Kankakee River sediment removal project gets proper send-off

AROMA PARK – Kankakee County officials, local state politicians and river enthusiasts gathered Tuesday morning to mark the beginning of the sediment removal project on the Kankakee River at the Aroma Park boat ramp.

The idea to remove sand and sediment from Kankakee River goes back decades, but this project began in 2022 when state Sen. Patrick Joyce, D-Essex, secured a $1 million grant from the state for Kankakee County.

“This is just one piece of a broader effort to maintain and protect this great asset we have,” Kankakee County Board Chairman Matthew Alexander-Hildebrand said after thanking Joyce for his efforts. “Together, we will continue working to preserve this natural beauty of our river for the future of our community. Thank you all for being here today to celebrate this achievement with us.”

Also on hand was AJ Fricke from the Christopher Burke Engineering firm in Indianapolis, which is overseeing the project; Shannon McCullough, owner of JS McCullough Excavating, the contractor; State Rep. Jackie Haas, R-Bourbonnais; Kankakee Mayor Chris Curtis; Sheriff Mike Downey; Scott Pelath, executive director of Kankakee River Basin and Yellow River Basin Development Commission in Indiana; and a few other county officials.

“I’m real proud that we’re finally taking some sediment out of the river,” Joyce said after he ceremoniously dropped a couple buckets from the excavator into a dump truck. “We’ve been talking about it since I’ve been in office for five years. And there was a different Senator Joyce, that this was a passion of his, and that was 45 years ago.”

Joyce also referenced a 1957 University of Illinois study that said that this portion of the Kankakee River would be unnavigable by boats by 2020.

“They were right,” he said. “We found that there’s sediment everywhere, and we could not get in at Aroma Park for an emergency.”

That was the impetus for jump-starting the current project that McCullough Excavating was set to begin on Wednesday.

“We’re bringing in a barge hopefully [Wednesday], and we’ll set that excavator up there on the barge,” said Shannon McCullough, owner of JS McCullough Excavating. “That’s how we’ll dig out the channel.”

McCullough said it’s a two- to three-month sediment removal project.

Fricke, director of the engineering department for Burke Engineering, thanked the County Board for the opportunity to serve as the design engineer on the project. Burke completed scientific studies, engineering design drawings and obtained permits from IDNR and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to complete the project.

“We believe that the design that we prepared is a long-term solution for this area,” he said. “We know that there will be future maintenance that will need to occur, but we have provided a design that we think is sustainable and will provide suitable river access, not only for recreational purposes, but also for our emergency first responders so that they can serve the community and have river access.”

Pelath said there are eight counties in Indiana that are working on bank stabilization and other measures to stop the flow of sediment into Illinois, which will help prevent the sediment from filling back up so quickly.

“Since 2019 we’ve already invested approximately $6 million in mitigating sediment coming out of the Yellow and Kankakee rivers that eventually gets transported into Illinois and to the Mississippi River system,” he said. “This is an outstanding partnership that we are building here between our two states.”

Pelath said the Kankakee River issues go back almost two centuries when the Kankakee River in Indiana was altered.

“I’m grateful that we’ve left those debates in the past, because they have absolutely no relevance to anything that we’re working on today,” he said. “Anybody that did those things is long gone. We get to address the problems that exist today. ... We’re dedicated to making one area of the public sector, effective in both of our great states.”

Alexander-Hildebrand and Pelath both recognized former County Board Chairman Andy Wheeler for initiating the sediment project and bringing it to fruition.

Joyce said it’s imperative to keep bringing resources and equipment to this process because the Kankakee River is a jewel. He added it took more than 100 years to get in this bad shape, and fixing it is a slow process.

“We’re heading in the right direction,” he said. “... Until we can show people that we are actually doing it, there’s a lot of people who don’t believe it, so we’re going to make them believers. We’re going to see what we can do on the river, and I think it’s going to be something that we owe future generations.”