Important Watershed Area Plan

The third in ongoing stakeholder meetings of the Woods Creek Watershed Planning group is meeting Tuesday, March 20 to focus on mercury in Woods Creek Lake, existing and future land use cover impacts, identification of impairments in the watershed, and education ideas.

The group includes the Village of Algonquin, Village of Lake in the Hills, City of Crystal Lake and Crystal Lake Park District which have joined together to create a Woods Creek Watershed Plan.

Funding for the plan is provided by an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency Grant and intergovernmental cooperation. These agencies also recognize that watershed issues are so complex and inter-related that it is essential for stakeholders, including individual landowners, organizations, and governments, to work together and help them understand the watershed and work on projects that improve water quality and enhance natural resources and open space.

Funding for the plan has been provided by an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency grant. The agencies involved recognize the complexity of the situation and the importance for stakeholder landowners, organizations and governments to work together to understand the watershed and the need to improve water quality and enhance natural resources and open spaces.

What Is Woods Creek Watershed?

It is located primarily in southeast McHenry County, and is a subwatershed to the Crystal Creek Watershed that is part of the larger Upper Fox River Basin in northeast Illinois. The watershed drains approximately nine square miles to Crystal Creek.

Large portions of the watershed include subdivisions of homes, commercial/industrial centers, farmland, gravel mining operations, area schools, and recreational facilities. Interspersed throughout the urban environment is a natural system of streams, lakes, wetlands, and upland prairies, savannas, and woodlands.

The ecological quality of the Woods Creek Watershed was long thought to be in good condition. However, intense urban sprawl in southeast McHenry County within the past 15 years is beginning to degrade the water quality within the watershed.

Impacts to designated uses are primarily the result of phosphorus, total dissolved solids, chloride, fecal coliform and mercury originating from municipal point sources and urban runoff/stormwater sewers.