CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) – A north suburban governmental agency has a new strategy for dealing with beavers that have caused flooding along the former Squaw Creek which is now known as Manitou Creek.
The Manitou Creek Drainage District Board decided to be a “no-kill” agency so, instead of relocating or killing beavers that were building dams and creating flooding along the creek as had been done in the past, the board is opting for a bypass system.
According to Drainage District Board chair Patrick Duby, the bypass system involves putting a culvert pipe through small portions of the dams that would allow water to flow through the pipes and beavers get to remain where they are.
“If we can, you know, by hand insert a pipe that’s, you know, 20 or 40 feet long, it can go ten feet past on either end and the water, when it hits a certain level, flows through the pipe,” Duby said.
Duby said that even last year when there wasn’t as much rain, there was some flooding caused by beavers along the creek.
“We still had at least 13 locations that had flooding issues, beaver dams that were built flooding those areas. We had a lot of farmers saying, ‘I can’t even get to my crops because of this [flooding],” Duby said.
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Duby said the Beaver Dam Bypass System is used successfully in a few other states and can save his tiny agency and Lake County taxpayers money because heavy equipment won’t need to be brought in every year to tear down dams as well as to relocate or kill beavers.
He also said there are environmental benefits to the bypass system.
“Now that we’re not killing beavers, which, you know, back in the day that was kind of more standard practice, and I didn’t want to see that anymore and there actually are some benefits to wetlands if you leave the natural habitats the way they are but we also couldn’t have increased flooding in the area,” Duby explained.
Manitou Creek runs for about 15 miles from the Hawthorn Woods area northwest and empties into Long Lake. The creek’s name was officially changed by the federal government last month from Squaw Creek after Duby and others requested the name change because of the derogatory connotation connected with the word squaw.
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