Paddling Bubbly Creek: Water, Food, and Urban Ecology

This past Sunday, 29 April 2012, students from my SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class joined staff and student interns from Growing Power‘s Chicago Lights Urban Farm for a canoe trip on Bubbly Creek, aka the South Fork of the South Branch of the Chicago River. This was the second of two field trip experiences for RU undergrads and Growing Power Youth Corps job interns who have been working together in the Spring of 2012 at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm. (The first was a road trip to Growing Power’s original farm site on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side.)

Paddling south on Bubbly Creek (M. Bryson)

Led by Friends of the Chicago River, this outdoor adventure introduced RU undergrads and Cabrini-Green teens and young adults to river ecology, wastewater policy, Chicago history, and urban biodiversity — not to mention the no-less-important skills of teamwork and good paddling technique. Most of the day’s participants had limited to no canoeing experience prior to our adventure; but they learned quickly with the help of a pre-launch paddling lesson by our Friends of the Chicago River guides, and by the end of our 2.5 mile journey had proven themselves adept at handling a canoe on one of America’s most infamous urban waterways. Talk about baptism by fire . . . er, wastewater effluent!

This industrialized and heavily polluted channel on Chicago’s South Side got its name years ago from the methane gas that bubbled up from the bacterial decomposition of organic waste on the creek’s bottom. Bubbly Creek was the notorious dumping ground for the Chicago Stockyards for decades. Things were so bad in 1909 that a chicken was photographed walking across the sludgy surface of the river.

Paddling south on Bubbly Creek; to the right (west) are 34th Street and the Iron Street Farm (M. Bryson)

The South Fork’s revolting environmental history inspired me to take urban sustainability seminar students to the waterway as our capstone field trip back in May of 2009 — and I’ve been canoeing Bubbly Creek with my students ever since.

The mild spring weather, sluggish current, and lack of boat traffic made for exceptional paddling down the one-and-a-quarter-mile length of Bubbly Creek this past Sunday. Our view was one of arresting images and stark contrasts. Along some stretches, vegetation reclaimed the industrial riverbank. Elsewhere, pipes stuck out from concrete or steel embankments, water from area street-level drains trickling from their openings — a hint of the deluge that would ensue were it to rain. We floated slowly and quietly under massive railroad and highway bridges, the dim roar of traffic far above us.

Near the headwaters of Bubbly Creek; on our right is the massive Racine Avenue Pumping Station. Each of its eight pipes is 5 feet in diameter. This station pumps wastewater from this area of Chicago southwest to the MWRD's Stickney wastewater treatment plant -- the largest such facility in the world. In times of significant rainfall, these pumps reverse and pump untreated combined sewage into Bubbly Creek, where the water levels quickly rise three feet. (M. Bryson)

Visible evidence of pollution was everywhere — old plastic garbage bags hanging from trees; floating bottles and cans; the occasional used condom (nicknamed “Chicago River Whitefish” by jaded river veterans); and the infamous bubbles, still percolating up from the murky depths. At times the faint stench of sewage drifted over us.

Yet, we also saw encountered wildlife, including Canada geese, Mallard ducks, a juvenile red-tailed hawk, and a green heron (one of the three heron species native to Illinois). Tree swallows swooped over the water, hunting for insects, and red-winged blackbirds and white-throated sparrows sang lustily from the brush riverbanks. Although we didn’t see any that day, beavers are known to be active along the creek, despite its persistent pollution. Such observations provided a dramatic ecology lesson: while Bubbly Creek is still in rough shape, it has come a long way from its earlier environmental desecration.

A significant moments of our trip occurred as we paddled southward along an imposing, rusted metal retaining wall on the east bank of the river; to the west was a more vegetated riparian zone that ended at a chain link fence.

