Crystal Lake Digs Ditch to Crystal Lake

The Crystal Lake Public Works Department was out in force on the North Shore Wednesday night digging a ditch to try to drain enough water from North Shore Drive to keep it passable.

This comes on the backdrop of increased concern about protection of the lake’s watershed because McHenry County College wants permission to cover 50% of its property with roofs and asphalt, offering no plan whatsoever for 57 acres of its property.

The depth of the water on North Shore Drive was 3-4 inches early Wednesday evening, but has been as high as 7-8 inches, I was told.

The city’s answer was to dig a shallow ditch from the south side of the road through the lot the city owns at the end of Woodland Drive to drain into Crystal Lake.

It runs parallel to a storm water pipe that was carrying as much runoff as it could into Crystal Lake from Dog Lake.

The ditch couldn’t be too deep or Crystal Lake would start flowing into the ditch.

It couldn’t be too shallow or the water wouldn’t run.

Permeable silt filters were installed at several places in the ditch to catch dirt particles.

Water was flowing ever so slowly along the ditch when I left a bit after 8 PM. It had not reached the lake when I left.

If that strategy wasn’t successful, culverts had been laid to carry the water under a connector road that could be built from Woodland Drive to connect it with Oak Court, the connector street behind the lakefront lots on the North Shore.

Piles of pulverized blacktop were available for use, if the need arises and one could see the buck thorn and other smaller trees that would be cut down, if the need arose.

Public Works Director Eric Lecuyer explained that the city was trying to prepare for a possible additional 5 inches of rain.

Clearly the ditch was seen as a preemptive measure.

I was told that city works employees would be monitoring the ditch throughout the night to make sure things went as planned.

When the water was at it highest, two cars went through so fast they stalled. Both were driven by younger folks, I learned.

Supervisory personnel were present to calm the concerns of neighbors, most of who were from the North Shore…as opposed to the Woodland Drive part of the North Shore.

The woman who alerted me had a message that was succinct: “I don’t trust the city.”

After talking to the young supervisor, she was mollified… at least to some extent.

Her husband, whom I met at the Park Board meeting on the watershed, was disturbed at the possibility of the black dirt ending up in Crystal Lake.

He and the Woodland Drive neighbor believed that digging the ditch through the roots of a huge poplar would be lead to its demise.

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The top photo is of Crystal Lake. You can see turbulence where water enters Crystal Lake from the current storm sewer. The concrete in the foreground is where the storm sewer ends. The ditch is to its west. The last permeable barrier that is supposed to keep the dirt out of the lake can also be seen.

This, as well as any other picture on McHenry County Blog can be enlarged by clicking on the image.

The next picture shows where the ditch starts on the south side of North Shore Drive right east of East Street.

Beneath is water trickling through a culvert laid so that Woodland Drive can be extended to meet Oak Court should the need arise.

Next is a Crystal Lake Public Works Department worker scraping a bit of the black dirt from the bottom of the ditch to keep the water running toward Crystal Lake.

I have more photographs that I shall try to post, but Google’s Blogger photo posting function is working so poorly tonight that


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