129 sediment flow, ruin and break habitats within the river, and prevent fish from passing as they please.3 As such, because the legislators decided to not build the dam, the Fox River was not turned into a place for energy production, allowing fish and other wildlife in the Fox River to thrive without human intervention or disruption. The state government continued to help the Fox River through the Scenic River Bill proposed and passed in 1972. Before the 1970s, corporations would dump their untreated sewage and industrial wastes directly into the water.4 For example, carbonless copy paper was discovered in the river, which released Polychlorinated Biphenyls (PCB).5 The river took a direct toll, as the lower part of the river suffered from “excessive loadings of sediment, nutrients, bacteria and heavy metals resulting in degraded aquatic habitat and an unbalanced fish community with low populations and limited diversity.”6 In response, the Scenic River Bill (Senate Bill 1576) made the Fox River in Kane and Kendall County a scenic river area, acquiring five miles for public property from strip mines.7 Turning this area into a scenic river area would designate it as a place “with shorelines or watersheds still largely primitive and shorelines largely undeveloped, but accessible in places by roads,” according to the National Park Service and accepted by the state of Illinois.8 The bill noted that the Department of Conservation would purchase lands around the river, reimburse the coal mine 3 September 18, “The Downside of Dams: Is the Environmental Price of Hydroelectric Power Too High?,” Scientific American (Scientific American, September 18, 2012), https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-dams hurtrivers/. 4 Ashley Rhodebeck, “How Clean Is the Fox River?,” Shaw Local (Shaw Local, November 23, 2020), https://www.shawlocal.com/2011/07/26/how-clean-is-the-fox-river/a9a3okh/. 5 Ibid. 6 “Lower Fox River Basin,” Lower Fox River basin (Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources), accessed November 13, 2022, https://dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/Watersheds/basins/lowerfox#:~:text=Water%20quality%20studies%20reveal%20th a t,limited%20diversity%3B%20sedimentation%20and%20excessive. 7 John Linebaugh Knuppel, “Illinois General Assembly,” Illinois General Assembly § (1972), https://www.ilga.gov/Senate/transcripts/Strans77/ST060272.pdf. 8 “What Are Wild and Scenic Rivers?” National Parks Service (U.S. Department of the Interior, 2021), https://www.nps.gov/orgs/1912/what-are-wild-and-scenic rivers.htm#:~:text=Scenic%20Rivers%3A%20Those%20rivers%20or,accessible%20in%20places%20by%20road.
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