Malcolm, a longtime Growing Power Youth Corps intern on his first canoeing adventure, points to the Iron Street Farm with his paddle (M. Bryson)

The view itself was unremarkable, save for the fact that we knew what was on the other side of that fence, mostly hidden from view on the high bank: the Iron Street Farm, one of Growing Power’s urban farming operations in Chicago that occupies several acres of former industrial land just west of Bubbly Creek at the intersection of Iron and 34th Streets. With a large building that has been adapted and re-purposed for integrated indoor urban agriculture (aquaponics and vermicomposting) and a bike repair facility, as well as extensive grounds for several hoop houses and even more composting bins, Iron Street Farm represents a sophisticated 21st-century post-industrial refashioning of a 19th century industrial landscape.

Iron Street Farm, as seen from Bubbly Creek (M. Bryson)

And what of the connections between the water of the creek and the food growing enterprise along its west bank? They are many and various, as we discussed while “rafting up” our canoes at the southern terminus of Bubbly Creek, where we contemplated the urban ecology of stormwater runoff and combined sewage overflows while floating in the shadow of the massive Racine Avenue Pumping Station. Every drop of water that falls on the compost-enriched soil of Iron Street Farm not only is utilized by edible plants in food production, but also is diverted from the sewer system of the city, thus reducing the total amount of surface run-off that results (in times of sufficient precipitation) in the release of untreated sewage into Bubbly Creek and the many other channels of the Chicago Area Waterway System.

Hoop Houses at Iron Street Farm; Bubbly Creek is just past the fence to the right (M. Bryson)

Beyond this systematic analysis, though, was a more emotional revelation about urban waterways that I felt may have occurred, tacitly but undeniably, amongst us on our trip — one that runs counter to the fears of the uninitiated that scary creatures lurk in the deeps, or that urban rivers are degraded beyond reclamation. Given the chance to experience a river, up close and personal, people of all ages respond to its rough and imperfect charms.

If we can learn to love and value the likes of Bubbly Creek — if we can see that a channelized, polluted, and long-neglected waterway has the potential to become, well, a river again — then just about anything’s possible.

Ivory (foreground) and Deja, two of the Growing Power Youth Corps interns who work at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)
Our group combined folks from Roosevelt University's SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class, Growing Power staff and Youth Corps interns, and guides from Friends of the Chicago River (M. Bryson)

Want to see more? Check out these annotated slideshows of our RU-Growing Power canoe trip on Bubbly Creek as well as the Iron Street Farm.

SUST 350’s Workday at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm

This past Wednesday was the third week for my SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class doing work at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm in Cabrini-Green. We help out on a variety of chores and projects at the farm on our Wed afternoon work sessions. Last week we pulled weeds, sifted compost, and harvested thousands of pumpkin seeds from some of last year’s leftover pumpkins. This week we sifted more compost, pulled weeds, and began work on constructing the 2nd hoop house for the farm. Here are some photos I took during that day’s activities.

Our class sessions on Wednesdays start with a discussion from 3-4pm, during which students give short “Farm Reports” on different urban farm operations around the country, and the class as a whole discusses that week’s assigned readings from Lorraine Johnson’s excellent book, City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing. Then, we get together with Growing Power’s Youth Corps kids from the neighborhood, do a few warm-up activities for exercise and community-bonding, and hit the chore list for that day. Our work session ends at 5:30 so students can get to their next class — but most of us are reluctant to stop because it’s so much fun . . . especially when you can work together getting your hands dirty for a good cause.

Here are a few photos from this week.

Josh gives his Farm Report at the picnic area, which doubles as our outside classroom.
Starting work on the farm's 2nd hoop house.
Rows of soil, built onsite from compost, sit atop the old basketball court -- ready for upcoming spring planting.
Steph (L) and Maria sift compost from the worm bin. The result is beautiful, rich, fine soil collected in the tub below the screen; the leftovers are added back into other composting bins.
Watering the compost bins at bit now and again helps speed the decomposition process; these bins can produce good compost in 6-9 months. Not your typical agricultural landscape, eh?

Growing Power’s Urban Farm in Milwaukee

For its first field trip experience this spring, my SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class on urban agriculture, social justice, and community development ventured up Lake Michigan’s western shoreline to the great city of Milwaukee. Our destination was the flagship urban farm operation of Growing Power, the non-profit urban ag enterprise established in 1995 by pro basketball player-turned-urban farmer Will Allen.

