Are Fluorescent Lights Safe?

 

The buzz about compact fluorescent light bulbs lately has been amazing, at least.  They seem to be the perfect light source aside of Mr. Sun.  They use significantly less energy, burn just as bright as older lights, last for years longer, and on top of all that, they look attractive and modern.  I know that I’m not the only person who has been seeing them everywhere.  A few weeks ago, I asked my mom why she hasn’t considered buying a few for our house, to use when our current bulbs wear out.  She replied that she had considered it, but heard from a friend that they contain mercury (Hg).  Well that certainly doesn’t sound nice, but how much of an impact does that mercury have?  Is it dangerous enough in flourescent bulbs to cause negative effects in humans? 

The average flourescent bulb contains about 20 milligrams (mg) of Hg, or .02 grams.  According to worldwise.com, an environmentally-conscious website that also sells it’s own cat toys, the solution to this problem is not to stop using the bulbs, because:
“The largest man-made source of mercury in the atmosphere is fossil fuel combustion (58% of total). When the mercury in a fossil fuel is heated in a combustor, it turns into a vapor and escapes into the atmosphere….On average, fossil-fueled power plants emit 0.04 milligrams of mercury per kilowatt-hour sold.” 
From the atmosphere, the mercury returns to the earth through precipitation.  If we could reduce the number of kilowatt-hours needed to be produced, we could reduce the amount of mercury in the amosphere, and by connection, the amount of mercury in the water supply.

The mercury in flourescent light bulbs has shown no ill effects as long as the bulb remains undamaged, but when broken, the mercury can evaporate at room temperature.  A high point, however, is that the bulbs, mercury and all, can be recycled.  As long as the bulbs are transported to the recycling plant in tact, roughly 99.9% of the mercury can be recycled for other purposes, as well as 100% of the rest of the bulb.  In the end, these bulbs seem beneficial enough to be worth the risk.  Users of these bulbs just need to take the caution to prevent breaking the bulbs.  One tip- package them in a cardboard tube before sending them away. 

Sources:
http://www.worldwise.com/recfluorlig.html

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund

You may have read Sarah’s recent post concerning the Defenders of Wildlife and their struggle to stop the illegal parrot capture and sales market in Mexico.  If you were like me and asked what you could do to help their cause, you might find this interesting.

I did some snooping (okay fine, I went to Google), and came across this: the Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund.  It is not what it at first sounds to be.  It is not the vehicle by which you can donate money directly to the “DoW.”  Rather, it is something with even more forethought.  The “DWAF” is an organization geared at making legislative changes in Washington to benefit the environment.  In simple terms, it is a lobby organization.  But it really is so much more than that. 

The DWAF takes it upon itself to educate the public on environmental issues and the actions of our politicians concerning them.  The organization emphasizes how it holds legislator’s to their past decisions concerning the environment, so that voters know exactly how they have stood in the past.  Will this cut back on politicians’ lying quota?  I think not.  But it does the next best thing, and prepares the only defense we have against “fuzzy math” and it’s relations: PUBLIC KNOWLEDGE.  Many of the decisions in Congress fly under the public’s eye, and most voters have no clue how their representative voted on a number of issues, many (and a continually growing number) concerning the environment.  It takes groups like the DWAF to educate the public, so that Senators and Representatives will be forced to give great, perhaps greater, consideration to how they vote on environmental ballots.

A major focus of the organization is the Wildlife Conservation Report Card, which, according to the organization’s website: “measures the commitment of U.S. Senators and Representatives to wildlife and habitat conservation during each Congressional session.” 

The Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund is not a charity organization, so donations are not tax deductable, but even a small donation helps, and it CERTAINLY won’t kill you.  In fact, it just might do the opposite.

In case you are curious, Illinois Senators Dick Durbin and Barack Obama scored 91% and 82% respectively, and House Representatives scored an average of 58%, with the Democrats leading the Republicans by 68 full percentage points.

