A few weeks later, I was invited by a new friend to attend the Volo Bog book club: Of Bogs & Books. The book for the December meeting was The Trees In My Forest by Bernd Heinrich. In the chapter he titled Seeds and Seedlings (surprisingly, not in the one he titled Acorns) was this paragraph that described what Alice had witnessed. Heinrich writes from the point of view of a tree trying to compete for a spot in a mature forest:

One problem with loading up the seeds with a large food store is that it invites predators to eat them. Another is that mobility can be low. To some extent, the seed predators have been exploited by oaks and beech trees to counteract the second problem. 

Blue jays and squirrels eat nuts, carrying off and planting the surplus they can't immediately eat. Most other seed predators are not so helpful. To have a surplus of seeds that will not be eaten, the tree generally produces no seeds for a few years -- until all of its seed predators have starved or left. Then the tree suddenly puts out a giant crop that hopefully won’t be completely devoured.

Of Bogs & Books meets in the Volo Bog Natural Area Visitor Center on W. Brandenburg Rd. in Ingleside on the first Thursday of the month from 7:00 p.m. - 8:30 p.m. For February we’re reading John Muir's Travels in Alaska. Call Stacy Miller at 815-344-1294 to let her know you're coming.

On March 9, 2002, 9:00 to noon, we will have a Buckthorn Bonfire! Bring a buckthorn branch from your neighborhood to add to the pyre! See Outings.

Want to help out from home? Adopt an oak tree! Your $25 will be used to hire helpers to liberate your tree from invasive buckthorn. We'll document our progress with pictures of your adopted tree, and place your initials on our Sun Lake Stewardship website next to them. Here's one of the huge oaks in the Preserve!). We'll use GPS to locate each tree  (so no marks will be made on the trees) and we'll send you your tree's coordinates in an e-mail. Write your check to Sierra Club, note "SLRC Oaks! and your e-mail address on it, and send it to POB 5012, Vernon Hills, 60061. Our yearly goal is 100 adoptions.

• January 12, 2002, 
• February 9, 
• March 9, 
• April 13, 
• May 11, 
• June 8,  etc. 

Your W&W Group's outings and planning activities are fulfilling our Forest Preserve Partnership for Sun Lake Forest Preserve in northern Lake County.

Bring along work gloves, hat, saw or branch clippers if you have any, as we are currently clearing invasive buckthorn from the perimeter of pristine Sun Lake and from the majestic oak savannas.  Future plans include planting of wildflowers and native grasses, restoration of the natural hydrology, including wetland recreation.  Local bird and animal populations will greatly benefit from this work and, of course, so will the people of Lake County.  Please join in.

Directions to Sun Lake: 
N. on Deep Lake Rd. from 132; 
W. on Painted Lake Rd.; 
L. on Spring Farm Rd.; 
R. on Longwood Drive. 
Park in cul de sac and look for a friendly, scruffy group of wonderful people. E-Mail DRNGO11@aol.com

There are other excellent reasons for a new township open space district. Probably the most popular one is that it saves money. New development means more residents, and more expensive schools, roads, sewers, and other facilities that will rapidly exceed the $10M sought for open space. These costs are not covered by developers or new residents, they fall on existing residents. 

An enthusiastic bunch of Fremont Township volunteers have already been hard at work writing an Open Space Plan, and getting TWO questions placed on the spring ballot to create and fund a NEW open space district. The first question will create the district, giving it the authority to raise money and buy land from willing sellers. The second question will authorize bonds to generate $10,000,000. These funds will be leveraged to preserve as much as 1,000 acres of those identified in the plan. Both questions need the support of Freemont voters for this to happen.

The Fremont Open Space Committee, lead by Raine Ray (who's farm recently became a new Lake County Forest Preserve acquisition!), asked W&W for our support. Besides asking you, our own members for your vote, we need to convince enough of the township's 14,000 voters that the plan is crucial to protect the beauty and character of the region. Mailings to these voters are expensive, and the Fremont For Open Space campaign will need to do several to make sure that the message gets through.

Your W&W Executive Committee voted to endorse the campaign, and contribute $1,000 from our limited funds to support one informational mailing to Fremont residents. We then sent our delegate to the IL Chapter Executive Committee with a request for matching grants from both the Land Acquisition and Sprawl Campaigns. This is an unusually large request, but the Chapter recognized the significance of starting a new open space district, and came through! We now have $3,000, and that should cover the cost of our mailing. In addition, our editor has gallantly offered to donate her talent to do the layout.