Growing Power's flagship farm location in Milwaukee

Since the mid-2000s, Growing Power has expanded its operations to several sites in Chicago, including the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (CLUF) in Cabrini-Green, which is the service learning partner organization / work site for our SUST 350 class this semester.

Our objective in visiting Growing Power’s Milwaukee location was to get a hands-on introduction to one of the most celebrated sustainable urban farm operations in the US. We began our day with a picnic lunch at our urban farm site in Chicago, where we broke bread with CLUF/Growing Power staff and Youth Corps high school student interns. Then, we piled into a rented school bus and headed up to Growing Power’s site on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side, where we got a superb and information-packed 90-minute tour of the entire two-acre facility by Amy, a tour facilitator and full-time employee of the farm.

Growing Power is an example of a hybrid urban farm that is focused on developing sustainable urban farming practices in the production of vegetables (especially baby greens salad mixes), fish (primarily tilapia), animal products (goat milk and meat, eggs and poultry), and compost.

Growing trays in greenhouse #1

Their food is sold to area restaurants, at the Growing Power on-site farm stand, and at various “Market Basket” locations in Milwaukee where fresh food is hard to find. All of their growing soil is produced on-site by a sophisticated and large-scale composting system, which includes an impressive vermiculture operation that uses worms to process plant “waste” into nutrient-rich soil. Growing Power is a pioneer is using closed-loop cultivation systems in which wastewater from the aquaponic fish-growing tank flows through hydroponic plant beds, where various vegetables and flowers take up the excess nutrients from the water; the cleansed water is then returned to the aquaponics tanks, to start the cycle again.

Here, perfect soil is created by worms. Dirt is the great equalizer, the foundation of agriculture -- no matter one's race, color, or creed.
Aquaponic tank, replenished by water filtered by the hydroponically-grown plants in the upper level

The farm also harvests renewable energy from several solar panel arrays, and uses the heat bio-generated from interior composting bins to warm its several large greenhouses and significantly reduce heating costs during the cold Wisconsin winters.

For a more detailed account of our group’s tour, check out the field trip notes taken by Maria Cancilla of our SUST 350 class at the pdf link below and the photos I took of our tour. Also see Growing Power’s website for a wealth of information about the farm as well as virtual tours of its facility.

Growing Power Tour Notes 2012-03-24 (pdf)

Growing Power’s Milwaukee and Chicago facilities are prime examples, but by no means the only ones, of the burgeoning urban farming movement in cities and suburbs across North America. Students in this inaugural section of SUST 350 in Roosevelt’s Sustainability Studies program are working on a community-based research project about the Cabrini-Green neighborhood’s history, present assets, and future prospects. Two-thirds of our class meetings take place at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm in Cabrini-Green, a half-acre urban farm that began as a small community garden built atop a derelict basketball court in 2002. Here we are working side-by-side with Youth Corps teenage interns from the neighborhood to work compost, weed planting beds, harvest seeds from last year’s crops, build a new hoop house, and do whatever else needs to be done in the farm’s early spring work season.

This farm is an inspiring example of how sustainable agriculture in inner-city neighborhoods can contribute to positively to the physical environment, economic activity, educational opportunities, and social fabric of its community. Its example can be a spark for imagining other urban farming projects that could be implemented in underserved communities throughout the greater Chicago region — such as my hometown of Joliet, IL, located 40 miles southwest of Chicago’s Loop.

Vermiculture compost bins inside a greenhouse at Growing Power
The production of compost at Growing Power's 2-acre site is incredible; we called this pile "Mount Compost"
Our group from Roosevelt University and the Chicago Lights Urban Farm

Gardening for Life: Lessons from Hufford Jr. High

I’ve met Doris Hamm only once, but she’s already one of my heroes. She’s started something here in Joliet that’s going to change the world, one school and one kid at a time.

Hamm is a teacher’s assistant at Joliet’s Hufford Junior High School in Darren Raichart’s “Life Skills” class for cognitively-challenged students. She is the architect of a truly extraordinary project: a vegetable garden in Hufford’s courtyard run by her Life Skills students, who have fun getting dirty and learning hands-on gardening techniques, food preparation and cooking skills, and practical lessons in science, math, and economics.

