Peoria Journal Star: Cat gift benefits rivers

[Tweed]

http://www.pjstar.com/stories/011505/REG_B5A5SFC7.027.shtml

CHICAGO - Caterpillar Inc.'s charitable foundation will donate $12 million - its second-largest gift ever - toward a water-conservation effort on three continents that is expected to benefit the Illinois River.

The money, spread over the next five years, will help The Nature Conservancy start a research network that will study challenges facing three freshwater river systems. They are the Upper Mississippi River, the Paraguay/Parana River in Brazil and China's Upper Yangtze River.

Caterpillar, a Fortune 100 company that manufacturers earth-moving and mining equipment, has a company presence in the two foreign countries and has long been based in Peoria, where the Illinois River - part of the Mississippi basin - flows.

"It looks beautiful, but we're all painfully aware that in the Greater Peoria Lakes, it's about 18 inches deep," Caterpillar chairman Jim Owens said Friday at a Chicago news conference to announce the gift. Peoria Lakes is the area where the Illinois River widens out as it passes through the Peoria metropolitan area."