system of international importance () by RAMSAR, the Convention on Wetlands intergovernmental treaty that provides the framework for national action and international cooperation for the conservation and wise use of wetlands and their resources. Ramsar Sites Information Service, “Chiwaukee Illinois Beach Lake Plain,” 2015, https://rsis.ramsar.org/ris/2243.}}} and is degraded, fragmented, and affected by dynamic lake levels and a changing shoreline, which can affect infrastructure, shipping, property, recreational resources, and sensitive ecosystems. Preventing the introduction of additional aquatic invasive species, which have already affected the lake’s natural ecology and native species dynamics, should be a high priority. The region should be engaged in solutions that help protect the Great Lakes from Asian Carp and other such species while also maintaining the services currently provided by the Chicago area’s rivers and streams including the Chicago and Calumet Rivers, and the North Shore, Cal-Sag, and Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canals. The “Our Great Rivers” initiative is intended to focus attention and investment on improving these legacy resources, and the Great Lakes and Mississippi River Interbasin Study focused on the interaction between these water systems, should be implemented.^{{{Great Rivers Chicago, “Great Rivers Chicago,” 2018, http://greatriverschicago.com/index.html.}}}