Life Skills students in their courtyard garden at Hufford Jr. High School, Joliet IL (photo: IL District 86)

Hamm likens this sustainable experiential learning process to fishing. “It’s like the old Bible story goes,” she told me. “If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach them to fish, you feed them for a lifetime.”

Her students are eating it up. During my visit in the fall of 2009 to Hufford’s Life Skills classroom, the kids eagerly showed me pictures of their garden and told me about their experiences. Some struggled merely to say their names; but their enthusiasm for and knowledge about their garden was nothing short of phenomenal.

In the spring of 2009, the garden’s inaugural year, Hamm and her charges sowed $28 worth of vegetable seedlings. Their diverse array of crops included green beans, peas, tomatoes, broccoli, collard greens, cucumbers, peppers, onions, cabbage, and zucchini.

The kids tended their garden through the summer growing season by watering, pulling weeds, and harvesting food. Later, they used their vegetables in recipes and froze their excess bounty. When Thanksgiving, they cooked a feast made from the organic produce they grew, processed, and preserved themselves.

Hufford Life Skills students at their Fall 2009 farmers market in the school hallways (photo: IL District 86)

Most amazingly, the Life Skills students ran three farmer’s markets in the hallways of Hufford in the fall of 2009. Strategically timed for payday, the markets proved a huge hit among faculty and staff, and made over $300 collectively — a stunning 980% return on their initial investment. Green venture capitalists, take note!

This success has stoked great plans for coming years. Hamm and her student-gardeners hope to significantly expand their courtyard plot, dedicate part of their harvest to local charities, expand their farmer’s market operation, consider ways to supply the school cafeteria with fresh in-season vegetables, and include many more students in this incredible hands-on learning experience.

Based on what I’ve seen so far, I know they’ll make it happen. After all, they’re not just learning to plant seeds or pull weeds. They’re gardening for life.

This essay was originally published as an op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 5 November 2009. The Hufford courtyard garden has expanded as of March 2012, and the children there are busy planning their 2012 planting and growing season.

The garden project now involves several groups of kids from this urban middle school of almost 1,100 students, including those in Hufford’s Independent Education magnet program as well as those with chronic behavior problems who are learning to work side-by-side with their peers in a peaceful and respectful manner and, in the process, forging friendships with their developmentally-disabled peers.

For more information about school gardens and improving school lunch programs, check out the Illinois Nutrition Education and Training Program.

Urban Agriculture in Joliet

The phrase “urban agriculture” might seem like an oxymoron. But this burgeoning social and economic movement is revolutionizing food production, land use, K-12 education, and community development in big cities like Chicago, Detroit, and Oakland. But smaller cities like my hometown of Joliet have an opportunity to vault to the vanguard of urban agricultural innovation, if they just seize the day.

This spring some of my Roosevelt University students and I work Wednesday afternoons at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm, a small but incredibly productive operation in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood on Chicago’s Near-North Side.

Chicago Lights Urban Farm (M. Bryson)

This half-acre oasis of green built atop an abandoned basketball court started as a community garden back in 2002. Now, the Chicago Lights staff, volunteers, and local youth interns produce over 100 kinds of vegetables each growing season from this hitherto derelict property.

The Cabrini-Green farm is thus a vital source of freshly grown, organic produce in a place where walking to the nearest supermarket can entail crossing a dangerous gang boundary. It’s also a training ground for local youth in need of practical job skills; a demonstration site for sustainable agricultural techniques; a place of peace in an area pockmarked by poverty and violence; and a means of reconnecting urban folk to the natural world.

The community garden created by Cool Joliet and the University of Saint Francis (M. Bryson)

Here in Joliet, various groups have jump-started impressive urban agriculture initiatives lately, including the Cool Joliet / USF community garden project on the near West Side, the Joliet Park District’s new organic community garden opening up on McDonough Street on the far West Side; and Pilcher Park’s community/school garden on the East Side.

