IL HR0394

Kaskaskia Watershed encompasses 10.2 percent of Illinois, spanning all or parts of 22 counties from Champaign County to the Mississippi River in Randolph County.

The watershed contains three Army Corps of Engineers projects (Lake Shelbyville, Carlyle Lake, and Kaskaskia Navigation Project) that generate 7.4 million visitors annually and $167.2 million in visitor spending, while serving 557,837 people through public water systems.

Kaskaskia River is degrading at a rate of one mile per year due to headcutting, causing increased dredging costs, private property loss, and ecosystem degradation including damage to Illinois's largest contiguous bottomland hardwood forest.

Congress authorized $20 million in federal funding for critical watershed restoration projects in 2007, contingent on completion of a Comprehensive Plan that requires a 50 percent non-federal match.

House Resolution urges all four legislative caucuses and the Governor to include $300,000 in state funding in the upcoming fiscal year budget to complete the Comprehensive Plan and leverage the $20 million in federal funds before they are reprogrammed to other states.