[House Calculation: Total Average = (70+35+80+100+94+89+100+0+5+95+80+55+20+90+0+84+100+0+0)/19= 57.74%
rounded to 58%

Democrat Average= (100+84+90+95+100+89+94+100+80+70)/10= 90.20%
rounded to 90%

Republican Average= (35+0+5+80+55+20+0+0+0)/9= 21.67%
rounded to 22%

90%(dem)-22%(rep)=68% (difference)

Source: http://www.defendersactionfund.org/
(Report Card Link)= http://www.defendersactionfund.org/report.html

Image Source: http://flickr.com/photos/heypaul/1428909/

Don’t Forget to Scrub Behind Your Ears

Scrubbers are good, I won’t deny that.  They have been proven to reduce the levels of SO2 and other chemical emssions into the atmosphere from production facilities, and there is nothing bad about that.  Less potent acid rain, less junk going down our lungs, great.  But what happens with the residue that is left on the scrubber?  The stuff we’re trying to keep out of the environment.  Even if it has been chemically reacted into a new form, there is always the possibility of it being released again through other reactions.

 First, a quick review of how a scrubber works: The emissions are vented into the scrubber, where they are sprayed with a limestone (or dolomite or lime)-water mixture.  These components undergo a number of chemical reactions that result in neutralizing the toxic emissions.

My question is: What happens to the leftovers?

The final reaction produces the mineral gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate), which can be used for economic purposes.  Gypsum can be used in the production of chalk, bone repair cement, drywall, plaster, toothpaste, and surgical casts, among many other things, including structures made from earth (like adobe) that are much stronger due to their ability to retain their strength when wet (adobe loses it’s strength).

Our waste apparantly has a beneficial use!  With this increased amount of gypsum, resulting from the reactions inside of a smokestack scrubber, less gypsum needs to be gathered from naturally occuring reservoirs.  Though it is a common mineral, the less digging that needs to be done into the earth, the better.

———

Gypsum comes in several colors, often depending on where in the world it came from.  Here are a few examples:

Gypsum from Brazil

Gypsum from Australia

Gypsum from the Sahara (of the Desert Rose variety)

Sources:
http://encarta.msn.com/media_461547679/Anatomy_of_an_Air_Scrubber.html
http://antoine.frostburg.edu/chem/senese/101/inorganic/faq/waste-so2-to-wallboard.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gypsum
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_rose_%28crystal%29

Image Source: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e5/GipsitaEZ.jpg
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Gypsum_Australia.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Desert-rose-big.jpg

Let’s Hope…

Article: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17424650/

It seems to me that since the “Great Robbery” days, trains have lost much of their connotation with big black puff clouds of smoke, and also with pollution.  Despite the heavy smell of fuel around train stations, I never made the connection that trains contribute significantly to the amount of diesel soot in the atmosphere.  Much less than that are marine implements such as barges and ferries.  I realized though, that maybe, just maybe, images of soot flying into the air as the exhaust from these monster appliances have been such commonplace images throughout my life, in the media and in first-hand experience, that I never thought anything of it.  It just fit the picture too well to imagine it being removed. 

But hopefully, it will be removed soon.  The EPA has recently proposed a major bid to reduce the pollution standards of newly built and existing trains and diesel-fueled marine vehicles.

“The standards, if adopted and fully phased in, would reduce particulate pollution from these engines by 90 percent and smog-forming nitrogen oxides by 80 percent, the EPA said.” (AP)

That’s a vast majority, as far as I can count.  Not bad.

Exectutive director of the NACAA said: “We estimate the emissions benefits will be equivalent to taking three-quarters of a million diesel trucks off the road each year.”

That’d be great!–taking a bunch of money-makers off the road, but losing none of the production.  As always though, the companies most affected by the regulations will combat it.  General Electric is the country’s largest producer of trains, according to the article, and is, at this point, the most prominent opponent to the standard, stating that they do not believe the proper technology exists for these reductions to be possible. 

According to the article: “Costs of the new pollution requirements are estimated at $600 million by 2030, adding less than 3 percent to the price of a locomotive and 1 percent to 3.6 percent to the price of boats using the cleaner engines.”  To me that doesn’t sound like a lot more, and certainly not a huge sacrifice when you consider the amount of reduction that will take place.  Money does not, then, seem to the average American to be the principle factor in GE’s opposition, but huge corporations do have a tradition for pinching every penny for profit that they can.  Important also is that companies always have seemed to find ways to meet new regulations, according to Richard Kassel, National Resources Defence Council attorney.  Perhaps this means that GE is just hoping to avoid the work, preparation, and of course, expenses that are required by any emission standard reduction.

If one takes a look at the health benefits of the new standards, the cost of the reduction technology doesn’t seem as bad, at least to me.

