Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat News
The Newsletter of the Great Lakes
Aquatic Habitat Network and Fund
Volume 10, Number 1 • January-February 2002
Great Lakes Aquatic Habitat NewsThe Newsletter of the Great Lakes
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Joel Brammeier
Lake Michigan Federation
The image of planes flying low over city neighborhoods is not generally associated with Lake Michigan shoreline restoration. The Federation has learned recently that, at least in the city of Chicago, these two issues will be linked for some time to come.
Meigs Field airport sits in the unlikeliest of places: a peninsula jutting directly into Lake Michigan from downtown Chicago. In the mid-90s, the city announced its intent to close Meigs Field and return the use of Northerly Island to the millions of people who live in and visit Chicago each year. Prompted by this news, the Federation’s volunteer Lakefront Task Force decided to advocate for natural habitat creation on Northerly Island. The Federation’s plan for the site won the praise of Chicago’s top elected official when Mayor Richard M. Daley told reporters he thought the plan was “a great idea.”
Unfortunately, recent negotiations over the expansion of Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport have delayed the creation of a native habitat on Northerly Island. In exchange for O’Hare expansion, Mayor Daley agreed in December to Illinois Governor George Ryan’s request that Meigs Field remain open, with closure possible as early as 2006. The Federation will continue to work with environmental leaders, government agencies, and local citizens over the next 5 years to ensure that Meigs Field closes and Northerly Island becomes a premier display of natural habitat in an urban setting.
The Federation has challenged Exelon, owner of Commonwealth Edison and the closed nuclear power plant at Zion, Illinois, in its attempt to block public beach access. The power plant is located between the north and south sections of Illinois Beach State Park. The park contains the largest section of pre-settlement dune and swale habitat found in Illinois, and is also one of the most visited public parks in the country.
Exelon recently built a security fence to extend eastward to the lake’s edge from the company’s northern and southern property line. The Federation contended in a November letter to the Department of Natural Resources that the fence illegally blocks public passage along the water’s edge.
“We’re all for securing the site,” said Cameron Davis, executive director of the Federation. “Not once, however, has any agency or company official refuted our claim that a fence on private property will accomplish as much as on public property.” The Federation claims that under the “public trust doctrine,” private property extends up to the ordinary high water mark of the lake and that the public should be allowed access to the Lake Michigan shoreline. The public trust doctrine provides that the bottom lands of the Great Lakes are held in trust for the public by the stakeholders. The DNR is expected to back Exelon’s fence construction.
Local governments in Illinois are now eligible to apply for up to $1.75 million from the DNR for coastal protection and restoration projects. This money was made available as a compromise to the failed Conservation and Reinvestment Act of 2000. With only 63 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline in Illinois, the Federation is confident that this money can go a long way toward restoration of natural habitats along the lakefront. We will be working with several local agencies in northeast Illinois in hopes of moving habitat projects forward.