Agricultural Drainage and Levee Construction (continued)

In 1914, the State of Illinois Rivers and Lakes Commission publishes a report titled Water Resources of Illinois that provides extensive data regarding major rivers in the state, including the Illinois River. According to this report, there are 505 drainage districts in Illinois with 8,095 miles of drainage tile and 1,322 miles of levees. Table 16 provides a breakdown for the counties adjacent to the Illinois River from Peoria south. The total assessment provides an estimate of the magnitude of the work undertaken in a given county.

Table 16: Miles of Tile and Levees by County in 1914 (Rivers and Lakes Commission)

Table 16 illustrates that of the state's 1,322 miles of levees, 63.2% are located in these nine counties adjacent to the Illinois River. Only 5.3% of the state's total miles of tile are in these counties, and only 8.4% of the miles of open ditches are in these nine counties. Obviously, the levee districts adjacent to the Illinois River actively construct levees until 1914.

In 1899, the area of bottomlands under levees is only 9,100 acres. Within five years, the number increases to 21,500 acres, and by 1908 to 54,850 acres. By 1913, the number of acres under levees increases further to 130,830, and in 1914 to 145,780 acres, with an additional 50,000 acres in proposed drainage districts in which work is at various stages of completion.

Some are quite positive in their attitude towards drainage and levee construction in 1914. For example, Horton reports in 1914,

“The State of Illinois owes much of her wonderful wealth to the wide application of the principles of drainage to the vast swamp areas which extended over the State up to recent years...The removal of the stagnant waters of the land-locked glacial lakes and marsh; the change from the swamps of 1879 to the richly productive farms of today, improvements which have multiplied land values, two, four, and even twenty times, and brought added riches through increased public health; these benefits have all obtained through the broad development of our upland drainage.”

At the same time that Horton proclaims the value of reclaiming the land, he acknowledges there are negative impacts:

“The purpose of drainage is to hurry the waters of excessive rain or melting snow from the land in question. But this act produces an artificial effect of stream...These swamps acted as reservoirs, and stored the excessive waters for gradual distribution through the following months of little rain, this maintaining a fairly uniform around...Under the new conditions, these reservoirs have been removed, and great quantities of drainage water are poured into the streams in a short space of time.”

Others, however, express concern about the loss of the Illinois River floodplain to drainage and levee districts. In 1919, Stephen Forbes notes that the reclamation and drainage of the floodplain “leaves the Illinois River much as Sampson was left when short of his locks by the self-seeking Delilah” (Havera and Bellrose 2002). He further predicts that “by diking drainage operations, the Illinois River is being robbed of the haunts of its water birds, and corn will presently be growing every year on some 200,000 acres of forest, marsh, and lake...” (Havera and Bellrose 2002).

Stephen Forbes also notes in 1919 that, as a result of the levee construction and drainage of the floodplain, the

“bottom sediments are now more forcibly scoured out and moved farther down-stream than formerly; the successive stages of the oxidation and assimilation of sewage proteids are carried farther downward, as it also the upper limit of the normal life of the stream; the plankton is transported more swiftly and continues a shorter time in the Illinois, multiplying there, consequently, to smaller numbers; and more of the food material of the Illinois escapes into the Mississippi unconsumed.”

Forbes further observes that the drainage reduces the size of the lakes and swamps, lessening the productivity if the river despite its richness. He says that the “river and its plankton are a flowing soil and its crop, both slipping away continuously, but both renewed constantly from an exhaustive source of supply” (Forbes 1919).

Table 17 illustrates the dramatic loss of lakes in the Illinois River valley from before the construction of levees until 1914. The data show a loss in lake acreage of 46.4% in less than 14 years. Moreover, additional lakes will be cut off from the river, further reducing the areas available for fish breeding (Alvord and Burdick 1915).

Table 17: Lake Acreage in the Illinois River Valley Prior to Levee Construction Through 1914 (Alvord and Burdick 1915)