One remarkable opportunity waiting to bloom sits smack dab in the city’s center: the huge vacant lot located just west of Joliet Township High School’s Central campus and east of Silver Cross Field. Formerly the site of Rendel’s auto-body repair shop, this expansive grassy parcel is now owned by the high school district and has a yet-to-be-determined destiny.

View of the vacant lot owned by JT Central, looking east from the western boundary of the lot toward the high school (M. Bryson)

The school district should think big about what this property could be. One ambitious but exciting option is to create an education-focused urban agriculture enterprise for JT Central students that could start small, but eventually scale up and diversify to achieve educational and social impacts that would be unprecedented within the greater Chicago region.

Imagine students, teachers, and staff just walking outside to the farm next door and doing meaningful physical work growing and harvesting organically produced food. Such projects could be fully integrated with the school’s science, social studies, phys ed, business and health curricula, so that students learn from the ground up the ecological, economic, and social benefits of urban agriculture. Imagine their fresh local produce being donated to local food pantries, sold by student entrepreneurs at the Joliet farmers market, and eaten by students in Central’s cafeteria.

I know — it sounds pretty far-fetched. But then again, is it any crazier than believing you can grow food on top of an old basketball court in Cabrini-Green?

This essay was published as “The Revolution of Urban Agriculture” in the 29 March 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. See more pictures of Joliet Central’s open space and the Cool Joliet / USF community garden. Read about the High School for Public Service Youth Farm in Brooklyn, NY, which began in 2010 as a partnership with the nonprofit urban ag organization, bk farmyards.

The Peotone Airport’s Ongoing Tragicomedy

Thank goodness for the intransigence and political buffoonery of our Illinois public officials. Without their ceaseless bickering, the ill-fated and monumentally stupid Great Imaginary Airport project envisioned near Peotone might actually get off the ground.

As it is, the GIA — known variously as the South Suburban Airport (its IDOT-sanctioned title) and the Abraham Lincoln National Airport (Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s grandiose appellation) — exists only in the misguided minds of transportation technocrats and Pollyannaish politicians.

Farmland near Peotone, IL -- the proposed site of the Great Imaginary Airport (photo: Chicago Tribune)

This bizarre state of affairs stems, in part, from our elected leaders having serious control issues. Ever since I began writing about the GIA fiasco in 2007, debate has raged about who gets to sit on the airport’s board, what to call the facility (see above), and which paint colors should adorn the terminal’s bathroom walls.

What gets overlooked in this petty drama are two things far more important and disturbing: (1) the grand fiscal folly of a bankrupt state spending untold millions to construct an airport 40 miles from Chicago’s Loop that no commercial airline wants; and (2) the grotesque social injustice of government land grabs perpetrated against law-abiding, tax-paying rural landowners within the phantom airport’s ghostly footprint.

The GIA is so far from physical realization that even its most ardent supporters have no idea when it might actually be built. Due to the project’s incompetent political sponsorship thus far, final FAA approval is probably still years away and far from guaranteed. At least I hope so.

Despite those damning facts — and the stark economic reality that Illinois is billions of dollars in the red and cannot even pay its regular bills as required by law — Governor Quinn continues to pledge $100 million of state money for additional land acquisition for the GIA.

That’s not counting the money we’ve already blown. To date, IDOT has spent $34,014,383 and change (of taxpayer funds) acquiring 2,471 acres of prime Will County farmland surrounded by the small towns of Peotone, Beecher, and Monee. But since thousands of acres remain in private hands within the GIA’s footprint, and with land prices at historic lows, IDOT officials have stepped up the pressure on unwilling sellers by commencing formal condemnation proceedings.

Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt at their home outside of Beecher, IL, where they've lived for 50 years (photo: David Pierini/Chicago Tribune)

This means that folks like Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt, who had hoped to retire on their farm near Beecher as they enter their sunset years, are being taken to court and will have their land condemned. What the State wants, the State gets.

“We got the letter sometime late in the fall,” Vivian told me the other day after I gave her a call. “I’ve no doubt in my mind the state will take our land. There’s nothing we can do. It’s just a matter of time now.”

