pollution

St. Charles WWTP discharge

How Does the River Flow?

From time to time Friends of the Fox River receives questions thru our website or Facebook page about the river, pollution and other watershed related issues. Here’s a question we received that FOFR  Director Art Malm researched and answers. J. Faust asks: Do you have an estimate of the volume the many water reclamation districts … Read more

mucket

The Fox’s Formerly Phenomenal Filtering Freshwater Mussels

By Arthur Malm It has been 100 years since the passage of Illinois’ Sanitary District Act of 1917. That Act allowed voters to petition for a referendum to form a sanitary district and build treatment plants to “conduce to the preservation of the public health, comfort and convenience”(1).  Since that Act’s passage great strides have … Read more

heart river

Love Our River Days

by Gary Mechanic, Executive Director The Fox River has come a long way from the days when it was the most used and abused river in Illinois. An 1908 monograph describes the Fox River: “… the tributaries often bring large amounts of sediment, and various manufactories along the river discharge a large amount of refuse … Read more

challenge-v-comfort-zone

Meeting New Challenges

By Gary Mechanic, Executive Director 2017 was the worst of years, and the best of years, and I’ve seen a lot of years. I’m 70 and I’ve never seen federal protection of the environment take such giant steps backwards! Since the USEPA was created in 1970, it has dragged it’s feet creating pollution control standards, it’s refused to regulate … Read more

The Fox aka Jim Phillips

Schweitzer Second Sunday: The Legend of “The Fox”

“The Fox” also known as James F. Phillips, is better known around the world than he is in the Fox Valley where his covert, one-man campaign to stop pollution from entering the Fox River made him famous as an “eco-activist”. When “The Fox” plugged his first pipe that was polluting the Fox River, the sign … Read more

Fox River gravel bar

Our Waters, Our Fox

Article written for the April 2017 “Bravo Magazine” by Dean Tripp Our Fox By its very nature a river belongs to more than one people, place and time. Our Fox is no exception. The water flowing into and out of it is a resource we can’t create or destroy; we can only attempt to manage … Read more