“Health benefits are estimated at $12 billion by 2030, including 1,500 fewer premature deaths, 1,100 fewer hospitalizations and 170,000 more work days by people breathing easier.”

Some of those hospitalizations are bound to include GE workers, and many of those gained working days are sure to affect GE workers.  Reductions in emissions now might save GE a costly lawsuit later, if some of those hospitalizations are drastic enough to merit a court date (and what isn’t in American anyway?).

It’s good to see steps continually being taken to reduce the amount of pollution we are directly feeding into the atmosphere.  It’s nice to see that one day we might be able to breathe a little easier.

Image Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:North-shore-tugboats.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Go_Train_044.jpg

A Short Response to Sarah’s Oryx Post

 Sarah’s Post

It takes a lot of hunting to wipe out an entire species.  I feel often that human beings have a consistent “well…it’s not depleted YET” attitude when it comes to what we do for entertainment or for convienence.  It’s sad that our tastes have to affect wild, free animals so negatively.  We complain when a hungry tiger eats a child because it really needs a meal, but we kill hundreds and thousands of animals every year because we like their horns, or the thrill of the hunt is fun.  It’s disgusting.

This situation is different from the Cane Toad experiment, because the oryx’s previously were native to the region they are being reintroduced to, so if there are environmental drawbacks to (re)introducing them, they will be much much smaller.  What could be an issue is that this situation is like dropping a ball off a table, and catching it just before it hits the ground and lifting it back up again.  There is a shock there when it’s caught, and taking it back up to the table is more difficult than dropping it in the first place, and there’s always a chance it might slip out of your hands again.  A positive aspect of the situation might be that the grass populations of the region have increased with the reduced oryx population, so the food supplies may be large enough to support a population resurgance.

Integrity? In America? Sweet.

Article

It’s so hard to be optimistic concerning anything that happens in the “up there” regions of America’s intfrastructure.  Not JUST because I’m a cynical, thinking human being, but because there isn’t much in the actions of the higher ups to give us any reason to be overly optimistic about our futures.  Global warming, wars, violence in our own backyards, political corruption, and seeing the same bone structure on every politician we know.  Not exactly reassuring things.  What I read on the BBC News website however, gave me a reason for hope. 

We live in an age where science’s importance in our daily lives increases every day.  Science is playing a larger role in our routine functions than it ever has before.  And since most of us do not have a PhD in scientific fields, we need to be able to trust the scientific information we are receiving.

It comes as little surprise that the government would want to censor some of the information discovered by its scientists.  I can see also why the government, and the scientists, might see this as okay for a while.  The scientists ARE working for the government after all.  But they seem to be realizing recently, that the issues that can be concealed from the public are becomming more and more crucial to our lives.  Information on global warming, alternative energies, and the effects of our happy-go-lucky, devil-may-care lifestyles needs to be accessible and reliable.

The media can’t always be trusted to keep the government in check, but perhaps in the coming years we can count on the scientific world.

Penguin’s Making Waves (Gee I hope that isn’t already the title to a movie review)

Okay, I’ll admit it.  Last weekend I went to Yorktown Theatre for the express purpose of attending the 2:10 showing of Happy Feet.  To little surprise, I enjoyed it thoroughly.  There is just something about penguins singing and dancing (and Robin Williams as a sex idol) that is simply magnetic.  The film had an interesting plot, intriguing 3-dimensional (in more than one way) characters, and wonderful animation.  Something I was not expecting though, was the powerful message given at the end, accompanied by one of the most famous Beatles quotes ever. 

I won’t go into great detail, but it is revealed that a food shortage in the penguin societies of Antarctica is directly related to increased human fishing in the area.  In the last third or so of the movie, the dancing, defective penguin, Mumble, the dancing main penguin, is being held in a human zoo.  Eventually he attracts attention to himself through his odd tap-dancing talent, and somehow (unexplained) ends up returning to his home, followed by a crew of presumably American Antarctic explorers, who see his penguin home and the effects of the shortage of fish (as well as some pretty awesome dance sequences).  From that point, the movie turns into a flow of images and scenes from around the world, where humans discuss how their fishing ventures are affecting the ecosystems of the Antarctic regions around them.  In the end, all the human fishing interests vacate Antarctic waters, and the penguins’ food supply eventually returns.  The film closes with one of Robin Williams’ characters preaching that Beatles’ lyric from Abbey Road’s “The End”: “And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.”  A powerful message, I’d say.