I asked Vivian how people in Beecher felt about the GIA. “Some support it, because they think it will be an economic boost,” she admitted. “But a lot oppose it. The community is split, I suppose. And the thing is, most people can’t even think about it anymore. They’ve had the airport hanging over their heads for so long, they seem to have become numb.”

I ask you this: why is Illinois spending millions of dollars it doesn’t have to take citizens like the Bramstaedts to court and condemn their property? How can such a thing be tolerated by my fellow citizens in the Land of Lincoln? And why don’t any of our elected representatives have the backbone to stand up and state the truth about the monumental waste and injustice of Peotone’s Great Imaginary Airport?

A version of this essay appears as my monthly op-ed column (“Great Imaginary Airport a Boondoggle for Illinois“) in the 23 Feb 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For information about the airport’s plan, land acquisition data, maps, documents for FAA reviews, etc., see the official IDOT website.

And for additional commentary, check out my previous columns from the Herald-News about the Peotone Airport archived on this site.

The Airport that Just Won’t Die

Like a cold sore or a nasty case of bronchitis, the Great Imaginary Airport near Peotone just won’t go away. Not even with a prescription.

After many months of keeping a low profile, the Illinois Department of Transportation made a news splash in the summer of 2010 by releasing a 194-page report about its pet project to the FAA. It contains numerous rosy projections about future passenger and freight traffic demands meant to justify the airport’s construction.

Buried within its reams of statistics and turgid technical prose, however, was this telling passage on page 10: “The current economic downtown, the most serious since the Great Depression, is a challenge to the aviation industry.  . . . This forecast environment is precarious and it justifies caution in revisiting the assumptions and forecasts for an airport, particularly a new one.” No kidding!

What’s really “precarious,” though, is the state’s ethical position in using any means necessary to acquire private property for the initial build-out of an airport that may never be approved, let alone completed. And with Illinois billions of dollars in the red, it makes zero sense to throw hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars away on such a pathetically misguided boondoggle.

Yet that’s precisely what we’re doing. Ever since IDOT was given the power of eminent domain by the state in 2002, it’s been buying up land in the imaginary airport’s footprint as fast as an Illinois hog gulping his slops. As of July 2010, nearly $33 million have been spent acquiring 2,429 acres of land from (mostly) willing sellers.

Now, with the price of land bottoming out, IDOT is flexing its muscles to begin eminent domain proceedings against citizens with no interest in selling, like Willis and Vivian Bramstaedt, an elderly couple who had intended to retire on their Beecher property.

The Bramstaedts and others are in a real pickle: if they cave in to IDOT’s pressure to sell, they’re going to get far less for their property than they would’ve a few years ago. If they refuse to deal, they’ll have to wage a hopelessly expensive court fight against the state’s condemnation proceedings .

This situation is beyond grotesque. Surely the naked exercise of power in wresting land from law-abiding rural citizens against their will for a project of dubious merit is unjust. The fact that it is permissible under state law does not make it right.

Let’s call it for what it is, then: highway robbery.

This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 8 July 2010. It was the fourth in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois.

As of Dec. 31, 2010, the State continued to earmark millions of dollars for the purchase of land in the Peotone area, and IDOT has submitted more documents to the FAA for that agency’s review. The latter still had not approved the airport project.

Will the Peotone Airport Ever Fly? Let’s Hope Not

This is a tale of two airports — one real, the other imaginary — located in the peaceful Will County countryside near the small town of Peotone.

The real one used to be an obscure outpost called Sanger Field. It’s now widely known as Bult Field after being purchased in 2006 by Jim Bult, a Monee businessman who named the airport after himself, which I think is fine.

Jim Bult, left, at his airport near Monee, IL, c. 2007 (photo: Schwiess Doors, Inc)

The imaginary one doesn’t have an official name yet, because it doesn’t exist except in the minds of state planners and local politicians, who insist that the phantom airport will be the greatest economic engine the south suburbs have ever seen. It does have several candidates for names, though, including the geographically precise South Suburban Airport; the historically pretentious Abraham Lincoln National Airport; and the delightfully mysterious Great Imaginary Airport (GIA), which I made up.

