Through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act of 2022, the Kaskaskia Regional Watershed plans to receive over $28 million. 

“This is on top of the normal money, this is just extra money for improvements overall,” Ed Weilbacher, general manager for Kaskaskia Regional Port District, stressed at last week’s Lower Kaskaskia Stakeholders meeting. “That’s a lot of extra money coming to the Kaskaskia River. We never really have fared that high before, so that’s a big thing for us too.” 

Carlyle Lake received $9,350,000, Lake Shelbyville received $8,825,00 and the Jerry F. Costello Lock & Dam received $10,395,000, bringing the watershed’s total to $28,570,000. 

Weilbacher explained to stakeholders that the approximate $10.4 million the Corps of Engineers plan on allocating at the Jerry F. Costello Lock and Dam will largely be used to address what he deemed a “maintenance backlog.” 

Projects included in this category include repairing damage to the project office, recreation facilities and control house.

Weilbacher highlighted raising the lock arms at the Lock and Dam as a very important topic the funds will be appropriated to. He explained that since a big flood a couple of years ago, the lock arms could not operate the lock when the water would rise to them, as debris would get stuck. 

Staff currently has to manually flush out debris. 

With the arms being raised, Weilbacher said they could gain 2.5 feet of operations. 

“So as we can get these done, that shows a couple of things,” Weilbacher said. “First off, we don’t want floods, but we can’t predict them. Customers, tenants, they want reliability and certainty, and by moving the lock arms up that means this lock will be more reliable, more certain to operate at higher water events. So that’s a critical improvement for us.” 

Enhancing the spoil site to allow for greater capacity is another project that the $10.4 million will feed into. 

The Corps’ response to KRPD’s request outlines why this is so essential: 

“The storm/flood events of 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2019 not only deposited enormous amounts of silt in the navigation channel, they also overtopped the dredge spoil levee, depositing silt and eroding areas of the levee. Minimal repairs were made to handle past dredging operations; however, future dredging needs are only increasing and will require raising the levee in some areas, removing trees and vegetation and redistributing silt within the spoil pond to remain ready and resilient for future operations.”