A new creek channel was built as part of the Spring Brook restoration work in Blackwell Forest Preserve near Warrenville. The third and final phase of the creek restoration project is planned for the second half of this year.
Courtesy of the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County
Spring Brook Creek now takes more of a snakelike course through St. James Farm and Blackwell forest preserves near Warrenville as a result of a large-scale restoration project.
The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority funded the first two phases of the project — within St. James and Blackwell, respectively — to help mitigate construction impacts associated with road widening.
In Blackwell specifically, the Forest Preserve District of DuPage County rerouted a section of the creek so that it’s more sinuous or natural. The district also removed a dam structure — a barrier to fish movement.
The intergovernmental agreement with the tollway provides funding for the third and final phase of the Spring Brook project, according to district documents. On Tuesday, the forest preserve board is set to vote on a contract with RES Environmental Operating Co., with substantial completion of the work expected by December 2025.
That stretch of Spring Brook runs from the end of the Phase 2 site, south through Blackwell, to its confluence with the West Branch of the DuPage River.
The stream itself in that location was never really channelized, said Scott Meister, the district’s manager of natural resources.
“There are some natural meanders to it so there’s no need to meander the stream like we did in the phase 1 and phase 2 projects,” Meister said at a recent planning session.
However, non-native vegetation, stream bank erosion and an undersized culvert “present undesirable conditions within this reach of Spring Brook,” documents state.
There are several components to the last stage of the project — the primary one being stream bank stabilization.
“There are many areas along this corridor where the banks are eroding,” said Meister, who showed forest preserve commissioners pictures of the issue.
Rock will be placed along those areas where “we’re seeing high rates of stream erosion,” Meister said.
The project also calls for replacing a bridge that carries the Cenacle Trail over Spring Brook.
“During storm events, all water has to go through that little culvert, and it’s woefully undersized, and what ends up happening, debris often backs up on the upstream side of the culvert,” Meister said.
Final completion of the project is expected by December 2028 to allow for three years of vegetative maintenance.
“The current situation along the stream, in many cases, there isn’t a lot of ground floor because of the dense honeysuckle and buckthorn that was along the banks, and so there’s not much native vegetation established,” Meister said. “We want to get that native vegetation established because in the long term … the native vegetation is also going to help hold the ground and stabilize the banks in place.”
This past winter, a lot of the invasive brush was removed from the stream corridor for not only an ecological reason.
“There’s going to be heavy equipment that will haul the rock in,” Meister explained, “to place along the banks to stabilize the banks, so we needed to provide access.”
Part of the project corridor, meanwhile, is not on forest preserve property.
“It didn’t make sense to us to restore Spring Brook for over 2 miles and leave this 1,000-foot gap in the middle of this stretch unrestored,” Meister said. “That could lead to future erosion and future problems not only for the private landowners but for the forest preserve district itself.”
So in late 2021, officials authorized an agreement with the county to be a project partner.
In addition to providing hydraulic modeling for the permitting process, the county worked with three private landowners for access agreements so the forest preserve district could address the erosion occurring there.
The district also plans to replace the larger Cenacle bridge over the West Branch of the DuPage River — a separate project within Blackwell.
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