CAWS: Barge& in charge
Exploring the Chicago Area Waterway System is quite an adventure
Not sure if the dozens of great blue herons we saw on the Cal-Sag or the waterway-clogging barge traffic around Lemont was more impressive.
It’s tough to define natural and unnatural when it comes to the Chicago Area Waterway System (CAWS).
On Monday, Tom Palmisano took Ken Schneider and me on our annual ride exploring the CAWS and the Chicago lakefront. We ran from the Calumet River near Lake Michigan to the Lockport Lock on the Sanitary and Ship Canal.
For me, the ride completed everything on the CAWS from Wilmette and Chicago to Lockport.
We launched from Crowley’s Yacht Yard on the Calumet at 95th Street. That area is remarkable for its industrial landscape (wasteland?) with piles of raw materials, piles of recycling metals, aging industrial structures and pock-marked silos along aman-made shoreline (metal and concrete).
It’s also one of the better urban boat fisheries around Chicago. Schneider (who started fishing the Cal in the 1980s) and I reminisced about which metal corners, bridge abutments or barge-filled slips produced smallmouth and largemouth bass.
We motored through the Little Calumet and the O’Brien Lock. Then it was a long, straight ride on the Cal-Sag to the confluence with the Sanitary and Ship Canal upstream.
That was new for Schneider. None of us had brought a fishing rod because we had a long ride planned. But there were encouraging signs for fishermen. Dozens of herons and egrets fished on the shoreline, signaling fish and amphibian life.
Other good signs were multiple Sidestream Elevated Pool Aeration (SEPA) stations by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago. I also noted the Worth launch ($10 daily, $60 annual).
Schneider was struck by the beauty of the lighthouse and SEPA station at the confluence. From there, incredibly heavy barge traffic dominated the Sanitary and Ship Canal. Barges own the river, as captains let you know.
Illinois does have immense commerce. It comes by water.
Even with stopping to chow cold chicken in one slip while waiting on a barge to pass, we reached the electric barrier by early afternoon. The barrier is designed to prevent bighead and silver carp from reaching Lake Michigan.
The interstate and international fight over the CAWS connecting the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River basin is about the commerce represented by the barges as much as preventing the advance of bigheads and silvers.
At the barrier, we had a decision: Do the six miles to Lockport or head back.
Palmisano thought we had enough reserve gas to make it. We both agreed that stretch is not one we would run again, so onward.
Nothing visually notable other than realizing the water we motored on was as high as the treetops on the side. The Army Corps of Engineers lists the average vertical lift at Lockport at 39 feet.
On the way back, we ducked into a slip to wait on a passing barge and found the Point Counterpoint II, water home of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra. The 195-foot metal oddity, which opens for performances led by the founder, maestro Robert Austin Boudreau, was designed by the late architect Louis I. Kahn.
As we turned into the turning basin by Crowley’s, the gas ran out. It was time. Palmisano got the motor started enough to reach the dock.