A few of the people working on the Fremont For Open Space Campaign are Sierra Club members, and there is room for more of you that want to help, from simple things like sending your neighbors postcards and giving money, to making phone calls, distributing literature, leading rallies, hosting a presentation and putting out signs. We're calling our members to ask for your support, but don't wait. Call or e-mail us and volunteer, or send a check to Fremont For Open Space, P.O. Box 711, Mundelein, Illinois  60060.
 

... to top of next column

• Create an Open Space District within Fremont Township
• Acquire land and/or development rights from willing sellers
• Prohibit the use of condemnation as part of the Fremont Township Open Space Plan
• Complement Comprehensive Plans of the numerous municipalities, Park Districts, and Forest Preserves throughout the Township
• Preserve the rural character of the Township from impacts of development
• Create large contiguous open space areas in Fremont Township
• Facilitate coordinated cooperation between Fremont Township and the municipalities within the Township for the preservation of open space
• Connect existing open space using trails and other methods
• Maintain sensitive areas including all natural resources
• Preserve habitat to sustain indigenous flora and fauna
• Educate the public regarding the importance of open space and the process of acquiring land
• Allow current use and character of the land to determine the future land use as part of the Fremont Open Space District
• Preserve the agricultural heritage of Fremont Township
• Preserve historical properties of Fremont Township
• Accept conservation easements
• Purchase development rights
• Identify and seek funding opportunities
• Preserve and protect the quality of life and the character of Fremont Township
• Limit the use of financial resources primarily for land acquisition
• Create a Township Open Space Advisory and Management Committee

Please lend your hand to help this campaign succeed. 

 We are proud that our Lake County Stormwater Management Commission (SMC) and Lake County Board voted in August to quickly adopt local ordinances to protect "isolated" wetlands. Going forward, SMC will have jurisdiction over "isolated" wetlands, while the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACOE) will continue to have jurisdiction over "navigable" waters. SMC's Joe Hmieleski, whose presentation was canceled last September, will present at our March 12 Public meeting on how this new arrangement is working.

 The new ordinances are similar to the previous regulations suspended by the Supreme Court last January. Those regulations enforced by the USACOE were found by a National Academy of Sciences report last summer to be insufficient, resulting in a net loss of thousands of wetland acres since 1993. The new SMC ordinances will likely be insufficient as well.

 This spring the Illinois Assembly Wetlands task force, headed by our trusted representative Karen May, will introduce legislation to protect isolated wetlands. This is especially important for the totally vulnerable wetlands outside of Lake County. We need to reinforce her effort to restore some protection for isolated wetlands across the state by calling on our own representatives. But we must realize that because we have more high quality wetlands than other Illinois counties, her efforts in Springfield are likely to be less successful than those of our own SMC. Rather than pin our hopes on her effort to improve wetlands protections in our territory, we need to initiate and improve wetland protection ordinances at our own county and village levels, and make sure that Illinois does not overrule our freedom to do so.

 In the new ordinances, SMC made a few improvements to the practices of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACOE). SMC was more concerned about where the water previously held by a doomed wetland will go. They decided to protect neighboring wetlands from inundation, a problem that continues to destroy wetland habitat in the jurisdiction of the USACOE. They also decided that wetlands to hold the displaced water should be re-created in the same watershed, rather than in a distant location where it cannot prevent the resulting flooding. SMC has also provided more safeguards for larger and higher quality wetlands.

 On the whole however, the pro development members of the SMC board chose to adopt ordinances that repeat the errors made by the USACOE for the past decade: automatic permits, and an unjustified over-reliance on mitigation. Rather than adopting zero or 5,000 square feet as recommended by their Technical Advisory Committee, they chose the USACOE's threshold of ¼ acre for wetlands that may be filled without even a permit. Rather than respecting the uniqueness of our wetland ecosystems, they chose to continue allowing wetlands to be destroyed in one place, with the promise of a re-created wetland nearby. This is called mitigation, and in spite of significant advances in mitigation science, it is largely unproved and unsuccessful.

