Environmental Progress - Fall 1997

Bureau of Water Hosts Baltic Visitors

Latvian, Estonian aquatic biologists spend time with Illinois field staff

In 1995, two officials of the Illinois EPA's Bureau of Water were part of a U.S. delegation to the Baltic states, providing assistance in updating their water pollution control program. Following that initial visit by Jim Park, Bureau chief, and Bill Busch, a second delegation including Busch and Joel Cross, head of the Bureau's planning section, returned to help with the emerging regulatory process.

Timm, left, and Poikan at the Braidwood cooling lake.

Last summer, two representatives of the Baltic states reversed the process and spent two weeks observing Bureau of Water hydrologists and biologists working out of the Maywood regional office. Sandra Poikan, with the Latvian Environmental Data Centre, and Henn Timm of the Vortsjarv Limnological Station in Estonia, joined the Northern Monitoring and Assessment Unit in its intensive basin survey of the Des Plaines River.

Both Timm and Ms. Poikan have backgrounds in aquatic biology with experience in monitoring rivers and lakes using aquatic macroinvertebrates as the primary assessment tool.

Their two week visit with Illinois EPA was planned to include as much variety as possible. In addition to the river basin survey, after they indicated strong interest in lakes they took part in collection of lake samples from ComEd's large cooling lakes at Heidecke and Braidwood. Later in their trip they spent a day at Illinois EPA's Springfield headquarters where they met with Gregg Good and the Lakes Unit staff discussing the Agency's lake monitoring programs.

An unscheduled drenching weekend thunderstorm generated flood conditions in rivers and streams in the Chicago area, putting some planned outdoor events on hold and provided an extra day to compare procedures and techniques with the field office staff. Over the weekend, the visitors were introduced to liaisons who took them to share weekend activities in Chicago's Latvian and Estonian communities.

The visits were underwritten in part by U.S. AID through cooperative agreements between U.S. EPA, the Latvian Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development, and the Estonian Ministry of Environment.