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Environmental update
Progress can mean two steps forward, one step back
Stewardship of natural resources can be a tricky proposition. Especially in a political context. With an eye to the bottom line, Cook County officials are taking another look at the balance between public responsibility to preserve forests and a desire to promote economic development. Meanwhile, outside Joliet, government lias begun a long process of erasing industrial development and restoring prairie on a vast tract once used to make munitions. Proponents of the project, including representatives of state and national agencies and members of Illinois' congressional delegation, foresee another kind of economic return from protecting the environment. But if people differ on development, they also disagree about what harms the environment. A study of the Great Lakes region sparked that debate.
by Alf Stewart
JUST A TREE
Seeing the forest for economic development
Make no little plans. That was architect Daniel Burnham's rule. And it helped make Chicago famous. But today, as then, it's the clout behind the plan that counts.
And open-space advocates fear Burnham's vision for suburban forest preserves will end up being the loser if Rosemont Mayor Don Stephens' big plans go forward.
Burnham's famous 1909 Chicago Plan, which helped shape the city's lake front and riverfront, envisioned the Des Plaines River as a suburban corridor of natural greenery. But the O'Hare-area cloutmeister wants to expand his village's convention center onto forest preserve land near the river. That's the suburban equivalent of building McCormick Place on the lakefront, or in political terms, imperial Russia's drive for a warm-water seaport.
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In the past, Stephens has pushed for casino gambling on land or on the water in Rosemont, and has offered to build a landscaped riverwalk on the Des Plaines to boot. What's different about his latest proposal is the dog that didn't bark in the night: surprising support for selling a few acres of preserve land in the river corridor to the convention center. Mary McDonald, chairwoman of the Cook County Forest Preserve District's citizens advisory committee, which is reviewing the proposal, explains that a combination of tax caps and a desperate desire on the part of the district to acquire more land in the fast-developing southwest suburbs has made a deal with Stephens a possibility — if the price is right. Last summer, the Rosemont mayor offered about $2 million for two less- than-pristine district acres near but not directly on the riverbank, funds that he said could be used to buy 31 acres in Orland Township that the preserve agency wants to link to its existing holdings. Stephens has pledged not to put gambling on the land if he acquires it. McDonald says the district needs to get a higher price to justify the land exchange. |
But whatever happens with the current proposal, the old notion of preserve land as sacrosanct seems to have taken a decisive beating from the fiscal pragmatism of the '90s. Both major Chicago newspapers have editorially endorsed the Stephens proposal, and key officials concur with McDonald.
Yet not everybody is happy. While the district has sold some "surplus" land in the past, the parcel now under study is part of one of the district's key river corridors. Under a recently revised regional greenways plan, public land along the Des Plaines is seen as a central corridor for linking habitats, protecting floodplains and
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providing recreation space stretching from Chicago's southwest suburbs to the Wisconsin border.
Supporters of Stephens' plan say Rosemont's help in building a river- walk could make that corridor more accessible to people. Still, a convention center site that, in a final deal, could go right up to the floodplain and a possible village riverfront walkway would increase Rosemont's municipal presence on the corridor considerably. And with anti-casino Gov. Jim Edgar a lame duck, casino gambling in some form might not be far behind, whatever the restrictions on the acreage currently in question.
More significant, accepting the principle that public land on a greenway can be put up for sale is disturbing to Gerald Adelmann, executive director of the Openlands Project. "Disposing of a property that clearly is not surplus property and that functions as a part of a larger system would set a dangerous precedent," Adelmann wrote in a letter to County Board President John Stroger. Even if the land is not the most scenic or pristine of the district's holdings, Adelmann argued, it should be respected as part of the greenway envisioned by Burnham and fought for over the years by succeeding generations of officials and activists in Cook and surrounding counties.
Stroger's spokeswoman Andrea Brands says county officials want to "make sure we do the right thing" while being "very careful with setting a precedent," but adds officials don't want to reject out of hand any good deal that could result in a net gain to the district's holdings.
Adelmann, defending a more ancient concept of civic value, wants the district to "stand firm" against disposing of any greenway land.
He was instrumental in putting together a number of complex public- private land preservation efforts, including the precedent-setting Illinois and Michigan National Heritage Corridor, and he says officials need to actively seek out "other means of acquiring [new] property besides cannibalizing the district's own holdings."
Chicago is not a city that has consciously honored civic tradition during most of its existence as a metropolitan area. Yet the tradition of greenways on its lakefront and its rivers is one civic concept that has enjoyed enduring, if shaky support.
But in the fiscal realities of modern Chicago politics, civic tradition carries less weight. No snail darters have been found in Rosemont, a Chicago Tribune editorial noted while criticizing Adelmann's concerns and supporting Stephens' proposal.
Meanwhile, down in the south suburbs, nearly simultaneous with Stephens' proposal, Acme Steel in Riverdale has also broached a plan to acquire preserve land for a plant expansion.
If Stephens, a political boss whose fortunes were built on the fortuity of founding a town near the site of O'Hare International Airport, is entitled to acquire preserve land, then why not Acme, which has created jobs the old-fashioned way by investing millions of private dollars to keep the region's flailing steel industry alive?
One thing for sure is that few of the average Grabowskis and Smiths for whom the preserves are held in trust will be in on the action when and if such deals are struck.
NEW PRAIRIE PARK
An Amazon rain forest turned upside down
The nation's largest tallgrass prairie restoration project is underway at the site of the old Joliet Arsenal, and the best way to see it is to volunteer to help.