 Of the 13 types of wetlands found in Lake County, only 3 were considered mitigatable by Gerould Wilhelm, a Morton Arboretum authority, in his 1991 paper on the subject. Isolated wetlands comprise over 5,000 acres, about 15% of those remaining in Lake County. Because of their isolation, they support more varied and unique ecosystems than those connected to our waterways. The other 10 types of wetlands here are comprised of colonies of species that defy successful relocation or re-creation.

 Mitigation has become more successful because of better science, and it has also become more commercial. The wetland restoration companies, like the developers they serve, have their own lobbyists who voiced their support for more reliance on mitigation at the SMC hearings. And the ordinance reflects this. Under USACOE regulations, when a wetland is mitigated, the developer must re-create more wetlands than he fills, at a ratio of 1½:1 to 3:1. Although typically unsuccessful and ultimately insufficient, this is intended to compensate for the lost quality of the filled wetlands, as well as the historical and ongoing losses from automatic permits. However, SMC has decided to ignore these reasons, and reward a "certified" mitigation wetland with a 1:1 ratio. The combination of automatic permits and 1:1 mitigation portends a continued decline of wetlands. Instead of accepting USACOE ratios, and reducing them, SMC should set higher ratios, especially for unmitigatable wetland types.

SMC and their Technical Advisory Board both meet regularly to consider improvements to the existing ordinances, and with state legislation approaching, now is an important time to express our resolve for these improvements. In addition, just as SMC seized the opportunity to adopt improved wetland ordinances, they have invited municipalities to adopt further improved local wetland ordinances. Perhaps the easiest way to do this is for a village or city to stipulate higher mitigation ratios and lower quality criteria to be used by in conjunction with an SMC wetland fill application.

W&W asked a few municipalities to adopt the following resolution. At least one did, and forwarded it to the SMC. Take it to your trustees in this election season, and ask them to support it: 
 

The North Shore Sanitary District (NSSD) board wants to stop putting sludge in a landfill and start incinerating it. Your Club leaders think this is a big mistake. To be put in a landfill the sludge is stabilized with fly ash, and the toxic materials it contains are buried for another generation to deal with - far from perfect.

The NSSD is applying to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) for a permit to pollute the air with a Minergy brand sludge melter. The IEPA has drafted a permit indicating their intent to allow its pollution! Then they invited comments from the public and held a hearing. 

What the draft permit did say was reason enough for alarm. The Lake Michigan Federation, which has been working for years to reduce the amount of mercury already in Lake Michigan, wrote comments objecting to any additional mercury in the Lake. 

We also think that construction of another toxic plant in an economically challenged neighborhood is unfair. One of our members has worked with the Club’s Environmental Justice staff and submitted comments on behalf of ICA to defend the local community’s rights. 

The draft IEPA permit also fails to require that either the sludge entering the incinerator, or the plume leaving it be monitored for the amount of toxins present - depriving the public from ever exactly knowing the consequences of granting a permit. LCCA also commented that the IEPA has also failed to measure or model present pollution levels and wind patterns in Waukegan to be able to accurately predict where the emissions of this incinerator will go. And the permit does not restrict NSSD from bringing in sludge from outside its district to this incinerator.

With a little knowledge about a class of extremely potent organo-chlorine carcinogens called dioxins, we submitted comments speculating that organics and chlorine in the sludge would likely form dioxins in the incineration process, and that their release should not be allowed. We were uncomfortable with speculation, and we decided to get some help. The Club has a task force working on the problem of sludge disposal, focussing on the hazards from applying raw sludge to farm fields. 

Dioxin bio-accumulates in the fat of animals we eat: meat and fish. It accumulates in our fat, and is passed on through mothers’ placenta and breast milk to babies. 

... to top of next column

The local groups working on this issue are investigating options that we feel are more promising than the Minergy incineration process. One possibility is a carefully controlled composting incubator sold by the Bedminster corporation. 

Overcoming the difficulties of properly treating sludge is likely to remain a challenge, and better approximations will likely cost more money. Perhaps the most attractive approach, which is not even on the table at NSSD, is better source control. 