This film hit on a couple of the basic environmental effects of overfishing.  As the fish populations declined, the native birds (which fed primarily on fish, but occasionally on young penguins) began seeking out penguins more and more for food.  Of course, this was a Disney-type movie, so no penguins are actually seen being eaten, but Mumble himself does experience at least two memorable, very up close and personal, attacks.  By the end of the movie, just before the Americans arrive at the penguins’ area, the entire region is surrounded by perching birds, waiting for young, weak penguins to make an easy lunch.  The increased competition between the birds themselves is easy to see, as well, as they fight and bicker between themselves at even the smallest things.

This movie put me in a great mood for the rest of the evening, because of it’s important message to young children.  I was so wonderfully impressed at the message it presented, I was about to write to the script writer.  Let’s not fool ourselves.  I am fully aware that my girlfriend and I were the only people in that theater who were above the age of 10 and below the age of 30.  So I can fully say that I think it is great that kids are getting these messages from their sources of popular culture.  Remember Captain Planet?  I sure do!  Earth, Wind, Water, Fire, Heart!  The red headed kid who had fire?  The Indian kid with the monkey and the not-real element?  Yeah.  Well that was where my environmental education came from for many years.  I don’t know about any of you, but I can’t seem to find that show on anywhere now.  Where are kids hearing about the environment??  Al Gore?  He’s got a great message, and it’s great for adults, but something tells me that kids might find him a little scary. 

I want to salute everyone who put their mark on this movie, Happy Feet, and made an extra effort to educate today’s kids on the frailty of their world’s environment.  Who knows, maybe the next great environmental figure will be jumpstarted on that path because they saw this movie when they were 10.

(All information presented here from personal recollection.  Movie Happy Feet is a product of Warner Brothers Pictures.)

Song Quote Citation:

McCartney, Paul, and J. Lennon.  “The End.”  Lyrics.  Abbey Road.  Apple, 1969.

Who’s Country is This?

This is a post in response to Abby’s post on President Bush’s plan to put American land  from national reserves up for sale.   Here is a link to her original post. http://abbyr.wordpress.com/2006/11/12/goodbye-national-land/#comment-55

 I’m not sure that I have much to say that hasn’t already been said, but this issue rubs me so wrongly that I’m going to say it anyway. 

If America is the land of quickfixes and half-baked schemes, then President Bush must be the poster child (how fitting).  Land was put aside into national reserves for the purpose of saving it for future generations.  The reasons for this saving include both saving the aesthetic qualities of the area, and saving the generally renewable resources they contain, so that America will have something to fall back on in an extreme emergency.  Apparantly Mr. Bush has a different concept of what resources our National Forests contain.  Based on what I’ve read now in Abby’s post and in her original article, Mr. Bush seems to be looking for some quick cash.  Why would he do that?  I don’t want to sound horribly accusational, but isn’t there a war going on?  Hmm.  If that is the truth, then I’m sorry (not really), but I do not find it acceptable at all to steal from the future in order to finance a war in the present that half of Americans no longer agree with.  Stealing from the future so that a couple hundred more people can be killed?  Of course, this money could be going towards other expenses, such as education, or transportation, or whatever else you will.  But take a quick look at America’s national budget, and it’s clear where our money has been going.  The Departament of Defense budget is $352.1 billion higher than the next highest number, $67.2 billion in the Departament of Health and Human Services. 

To me, this does not seem right.  The President attempting to permanently sell national land so he can get a few bucks once, while he’s got a $400 billion war interest going on.  Sounds a bit rash. 

Who’s this land going to anyway?  Mentioned in the article were real estate and mining intrests, and other unmentioned development interests.  Say real estate agencies buy some land.  Who’s going to buy it and live there?  The poor?  Of course not!  This would just benefit the rich by giving them another summer/winter home.  Little to no progress would be made in America’s current housing problems.  As far as I’m concerned, that land would be wasted.  It would go from being national land accessible to all Americans to being private land that benefits no one except the owner.  Does this remind anyone else of class priviledge and landed aristocracy? 

Mining ravages landscapes, and to subject some of our selectly preserved lands to this, because the country is lacking money, while engaged in a very expensive war that seems very well to not have had a veritable cause, seems rash, immoral, and irresponsible.  Mining can leave the ecosystems it affects as virtual deserts.  I ask, why create two battlegrounds when one is too many?