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The Midewin National Tallgrass Prairie eventually will include 19,000 acres of restored native habitats on the closed military site, most of them prairie. In March, the Army transferred about 15,000 acres to the U.S. Forest Service, which is operating the site. Officials are still closing down and cleaning up the remainder. Despite the transfer, the preserve is not open to the general public, with the notable exception of 500 volunteers who have been helping to get the project started. "Large scale it's going to look like a big farming operation to many people," says Larry Stritch of the Forest Service, who is coordinator of the "macro-site" that includes Midewin and some 40,000 acres of neighboring public lands around the headwaters of the Illinois River. "People will see us planting oak trees as well, and a restoration of gallery woodlands along prairie creeks." |
The envisioned restoration will take generations. So far, more than 300 acres have been planted with prairie vegetation, and a large-scale native seed nursery has been started. The
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nursery includes 1,000-foot-long, 6ft-wide prairie flower beds, which will eventually grow to a total of 40 miles in length. Workers are also planing fields of single types of prairie grass. And eventually, restorationists hope to bring bison back to the area.
Officials plan to open the first area for public visitors by Memorial Day next year, including a picnic area with shelters and open tables.
But, for the foreseeable future, the best way to see what's going on is to volunteer. The site will be opened gradually to the rest of the public as funds and the progress of the plantings permit.
It will take about 25 years to put much of the restoration in place, Stritch says. Planting has been planned to allow a succession of flora to imitate the natural emergence of a prairie. But it will take "millennia" for virgin black- soil prairie to reassert itself.
"Prairie is often referred to as the Amazon rain forest turned upside down," Stritch explains, "because much of the growth is below ground. It will take nature some time to restore itself. We put the beginnings down ... then you need time for the next weave."
Due to the size and quality of the site (more than 70 percent of the soil types of the old Illinois prairie are represented there), Stritch says that eventually 21 types of prairie and savannah communities will be planted. And the Army's past grazing policies have already made the area a haven for disappearing grassland birds that should thrive with restoration.
Most of the heavy farm-style equipment needed for the restoration has been purchased, but Stritch estimates that about $500,000 to $750,000 a year will be needed to support the project for the first quarter century. Success ultimately hinges on the involvement of volunteers and foundations in the public-private partnership that has forged the new park. (Volunteers donated more than 1,700 hours last year, even before the land was transferred from the Army.) Stritch says those volunteering appreciate the value of the project: "The tallgrass prairie ecosystem is the most endangered ecosystem on the continent, more than the old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest."
Those interested in seeing the historic project up close can volunteer by calling Prairie Supervisor Kent Austin at 815-423-6370.
ART AND SCIENCE
Finding hazards in the Great Lakes region
Forget for a moment acid rain and global warming.
The latest environmental controversy to hit the Rust Belt is the so-called endocrine disrupter: a chemical said to function as an "imposter hormone" that can cause harm to animals and humans.
Environmentalists believe some 13 chemicals used or produced by industry in the Great Lakes region imitate or block the action of natural hormones that control such bodily functions as metabolism and reproduction. They're blaming the compounds for what they see as an unnatural increase in deformities among animals, including birds born with crossed bills that won't close. They believe humans could also suffer from decreased fertility. And they charge that even tiny amounts can result in birth defects and abnormal development.
Among the suspect chemicals are such common compounds as lead and mercury, and the now-outlawed polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, once used in electrical transformers, hydraulic fluids and insecticides.
The problem with such claims, however, is that hormones are present in such small amounts and the chemicals under study are present in such a wide array of products and industrial wastes that it's hard to pin down a direct relationship. Numerous studies of the issue are underway, but so far results are not definitive. And the charges have set off yet another round of arguments between environmentalists and industry representatives over what is science and what is "junk science," and whether there is enough evidence to justify increased regulation, or even the cost of increased reporting of emissions of the chemicals in question.
Last summer, the nonprofit, nonpartisan Washington, D.C.-based Environmental Information Center analyzed the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's first nationwide report of data on toxic chemical emissions that may be linked to hormone disruption. The conclusion: Our region's "own high industrial emissions of disrupters, coupled with its geographic location north of other major polluting regions, make the Great Lakes region the nation's number one hotspot for endocrine disrupting pollution." The final recommendation: more research, coupled with increased requirements for reporting lower-level emissions of potential hormone disrupters by companies. The group noted that in the past such reporting has resulted in reduced emissions.
While the center called current reporting requirements inadequate, it listed the 50 largest Great Lakes facilities emitting the chemicals in question, based on current reporting regulations. Only four are in Illinois, but these include three of the four largest companies cited, topped by GE Plastics in Ottawa.
The plant's human resources officer, Mark Hart, disputes the listing, which he says was based on the factory's emissions of styrene. "The body of scientific evidence does not support categorizing styrene as an endocrine disrupter," he says, adding that the emissions were well below any potential danger levels and that the plant has been cited for good safety practices. Henry Walton, a consultant on environmental policy to an affiliate of the Illinois Chamber of Commerce, says more research needs to be done on the issue and, in the meantime, "it costs everybody money" for increased regulation "before the science is there."
Let science determine if there's a problem or not," he adds.
"Right now the most recent indications are that they cannot repeat the results of earlier studies [that showed a potential problem]."
Everybody wants science to decide such issues. The problem, however, is that science is human too. And balancing concerns about safety and social responsibility with freedom is often more an art than a science.
AlfSiewers, former urban affairs writer at the Chicago Sun-Times, is researching landscape and ancient cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
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