The crisp air filled my lungs as I breathed in the sunrise upon the lake and in that chilly morning, a part of me long-forgotten began to stir. Winter had come early and a foot of snow covered the grounds of Clark Park, which met the break walls of jagged rock separating me from the icy waters of Lake Michigan. It was 5:30 am, 9 degrees Fahrenheit, the sun had just breached, I was alone and it was beautiful. But appearances can be deceiving, and although the Chicago skyline gleamed in the beauty of the sunrise, a feeling of unease settled over me. 

That moment of purity was a rare encounter in the city limits.  At that same time, plow trucks were dusting the streets with sodium chlorides, pesticide and herbicide residues washed into rush hour traffic, filling the streets with exhaust that turned the snow a shade of grey. The ashy slush slid into the sewers and ended up flowing down the Chicago River.  When the snow melts and spring rains meet frozen ground, the floods will wash our residues down the Chicago River into the farmlands of the Illinois River Valley.  After accumulating more chemical runoff from the corn and soybean farms, our discharge enters the Mississippi River. Over the last 100-plus y ears, we have polluted the Chicago River beyond belief, and now it’s time to turn that around if we can. 

It is in our nature to seek a pure environment. Most of us would choose not to contaminate the area where we live, and there are many easy ways to avoid it.  The first is to reduce or eliminate the sources of contamination, and secondly keep our rain and snow from entering the Chicago River so that it can remain in our watershed.

Doing your part to reduce contamination

Reducing your local contaminates may not be as hard as you might think. It is as simple as the choices we make. For example, when it comes to caring for the outdoor areas of our residences, we can use environmentally responsible de-icers because they are non-corrosive, don’t damage paved areas or vegetation, and are safe for pets. Organic lawn care brings your soil back to life, builds dense green turf, and is far more effective than chemical lawn care.  A healthy organic lawn, with a good layer of top soil, becomes a spongey filter for rain and snow melt, cleaning our water as it trickles back into our watershed.

These reasonable choices can also save you money. Since eco-friendly de-icers are non-corrosive, homeowners won’t have to spend as much money on fixing paved areas, rusty cars, or replacing damaged vegetation in the springtime. Organic lawn care builds healthy lawns that require less overall maintenance in the long run. The extra bonus to these products is they don’t contain cancer-causing agents that could be damaging to your family the way chemical lawn care potentially can be.

Retaining your water is critical

It’s equally important to keep excess water out of our sewers and direct it where it belongs. Water is a valuable resource, yet for many of us in the Chicago area it can become an expensive problem.  It creeps through foundations, floods back yards, attracts mosquitoes, and can become a point of the contention with neighbors. The flat clay terrain of the Chicago area will naturally create drainage issues and there are many sustainable ways to solve them while keeping the water from being flushed down the drain. The premise is to design a landscape that utilizes this resource. Rain gardens, dry stream beds, rain water catchment systems, permeable pathways, patios, and driveways are the most progressive and effective techniques to manage drainage issues and conserve water at home. 

Now your moment of purity has come. You breath in the damp spring air of mid-April cloudy skies. A heavy spring rain filters into your organic lawn, pitches into a dry creek bed that directs a slow stream of runoff into a slight basin filled with water-loving, native plants, aka ‘the rain garden.’  The deep-rooted rain garden drinks the precipitation and soon will attract humming birds and butterflies with its bright colors. The sound of song birds return on distant winds. Your rain water catchment system, fed from your gutters, accumulates hundreds of gallons of rain water for later use in the summer drought. Instead of flooding it into the streets, your driveway soaks up thousands of gallons of water, sending it back to your home.  Your property is a giant sponge conserving the most valuable resource known to man.  You have created your moment of purity right in your own back yard.