Basically, my concern is that our national lands, preserved for all citizens, are at risk of being sold to private interests, and as far as I’m concerned, this is theft. 

Original article:

http://www.sierraclub.org/forests/notforsale/

U.S. 2006 National Budget

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2006/budget.html

Mmm…Bias-y

We always seem to talk about bias as if it’s a bad thing.  For example, in historical writings, it’s basically the ultimate evil.  Your opinion is not something that belongs in an educated format.  It will destroy your credibility.  Your paper will not tell anyone anything important.

I think that’s wrong.  Bias can be one of the most important tools we have in gathering information and understanding what we’re seeing, hearing, or reading about. 

When you pick out an article for an APES blog,  how do you analyze the information?  What information is reliable?  Do you examine the writer’s bias?  I for one, do.  Knowing what the writer feels about the situation at hand in the work helps me garner a more complete understanding of what is going on.  Knowing what the author is most likely to emphasize makes me more critical of the work on the whole.  It makes me want to search for other sources on the topic.  When the blog is finally written, I have a much wider knowledge of the situation than I would have if I hadn’t examined the author’s bias, or if the author presented no bias whatsoever.

If the author managed the impossible, and presented an event, idea, or belief, in a such a way that all bias was removed, anyone reading the article could nearly take the information at face value.  Fewer questions will be raised.  Less time will be spent trying to acquire a better understanding of what the article is actually talking about.  I feel that if this were the case, more people would have the basic, flat knowledge covering the article itself and the information presented in it, but that their knowledge and understanding of the issue would not extend much farther than that.  The mistrust we should have for all verbal (written and spoken) is essential to our mental development.  Mistrust is derived from, and generates, questions.  Questions generate answers, and answers generate more questions.  Knowledge and understanding increases in a generally direct relationship (usually). 

Think about the last time you wikiwandered.  That is, the last time you were so bored that you got onto Wikipedia and just followed links for hours and hours.  Think about the mass amounts of information you came across.  To assume that anyone could retain all of it would be absurd.  One can only take so much information at a time.  But the general concepts of the pages that you read, and the connections that linked them to other headlines will often stick with you.  From thence comes a broader understanding of how events, people, ideas, and nearly everything else are related.

The same thing happens to a certain extent when acting on your mistrust of an article’s author.  You go to several different outside sources, and gather several other points of view.  Take all these biases, find a middle-ground, and there you will likely have found the basic concept.  The basic argument of a debate can often be lost in layer upon layer of rhetoric and propaganda.  But with just a little individual research and comparison, anyone can find the real idea.  From that, and from the understanding you’ve reached from the research, you can make an educated decision of your own on the issue, influenced by all sides of the debate, not just the one presented in the original article.

Bias is good.  It makes us think.

Creek Woes

(All photographs provided by myself, all graphs provided by the United States Geological Society.  Please note that the water does not appear purple in person.  It appears that way in these pictures due to an effect of the light.  It is really more of the murky brown seen in the far section of water in the first picture.)

I currently work as a switchboard operator for the Sisters of St. Joseph, located off Ogden Ave next door to Nazareth High School in La Grange Park.  This past Sunday I was scheduled to work the 12:30 shift, and since it was a nice day, I decided to ride my bike there.  For the majority of the way I took the recently repaved Salt Creek Bike Trail, because it avoids most traffic.  Things were running smoothly, and I was making decent time (simply meaning I wouldn’t be 5 minutes late like usual), until I took the turn into the sidepath that leads to La Grange suburbia.  Almost to the bridge crossing the creek, I found myself in increasing levels of water.  It didn’t look so bad, so I kept going.  Unfortunately, the path dips slightly before it reaches the bridge, and I found myself quickly bogged down in a foot of water.  Pedaling was useless, and I was almost onto dry land, so I jumped of my bike and walked it the rest of the way, soaking my pants on the way (I got to work with 3 minutes to spare, phew). 

All was fine, and it was a sort of adventure still in my mind, until I started to think about it.  I’d seen the creek flood before, but not quite that far.  Then I remembered hearing about how it was significantly polluted.  Hmm.  Something doesn’t seem very good about this situation.  My second major thought was, “Holy damn, I’m going to blog about this!”  So I went back after work with my friend (who has not only a camera but a car as well) and snapped some pictures.

