April is Earth Month, and Earth Day is officially on April 22nd. The concept of Earth Day is to recognize human dependence upon earth systems and to honor our mother, Earth. This tradition has been around for fifty-two years. In 1970, the developed world was just beginning to realize the impacts of our consumptive culture. … Read more
By Pat Brady, DivvyBack Managing Partner “Figures don’t lie but liars figure” is a piece of modern wisdom passed on through the pen of Mark Twain. I wonder what he would say about our modern world today? There is no lack of ironies so I suppose he would have a great time. Let’s see if … Read more
By Gary Swick, President 2020 has been a spectrum of angst ranging from a dumpster fire, to a period of darkness, to great hope bestowed upon 2021 as the light. The holiday season is a festival of light from many different cultures’ traditions. All these traditions symbolize getting through the tough time of short days, … Read more
By Gary Swick, President There is no ignoring that the recent election demonstrated that we are the (not so) United States of America. We are deeply divided, but on really just a few issues. Can we come together for a unified approach toward these common issues? Well the Fox River has a few lessons for … Read more
Fifty Years of Environmental Protection In this year’s live presentation of the State of the Fox River, I shared my challenge in answering the complex question that I often receive: “How is the Fox River doing?” Since the enactment of the Clean Water Act in 1970 things have been improving. That legislation was a federally … Read more
By Gary Swick, President While in Waubonsee Creek in Oswego, with 7th graders from the Aurora University STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) school, I got a surprise. We were doing a physical-feature analysis to make a map of the creek segment that we were monitoring. Students focused upon two concrete pipes which were discharging a … Read more
By Gary Mechanic, Executive Director The 1st It’s Our Fox River Day was a successful start for an annual event despite some awful weather for a cleanup. More than 150 volunteers braved the winds, cloudy skies, and rain to pick up trash. For the first time in history, local organizers ran cleanups at eleven sites … Read more
By Art Malm, P. E., FOTFR Director A disclaimer: The study of algae is a huge and enormously complex science. Every generality thought to be true has its exceptions. Even the word algae should be printed with an asterisk, explaining its use to be generally related to microscopic organisms that have chlorophyll or similar means … Read more
By Pat Kirmse Spring A warm March rain raised the temperature of the Fox River to 47 degrees and a 15″ smallmouth bass starts to stir. She is five years old and has survived another Illinois winter, the coldest and snowiest in her life. Fortunately there were no heavy midwinter rains that would have blown … Read more
By Gary Swick, President At our Yorkville river cleanup, I realized that my very full bag of trash was exceptionally light. It lacked the usual heavy glass bottles and pieces of metal. The contents were primarily cigarette butts, plastic bottles, food wrappers, and miscellaneous other plastic products like polystyrene (Styrofoam). These items end up as … Read more