Stream Cleaning on Iroquois Tribs In Indiana

[nater]

I had a meeting in Rensselear last night about watershed planning in the Iroqouis River watershed (Jasper and Newton counties specifically). I decided to drive up and spend the afternoon checking out the feeders, fish scouting, and maybe throwing a tube or two. I was warned by a friend that several of the major tributaries had just been "cleaned." I had an idea what this meant, but I did not expect this:

 

Slough Creek:

 

Curtis Creek:

 

The combination of the meeting topic and the situation on the ground was absolutely absurd. You can't have any type of coordinated watershed effort when surveyors/farmers are allowed to do that. I didn't bother fishing in either of those two creeks, choosing instead to hit up the Iroqouis itself. It's a freakin canal. V-shaped channel, virtually no cover, difficult to wade, thin riparian corridor with low quality trees at best (cottonwoods, sassafrass, sugar maples). Fished for an hour without a sniff.

 

I originally planned to drive around the Kankakee a little too, but I didn't have the heart; I know it's substantially worse up there.

[Mike Clifford]

WOW.

No sense having all those trees and nasty brush lining these streams, when one can farm right to the edge.

 

 

I have seen this at the far upper reaches of Rock Creek, a Kankakee River tributary in IL.

Wish I could find the photos now.

 

One day it had a buffer zone of tall trees and thick vegetation....the next day it was smooth and bare....just like those above.

Remarkable that this is allowed to occur in these days of environmental awareness and accountability.

[Norm M]

More sediment coming our way from the east. Stream cleaning has a whole different meaning.

 

With the Indiana DNR removed from the permitting process, I'm afraid scenes like that will become more common.

[nater]

More sediment coming our way from the east. Stream cleaning has a whole different meaning.

 

With the Indiana DNR removed from the permitting process, I'm afraid scenes like that will become more common.

 

From what I understand, entities in that part of the state are the ones who pushed the logjam removal/permit change through. They've basically created their own flooding problems and now are trying to solve them by further manipulating the regional ecology. It will get worse unless we do something about it.

 

I don't know who the "we" is at this point. While that area concerns me, my home waters (Sugar/other Wabash River tribs) are my primary focus. It's a problem that needs Indiana-Illinois coordination though, because the recreational value/public interest in those waterways is limited on the Indiana side. Or so it seems.