Each time Jet Funn Rentals books a customer to rent a boat or WaveRunner on Fox Lake, it takes a deposit for at least $200. And each time floodwaters prompt authorities to prohibit watercraft from creating waves on the Chain O’ Lakes, those customers cancel their orders.
Following record floods last year, and repeated high waters this year, Jet Funn had to refund some $30,000 in deposits since 2017, owner Kevin Lynch estimated. Operating since 1989, the business is now losing money.
“That has a big impact,” Lynch said of the shutdowns. “It’s been rough.”
Some residents and business owners along the Chain blame state officials who run the Stratton Lock and Dam on the Fox River downstream in McHenry Township, saying they’re causing flooding in the lakes. Fed up with repeated deluges, the property owners are mounting a petition drive asking the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to intervene.
Management of the dam has long been a controversial balancing act, as state officials warn that letting more water through the dam and out of the Chain — as some property owners want — could cause worse flooding downstream. Without any plans to expand capacity, state officials say, the system can’t hold all the water it gets, and flooding is the natural result.
But residents along the group of lakes that straddles Lake and McHenry counties suggest another alternative. Instead of using more space to hold the water, they call for using more time. Rather than waiting for rain to fall, they say, officials should open the dam gates to let out water sooner — before it starts rising.
Such a change would mark a major departure in how the Illinois Department of Natural Resources operates the dam. The agency measures water flowing into the system from the Fox River in Wisconsin and uses computer models to predict how much levels will rise after a storm — but doesn’t use forecasts to predict how much rain it will get.
The latest result of that, residents say, came this month, when floodwaters lapped at the edges of properties and forced the Chain and river into to institute no-wake rules for more than a week, putting a stop to most boating.
The Fox River reached 4.5 feet deep at the Stratton Dam on Sept. 7, half a foot above minor flood stage and a full foot above “action” levels, according to the National Weather Service.
But residents said the river started rising after torrential rains that started almost a week earlier. It was obvious, they say, that state officials should have been opened the dam gates sooner to let waters out before they started flooding.
“This is an operational error,” Fox Lake homeowner Andrew Hank said. “They’re never moving enough water out in a timely fashion.”
The state Department of Natural Resources issued a statement saying it can only do so much.
“There is not enough storage in the Chain O’ Lakes, nor capacity in the Fox River, to eliminate flooding,” spokesman Edward Cross wrote in an email. “Unless flood-prone buildings along the lakes and river are removed to create more storage in the Chain O’ Lakes or conveyance on the Fox River, changes to the operation guide are moot.”
Dam operators open the gates wider only after seeing how much rain actually falls rather than basing it on forecasts, because those can change dramatically. After recent heavy rains, for instance, meteorologists initially predicted up to 2 more inches would fall, but instead there was a negligible amount. Even after a rain, Cross said, operators open the dam gates for several days before waters peak.
“If the gates were opened more based on these rainfall predictions, flooding along the Fox River would be occurring,” Cross wrote. “If the rain does not materialize, the flooding would be unnecessary.”
State records show that waters on the Chain and Fox River began rising significantly as far back as Aug. 28, long before reaching flood stage. In response, state officials nearly doubled the amount of water they let through the dam gates.
After 2.25 inches of rain fell Aug. 29, the dam outflow was doubled again. But the gates are only opened completely in the case of severe flooding.
The outflow of water downstream remained greater than the inflow from Wisconsin upstream, but after 6 inches of rain over three days, the system was outpaced before drainage was increased again. But by then it was too little, too late, and boating on the Chain slowed to a crawl. The waters farther south on the system, below the Algonquin dam and farther downstream in Montgomery, south of Aurora, were also at a minor stage of flooding.
This was the second summer in a row that high waters forced restrictions on the Chain and followed record floods last year. Owners of marinas, restaurants and bars complained that the closures cost them crucial business in an industry that already has seen big statewide declines for years.
The problem is that the system acts like a giant funnel. The lakes of the Chain cover about 7,000 acres and are one of the busiest waterways in the country, attracting thousands of boats on summer weekends. But the Fox watershed starts in Waukesha County in Wisconsin and flows through Kenosha and Racine counties before crossing the state line and reaching the chain.
Ultimately, the system drains 1,200 square miles into the Fox River, all of which must go through the dam, which runs about the length of a football field. The flow moves over a spillway and a hinged gate, and through five sluice gates, 14-foot metal doors that slide up to let the flow pass below.
Normally, officials are supposed to keep the Fox Lake gauge at 4.5 feet deep in the summer, to ensure that boats can navigate. But four times this year, levels reached 5.5 feet, swamping ramps and some waterfront properties.
The state does take steps to proactively lower water levels in the winter. In November, the state lowers Fox Lake to 1.5 feet, then maintains it at 2.5 feet to increase capacity before spring rains and snow melt.
Another issue with the dam is its age and deteriorating condition. It was built in 1939; state officials have deemed its gates “not fully operational.”
In 2014 the state began a $17 million project to rebuild the dam gates, a nearby berm and adjacent locks. The locks were doubled in size to move more boats through and eliminate long waits. But the lack of a state budget caused the project to run out of money, and the berm and gates were never fixed.
Now that a state budget has been passed, officials expect work to resume in November and be completed in 2020. But by design, the repairs will not change the amount of water flow.
Back in 1992, a water survey report put out by the state concluded that releasing the water through the dam earlier and more often could have “significant” flood-control benefits. Potential downstream flooding also “can generally be offset by the early release of water from the dam prior to the arrival of the flood,” the report stated. The report estimated such measures would be needed rarely, about once a year.
But with hydrologic computer models dating back 20 years or more, and the last update to the operations plan in 2012, residents argue that increased torrential rains in recent years require more frequent intervention.
Joe Keller, director of the Fox Waterway Agency, which dredges and removes debris from the system, doesn’t always agree with the state Department of Natural Resources, but in this case, he defended the agency.
“It’s a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation,” he said. “If you let too much water out, you have flooding in homes downstream. If you let out too little, you have the same problem on the other side. And if the water gets too low, people can’t navigate.”
As for the Army Corps of Engineers, an official there said residents need to petition their local officials before going to the federal level.
Local representatives will “decide whether to pursue it, and if it’s possible to get federal funding,” said Patrick Bray, spokesman for the Corps of Engineers in Chicago.
Then the agency would need authorization and funding from Congress to do the work.
The Corps has repeatedly worked with other agencies on levees and other flood-control projects on the Des Plaines River and elsewhere in the Chicago area. Those projects generally required local consensus and action from local officials, in some cases going back decades.
Hank, the Fox Lake homeowner, said he’d be happy for any local officials to take up the cause.
“We need to get more water moving down that river,” Hank said, “but in way that’s safe for everybody.”
[email protected]
