Draft Report: Sediment Characterization in the Middle Peoria Pool, Illinois River

The Illinois Waterway (IWW) is a significant resource to the state of Illinois and the nation as a whole. Commercial navigation on the Illinois Waterway provides a vital means for transporting commodities to and from blue water ports on the East and Gulf coasts of the United States. However throughout the world large floodplain-river ecosystems, like the Illinois River, are becoming increasingly rare. The National Research Council Committee on Aquatic Ecosystems considered this ecosystem type to be the highest priority for aquatic restoration and specifically named the Illinois River as one of three floodplain-river ecosystems within the United States having sufficient ecological integrity to recover. To address the concomitant while sometimes competing needs of commercial navigation and ecological integrity the US federal government, through the Army Corp of Engineers (COE), and the Upper Mississippi River states have proposed the Navigation and Ecological Sustainability Project (NESP) as a means of improving navigation along the Upper Mississippi and Illinois Waterways while improving and/or mitigating the environmental impacts associated with the navigation improvements. As part of this effort it is envisioned that certain backwater areas within the middle Peoria Pool area will be dredged and the dredged material will be used for the construction of islands, elevated floodplain areas or other beneficial uses. These deep water areas will provide suitable overwinter habitat for native fish species while the islands and elevated floodplain areas will diversify terrestrial habitats within that river reach and provide loafing and nesting habitat for waterfowl and shorebirds. These Options 1-3 of this project seek to provide additional data to help further characterize the sediments found in the middle reach of the Illinois River. For this project that area can generally be described as that portion of the Illinois River between Lacon and Chillicothe IL. The descriptions, photos, and analytical results of the analyses for the 16 sediment cores collected May 8-9, 2006 are presented.U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Rock Island DistrictResults for Contract Options 1-3........................................................................... 1 Introduction ............................................................. 1 Acknowledgments ................................................... 1 Study Area ............................................................. 1 Methods .................................................................. 3 Results ................................................................... 4 References ............................................................ 5 Results for Contract Base Option .......................... 7 Appendix A. Field Sheets ....................................... 48 Appendix B. Standard Operating Procedures for the Collection of Sediment Cores Using the Rossfelder 3-Pc Vibrocore ............. 54 Appendix C. Chemical Results from Severn Trent Laboratories ..........62 Appendix D. Particle Size Results ............................................... 195 Appendix E. Percent Moisture ................................................... 230 Appendix F. Photographs of Sediment Cores ............................ 234Ope