The trustees of the North Shore Sanitary District approved their plan for an incinerator with insufficient public involvement. Two of them, Hawn and Washington, have reversed their position when they heard the public’s concerns at the IEPA air pollution permit hearing. The others, John Paxton, James Swarthout and Joseph Pasquesi seem determined to follow through. Even in the absence of an IEPA permit, they have ordered the Minergy equipment, and construction materials have begun arriving on the site next to Waukegan Harbor. Mark Hawn, in a letter to the editor, revealed a back room deal to provide access to a site for Zion in exchange for political support of this incinerator. Without the deal Calpine was unable to build their hotly contested Newport power plant. NSSD has also agreed to lease lakeshore land to Kinder Morgan for a new power plant, and supply it water. All of these moves reveal NSSD's intent to return the area to emission-central on the lake shore. 

In a strange but welcome turn of events, the IEPA has requested NSSD apply for a land pollution permit in order to maintain their air permit application. (Spanish version) We have grown accustomed to having the IEPA ignore our comments, and issue permit after permit for polluting peaker power plants. We are unsure whether our comments made a difference in this case, or if so, which ones. The land application will address delivery and onsite storage of sludge from the other NSSD facilities, re-examine vitrification of dried sludge, and limit the uses of the glass pellets. We will release an e-mail alert when we know more facts. If you are not yet on our e-mail list and want to help stop pollution from this incinerator, go to our ALERTS page or click ALERTS to sign on to the list. 
 
 
 

First out of the chute, the U.S. Senate will be turning its attention to America's energy needs, with a critical vote on a Senate energy bill expected in mid-February.

The Senate energy debate will swirl around the bill introduced in December by Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.). The National Energy Security Bill, S. 1766, is a huge improvement over the plan proposed by President Bush and the bill passed by the House of Representatives in August.

The Daschle bill is on the right track because it recognizes that our energy policy must protect the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other special places, plus help curb global warming and reduce America's oil dependence. The bill creates a strong framework to accomplish these key things, and move us to a cleaner, safer, more secure energy future.

However, some key elements have been left blank, to be filled in later. For example, the bill calls for improvements in automobile fuel economy, but doesn't say how much of an improvement should be made. We need to make sure that there is a loud chorus of support for a Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard of 40 mpg for cars, light trucks and SUVs by 2010.

Another fill-in-the-blank deals with tax subsidies for new energy technologies. The bill doesn't say yet how much or which technologies and industries will benefit. We need to make sure our tax dollars support clean, renewable technologies like solar and wind power, and don't subsidize nuclear power or so-called "clean coal," which is anything but.

The Senate bill calls for 10 percent of our electricity to be provided by new renewable energy sources by 2020, but studies by the Union of Concerned Scientists show that we can achieve 20 percent.

Clearly, our voices are needed now. Please take a minute to write a letter to your senators. You can use the sample letter below as a starting point.

Or go to the Club's new Take Action Web site at https://tioga.sierraclub.org/action/actionindex.jsp and send an e-mail or fax alert to your senators. Add your voice to the growing chorus for a cleaner, safer, more secure energy future.
 

Sample letter:
 

Friend - 
I belong to the Sierra Club Woods & Wetlands because it helps me understand, enjoy, and protect our environment. The Woods & Wetlands Group organizes members from Lake and NE Cook counties for local events, outings and actions. Membership includes the benefits of the national Club: Outings, Sierra magazine, and involvement with national issues. Visit their websites: http://illinois.sierraclub.org/w&w/ and you'll see what I mean. I hope you'll consider helping to protect our environment and become a member.

It's important to understand the serious errors in the DEIS, but it's even more important to recognize that LCTIP is using it to mislead the public. Here's how the news reports summarized its conclusions: 

Rt. 53 would damage a few more wetlands and a lot fewer homes and businesses; both 53 and the alternative would provide the same benefit.

Transportation needs support improved arterials and mass transit; low N-S travel demand does not merit huge environmental impacts of an unaffordable new highway in central Lake County.

