Piscasaw Creek

Piscasaw Creek is a tributary river in Wisconsin and Illinois. Rising in Walworth County, it passes through McHenry County before discharging into the Kishwaukee River in Boone County. Piscasaw Creek's mouth is located near Belvidere, Illinois.

Piscasaw Creek is classified as a "Class A" drainage by the criteria established by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, signifying the small river's relative health with respect to waterborne nutrients and chemicals. The creek drainage includes Harvard, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Traditional dairy farming operations around Harvard have not overloaded the creek's biotic capacity. However, exponential residential development starting in the 2000s is expected to present new challenges to the creek.

The land around Piscasaw Creek is relatively flat and does not slope much. Much of the creek is bordered by strips of damp soil and wetland, with cattails and willow trees. The wetlands have helped to maintain water quality.

Piscasaw Creek contains populations of rock bass, smallmouth bass, bluegill, green sunfish, and rainbow trout. [http://www.mccdistrict.org/re-fishing.htm]

Two stretches of land along Piscasaw Creek have been preserved for public use:

* "Beck's Woods" near Chemung, Illinois, is owned and operated by the McHenry County Conservation District.
* "Piscasaw Fen", near Poplar Grove, Illinois, is a recent land purchase by the Boone County Conservation District.

External links

* [http://www.mcdef.org/new_page_4.htm Friends of the Kishwaukee River]
* [http://www.mccdistrict.org/re-fishing.htm McHenry County Conservation District]

References

* "Time To Choose: The Future of McHenry County's High Quality Streams" (2004: Sierra Club, Chicago, Ill.), posted as http://illinois.sierraclub.org/news/McHenryReport.pdf, accessed 2/10/07.