Depue in the News

[Tim Weber]

I got a call from my Mom who lives in Chicago area this morning.

The Depue dam and up coming nationals made the Chicago Tribune front page. I went to look up the article and I couldn't down load it but it's there.


Tim

[Harmon-51V]

Our dam project has made the local papers and yesterday there was 2 different news channels at the lake. Hugo Heredia is getting this project and lake DePue all kinds of attention on Facebook

[thepiranhabros]

It's in the print edition of the Chicago Tribune. Front page; center of the fold with a jump to page 4. You have to be a Digital Member (whatever that means) to see Mary Schmich's article about DePue online.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/

[PopPop]

beloved boat race

The people of tiny DePue, Ill., have one more week to beat the drought of 2012 and save their beloved boat race.

The mission: Pump 600 million gallons of water from the Illinois River into Lake DePue, a feat that has fallen to three old tractors and a little crew of sweaty dreamers.

"It's a harebrained idea," said Mayor Eric Bryant on Tuesday afternoon, his truck bouncing over a narrow dirt road, the temperature kissing 100, as he headed toward the mouth of the lake, where the crazy plan started taking shape last weekend.

Mary Schmich

Bio | E-mail | Recent columns
Related
Photo: Lake DePue
Graphic: Lake DePue
Ads by Google"But when the people in town found out we were going to lose this race," he said, "it was devastating."

DePue is a dollop of houses out among the green cornfields and silver silos of the Illinois Valley, a two-hour drive west of Chicago. It has no motel. It has no factory. The Giant's Den lunch counter is the closest thing to a restaurant.

What it has are the races.

For one summer weekend every year, for the past 27 years, the American Power Boat Association holds its PRO National Championship Boat Races on the town's pride, its water.

Nevermind that the lake is filled with silt and lined with heavy metals left by departed factories and that the town's pleas to have it cleaned up have not been heeded. To the eye, the water remains an idyllic, vast shimmer hugged by green trees, and this is a boat race, not a fishing contest.

Twenty-thousand people come, from all over, some to compete, more to watch. They spend money in neighboring motels, restaurants and antique stores. The direct proceeds fill the town's poverty gaps, buying uniforms for the Little League and new equipment for the playground.

High school classes and families hold their reunions on race weekend, and almost everyone in town takes a week of vacation.

"It's our homecoming," said Mayor Bryant, a tall, fit, silvery-haired retired schoolteacher. "It's the only neat thing that we got going on."

But on Monday of last week, a call came: The lake was too low to be safe. The insurer for the races said it had to be 5 feet. It was only 3.

Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday passed. A crush of alarmed phone calls, meetings, schemes.

One call was Bryant's to Rich Magnuson, a retired boilermaker.

"If we can build a dike, can we pump enough water?" Bryant asked.

Magnuson said sure. He called a couple of duck-hunting buddies, who knew things about pumps.

By Friday, with help from Illinois state Rep. Frank Mautino and permission from the proper agencies, the DePue people made their pitch to the boating association, which would otherwise move the races somewhere else.

The officials gave them a deadline: They had until Wednesday, July 25, two days before the races are set to start, to add 2 feet of water to their waning lake.

Harebrained. But the only option.

"There's no stinkin' thinkin' going on around here," said Bryant, a proponent of the positive thought.

[racingfan1]

Chicago Tribune Digital Member

If you want to read the full story you must be a digital member , which is free and not a big deal. All they ask for is your zip code and email address. It is well written article by a good writer. She paints a very good picture of not just the dam and water but of the importance of Lake DePue and the PRO Nationals to the village of DePue.