 ... to top of next column

• distorted public opinion data, 
• miscalculated and deferred major environmental impact evaluations, 
• omitted bus and rail from their iterative models, 
• biased the outcome by using the Rt. 53 scenario as the benchmark, 
• selected a DOA (St. Mary's Rd.) alternative for comparison, 
• ignored E-W trips, 
• ignored whether 53 is a freeway or tollway, 
• grossly understated the cost of Rt. 53 beyond common sense, 
• artificially limited its consideration of environmental impacts to the footprint of each alternative,
• included the baseline plan in both alternatives, and then made misleading impact comparisons of the alternatives with the baseline,
• ignored the quality of existing areas, grossly miscalculating the growth impacts caused by Rt. 53,
• used a simplistic, inadequate and misleading water quality impact analysis,
• failed to compare air pollution impacts, especially ozone,
• omitted any legally required special effort to avoid impacting parks and recreation lands,
• omitted significant areas and natural resources impacted by Rt. 53 from their calculations of cumulative and secondary effects, 
• conducted Open Houses that do not satisfy the Public Hearing requirement. 

		POB 5012  Vernon Hills, IL 60061  November 4, 2001
	Sierra Club Woods & Wetlands Group

Regarding the Rt. 53 Draft Environmental Impact Statement:

The Woods & Wetlands Group of the Sierra Club represents the environmental concerns of 2300 members in NE Cook and Lake County. The DEIS is our chance to assess the damage that the Rt. 53 extension would cause, scrutinize whether it would provide the benefits promised, and weigh these against the baseline and alternative plans. We are concerned that serious flaws in this DEIS prevent us from doing so.

In releasing the DEIS, you (IDOT and the Toll Highway Authority) have presented baseline and transit improvements as insufficient, and asked us to choose between the Rt. 53 sprawl invitation, and to consider a plan that includes a ludicrous St. Mary's Road expansion as an alternative. We find this contemptuous. You show how this poor alternative impacts more homes and businesses than Rt. 53, and present Rt. 53's higher wetlands and agricultural impacts as a reasonable tradeoff. We find this misleading and unreasonable. You indicate that 53 would not relieve as much local traffic congestion. We find this an understatement.

We raise these specific problems with the DEIS:

• It assumes predominant N-S traffic patterns, ignores data calling for NW-SE improvements to access employment, and recommends wrong remedies to the wrong problem. The maps you present confirm the dense employment areas in the SE corner of the area. The Rt. 53 plan does not provide improved access to those jobs. This incorrect assumption invalidates the DEIS conclusions.
• It grossly understates the impacts of Rt. 53 to remote wetland systems by ignoring contiguous wetlands beyond the narrow corridor; and, by focusing on impacts to flowing streams, ignores the impact of runoff on sensitive isolated wetland and headwater ecosystems. Your questionable expectations that poor municipal stewardship of our region’s wetlands will overshadow impacts from Rt. 53 should not relieve you from considering its impacts beyond the corridor.
• Inclusion of St. Mary's road in the "alternative" makes the detailed distinctions between impacted pristine wetland acres and degraded acres - which seem to favor 53 - ridiculous. More ambitious transit proposals seem more appropriate to move commuters from more densely populated areas around this river and wetland rich area to employment centers to the SE.
• The DEIS ignores and dismisses the future impacts of new highway sprawl, tallying land use impacts only within a half mile of the 53 corridor, and blaming "reasons other than transportation" for an expected loss of more than 90% (5,500 acres) of the open space presently there. The Rt. 53 extension has been an imaginary threat for decades. It is unreasonable to expect municipalities not to modify their zoning ordinances to reflect the actual presence of a new 6 lane limited access highway inside their boundaries should that unlikely event actually occur.
• It dismisses long-term groundwater impacts without accounting for a significant fraction of the salt and other roadway pollutants, defers noise abatement issues until after approval, and is tragically incomplete in its evaluation of air pollution in a corridor that encroaches on homes and schools. These impacts likely contribute to findings that highway corridors can create cancer corridors.
• The baseline improvements are limited, unimaginative, overdue, and underrated, and additional transit improvements are only included in package deals with the poor road "choices." With such slow progress being made toward baseline improvements, we challenge whether it is realistic - and point out the irony - to call it the "No Build" scenario. For instance, dozens of simple intersection improvements could quickly and economically augment the baseline, but only two are indicated. Expanded use of our existing rail network could access additional areas, but only double tracking the WI Central is included. Badly needed RR overpasses are totally missing. There are many common sense remedies to our traffic problems that have been overlooked amid this grandiose and expensive tollway justification exercise.

Evan L. Craig  Chair
PROTECT AMERICA'S ENVIRONMENT For our Families ... For our Future