Navigating the Future

by Ingrid Ruttendjie
Executive Director, Fox Waterway Agency  

As a little girl growing up on the north side of Chicago in the 1970’s, in the days of lemonade stands, my biggest competitor was another little girl—the daughter of an immigrant family—who was selling water from a giant glass bowl with a serving spoon! How stupid, I thought back then. Today, she’s probably the CEO of a major water bottling company. Life comes at you quickly, as that commercial goes, and I am pleased to see environmental water issues finally taking a front seat on the general population’s radar. However, the “recreational and quality of life” issues regarding water are getting lost and I think we’re missing the boat—literally!

Water is life. No one can deny the importance of water--we began our existences swirling around in it, we drink it and bathe in it everyday, and wait for the heavens to open to bring life and color to our world with vibrant greenery. Protecting water for health and survival is important. But we need to acknowledge that as humans, we are drawn to water-bodies like moths to a flame. I have been moved by sunsets over Grass Lake in Antioch, soothed by the sounds of trickling water over the rocks of Nippersink Creek, exhilarated by the spray in our faces as we cut our boat through waves on Pistakee Lake in McHenry, and awed by the sheer vastness of Lake Michigan as we cut the engines and dangled our legs off the back of the boat to watch the sunset fizzle into the never-ending west. This is real. This is what speaks to our hearts and souls.

In all of our planning, the recreational and quality of life issues regarding water and water-bodies need to be considered. There are very few soul-moving experiences standing at the edge of a detention basin or a drainage ditch. We need to incorporate the veins and arteries of our region--the creeks, rivers, streams, wetlands and lakes—into our plans. “They’re not making any more land” is true, but even truer is that “they’re not making any more lakes and rivers.”

Click HERE to watch the Winner of the Go To 2040 "Bold Ideas" contest at Whitney Young High School—Best Video: "Dry Earth" by Jake Saner and Jake Wiener.