By VICKI URBANIK

About 13 years ago, local environmentalists made another attempt at preserving a wetland along the Little Calumet River in Westchester Township by trying to add the land to the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

That effort failed, but the ultimate goal of preservation has now been achieved through a much different means.

Thanks to a federal grant program aimed at preserving waterfowl habitat, the Coffee Creek Watershed Conservancy has now acquired a 29.4 acre wetland on the north side of the river north of Indian Boundary Road, just west of the point that Sand Creek merges into the river.

The wetland is adjacent to the 10-acre Langeluttig Marsh weltand managed by the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, essentially creating nearly 40 acres of preserved wetlands.

The acquisition is the first land purchase for the CCWC, the organization that manages the 167-acre preserve in the Lake Erie Land Co.’s Coffee Creek development. And it also represents an expansion of the conservancy’s land preservation efforts beyond Coffee Creek.

Tom Anderson, president of the CCWC and executive director of the Save the Dunes Council, said the wetland acquisition has been in the works for about three years as part of the third phase of the North American Waterfowl Conservation Act administered locally by the Shirley Heinze Environmental Fund.

Though there are other wetlands deserving of protection, Anderson said, “this certainly is a significant acquisition.”

The federal grant program is aimed at acquiring and restoring habitat for waterfowl. To get a grant, organizations must put up cash or assets that are twice as much as the grant to be awarded. Anderson said the conservancy put up about $750,000 in assets at the Coffee Creek preserve and was awarded roughly a quarter million dollars in return.

Other partners in the grant program locally have been the DNR, the Lake County Parks Department and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, the latter of which has used its grant toward the Great Marsh restoration in Beverly Shores.

Property can be acquired through the program only from willing sellers. The newly acquired property was purchased from an Illinois resident wanting to sell.

Anderson said it’s not been determined yet if the site will have public access, but if it does, it would be low-key only.

He also said that while this is the first acquisition by the conservancy, he hopes it won’t be the last.

While the newly acquired parcel is immediately west of the protected Langeluttig Marsh, it’s also two properties away from an 18.3-acre parcel donated to Porter County in 1981 by Robert Greer. Plat maps identify that parcel as a public park.

Environmentalists have long tried to preserve the property now acquired by the CCWC. Anderson said the efforts probably began about 40 years ago. In the late 1980s, a proposal was made to include the land in the dunes expansion bill that eventually became law in 1992.

Anderson said it’s exciting that the property has now been acquired almost in an “overnight success” after 40 years of efforts.

“It’s another example of seeing the mission and trying to accomplish it,” he said.

Posted 7/15/2003