We’ve all heard about floodplains, and we all know that flooding can be a very natural, healthy process in a waterway ecosystem.  Flooding can deposit nutrients and minerals, and perhaps fertilizer in the form of dead fish, on the shore, benefiting the natural life there.  All of the major civilizations at the dawn of civilization formed around river floodplains, partly because the soil there was so fertile.  Flooding can also, however, cause a major increase in shoreline erosion, negatively affecting the structure of the ecosystem.  In this case, the creek is also polluted.  Flooding spreads the contaminants to all of the plant and animal life in the flooded area.

The flood was caused by the intense amount of rain the area recieved on Friday evening.  According to the U.S. Geological Society, near Brookfield (close to where I was), the creek rose roughly 3.5 feet after the storm, with about 2/3 of that coming on Saturday; near Oak Brook Mall on 22nd Street, the creek rose about 4 feet, with a little less than half coming on Saturday; and near Western Springs, the creek rose just over 4 feet, with a little less than half coming on Saturday (graphs at bottom)

That such a large percentage of the water increase occured the day after the storm suggests that much of it was due to intake from sources other than directly from the sky, such as drainage from the surrounding towns’ streets and runoff from the nearby lawns (Source).

Pollution is such a problem to Salt Creek largely because of the amount of human development around it.  According to The Salt Creek Watershed Network, a preservation group, the major problem facing the creek in terms of pollution is the amount of runoff it gathers from bordering lawns, which carries chemicals from lawn treatments or contaminants on the streets (Source).  It’s rating according to the USGS is “Fair.”

In terms of water level control, the village of La Grange Park directs its collected storm water to drain in the creek ( Source ), and one could figure that several other towns along the creek do as well, though I have found no hard evidence of this.  The runoff from lawns and streets adds inches as well as does the actual initial rainfall.  It is understandable, therefore, that nearly half of the water level increase could come from secondary, “man-made”, sources.

What does any of this mean?

The shoreline of the creek is suffering big-time, from development in some areas, flooding in others, and both in many.  Houses going up on the shore interfere with the natural vegetation, and when vegetation on the shore dies, the soil is weakened, causing increased erosion.  There is also a problem with people “channelizing” the creek, making it flow straighter.  This increases the rate of the water’s flowing, thereby increasing the friction between the water and the shore, which causes greater erosion.  The creek already has to deal with thousands of gallons of extra, drained-in, water.  If the shoreline is weakened or lowered, the possibility of flooding is greatly increased, and the magnitude of the flooding in increased as well.  This double-threat now also causes even greater erosion to the shoreline, completing a circle of events that will continue to destroy the shore of the creek.

In the case of the Salt Creek Trail that I saw, the banks of the creek were extended inland for what seemed to be over 20 feet due to the flooding.  That’s at least 20 feet of deciduous forest trees and undergrowth exposed to polluted waters.  That’s another 20 feet of land all along at least the southern end of the creek that is potentially harmful to the already reduced populations of animals. 

According to a sign I read once at Brookfield Zoo, and supported by the SCWN website, Salt Creek used to be a place of great recreation for families who enjoyed swimming, fishing, and boating.  Now the creek is, for all intents and purposes off limits to anyone who doesn’t want to be bathing in ChemLawn.  If something isn’t done soon, to turn around the degredation of the Salt Creek, the bike trail (last of the widely utilized recreation areas in our section of the creek) and the surrounding areas may become an impassable zone with constant flooding of polluted waters.

 

Anyone who is interested in doing something to help improve Salt Creek can check out this organization I found while researching, The Salt Creek Watershed Netowrk: ( http://www.saltcreekwatershed.org/ResBal.pdf#search=%22salt%20creek%20flooding%20lagrange%22 ).  It is a grassroots organization centered in Brookfield.  This website clearly outlines their observations, goals (which are modest), and planned actions to meet these goals, as well as a comprehensive history of the waterway in question.

Sources:

http://www.saltcreekwatershed.org/ResBal.pdf#search=%22salt%20creek%20flooding%20lagrange%22

http://il.water.usgs.gov/

http://www.lagrangepark.org/pubworksdept.SewerOperations.htm 

Graphs: (did not work well being put on here, and the original link changes its values daily, so thank God I saved the graphs when writing this post)

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b122/waterdogg/Brookfield.png

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b122/waterdogg/OakBrook.png

http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b122/waterdogg/WesternSprings.png