Recently I’ve been writing about the April referendum that asks whether most of DeKalb, Boone and McHenry counties should form the Kishwaukee Valley Water Authority (KVWA). “Water Law Needs Overhaul” looks at current applications of the Illinois Water Authorities Act and implications for KVWA; and “Care & Feeding of Aquifers” explores groundwater issues discussed recently…
Hey, We Got a Bouquet Today
The Daily Chronicle, in its editorial-page “Barbs & Bouquets” list, today presented a bouquet to the folks who questioned the Rockefeller/Keating business-park project this time last year: Bouquet – Bravo to the DeKalb City Council and the DeKalb Township residents whose questions about a proposed south-side industrial park led to the developer’s bitter withdrawal of…
Allentown 1, Rockefeller 0
[Updated with links 12/16/2006] Remember Allentown, N.J.? Last June found residents fighting hard against another Rockefeller Godzilla Warehouse project just as some of us in DeKalb were this time last year. Click here to link to that article. A visitor to citybarbs at that time, Wayne R. Smith of Allentown has returned today to leave…
We are Cannibals
Our property taxes are becoming too burdensome to bear. Yet we can’t pay for our schools. We’ve invented impact fees to pay for our schools but that increases the cost of our homes, which leads to higher property taxes once again. We homeowners get stuck coming and going. In effect, we’re cannibalizing ourselves to make…
Attack of the Killer Dishwashers
Last weekend I trained as a water analyst for the Sierra Club’s Water Sentinels program. We tested two fresh samples of water from the Kishwaukee River, one upstream from DeKalb Sanitary District operations and one downstream. I was surprised by this in a couple of ways. I had expected we’d analyze water from a rural…
New Plan for the Keating Property
The 343-acre Keating property southeast of DeKalb–encompassed by Route 23, Gurler Road and Crego Road–was sold months ago to developer Jerry Krusinski. This week, Mr. Krusinski unveiled his plans for the land at the Plan Commission meeting.
Bob Pritchard & Fundraising
State Rep. Bob Pritchard is the incumbent this fall and fair game for scrutiny. However, this is not really about him so much as it is about the general need for campaign finance reform in Illinois. From a Daily Chronicle report on the defeated May 2004 IL House legislation to ban horse slaughter in the…
The Airlines & the Jail
Everybody knows that the county jail is full. Another referendum this fall, same as two years ago, will ask voters to approve a 1/2-cent hike in the local sales tax–a “public safety” tax–to fund expansions to jail-related programs and services. What’s plain is that the decision had to be made about whether we are going…
Welcome, Allentown, New Jersey!
[Updated 6/11.] Rockefeller Group, inconvenienced enough in DeKalb to shake the Midwest topsoil off its shoes and head back toward the coasts, wants to develop some 320 acres for logistics enterprises along the New Jersey Turnpike in the vicinity of Allentown, NJ, a plan comparable to their failed warehouse mega-project on 343 acres on the…
About that night-light on Route 88
Today’s Chicago Tribune front-paged a story about a Hillside Landfill that is leaking landfill gas (LFG), which is about 50% methane. Methane, you may recall, is one of the so-called greenhouse gases so the EPA generally frowns on its escape from any source other than livestock (and even that’s only true up to a point.)…