Bult Field near Monee, IL (photo: FlightAware)

Jim Bult has invested a lot of his own money, $37 million, in Bult Field because, as he told the Herald News in 2009, “I just want a quality runway and hangar here.” As far as I know, Mr. Bult has not asked Illinois taxpayers to subsidize his airport project or future planned upgrades.

In contrast, George Ryan (former Illinois governor and convicted criminal) and Rod Blagojevich (recently impeached Illinois governor and currently under indictment for crimes too numerous to list here) have spent $24 million of taxpayer money to purchase 1,951 acres of land (as of April 2009) and millions more on environmental impact statements, engineering studies, and marketing efforts for an airport that doesn’t exist.

The irony of all this? The real airport, Bult Field, sits right next to where the GIA might someday be; so close, in fact, that the state will probably have to buy Mr. Bult out to avoid airspace conflicts and otherwise looking extremely silly. That’s OK, though, because our current governor, Pat Quinn, recently pledged to spend $100 million (of taxpayer money, I assume) to acquire 3,275 more acres of prime Will County farmland for the project.

Um, I’m a little confused. Isn’t our state billions of dollars in the red? Is it wise to spend $100 million acquiring land for an airport that may never be built, when one right next door, a private airport financed by one man, already exists?

With entertainment like this, who needs to go to the movies? Just head out toward Peotone, and watch the Tale of Two Airports unfold.

This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 9 April 2009. It was the third in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois. For a map of the Peotone Airport land area that shows the location of Bult Field within the GIA’s footprint, check out the link below.

Peotone Airport Land Acquisition Status Map – Feb 2012 (pdf)

The Peotone Airport: Grab Land First, Ask Later

The ongoing follies in the Peotone Airport Saga have critics cheering and supporters groaning.

IDOT and Governor Blagojevich submitted two plans for Peotone to the FAA for review, hoping that one would be approved. This cover-all-the-bases approach incorporated the competing visions of the airport’s Congressional cheerleaders, Jerry Weller (remember him?) and Jesse Jackson, Jr., who disagree on everything from the facility’s name to the bathroom colors.

The people at the FAA sighed, shook their heads, and sent back the proposals stamped “Make Up Your Minds,” thus creating a potential delay of months, if not years, for the necessary federal go-ahead.

But this comical news has overshadowed a downright sober issue: government-sponsored intimidation of law-abiding citizens in eastern Will County who own land in the path of the bulldozers. So far, the state has spent over 23 million taxpayer dollars purchasing about 1,900 acres of land northeast of Peotone.

After getting scolded for making aggressive phone calls to owners of the remaining 2,200 acres needed for the initial build-out, IDOT has been sending letters to landowners making it clear — in a friendly, nice-guy, Midwestern kind of way — that if they can’t reach settlement on terms of sale, the government will proceed with condemnation.

That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, a wasteful, sprawling, ugly, polluting, and congestion-causing airport over 40 miles from downtown Chicago that no major airline wants is a lot more important than prime Illinois farmland, a quiet rural landscape, clean air, open space, county fairs, and the rights of individual landowners. That’s Progress in action!

Still, something just sticks in my craw about that 23 million bucks IDOT diligently has spent acquiring land. Haven’t they gotten a little ahead of themselves?

Is it just me, or have others noticed that the people in charge still haven’t decided on an official plan for the airport; still haven’t received FAA approval for that plan; still haven’t stopped arguing over who’s going to control the airport; still haven’t finished the required environmental impact studies; still haven’t gotten the backing of a single major airline; and . . . well, I hardly need go on.

Since when is it OK to take first and ask permission later? I guess things just work differently in the hallowed halls of Springfield. All I know is, that approach doesn’t jibe with my old-school Joliet upbringing. If as a teenager I had taken out my dad’s cherished ’65 Chevy for a night on the town without asking him first, well . . . you probably can imagine the unpleasant consequences. So where do our elected leaders and transportation bureaucrats get off?

Jerry, Jesse, Rod, and all your IDOT cronies — you, and this whole shameful Peotone airport fiasco, should be grounded.

This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 19 February 2007. It was the first in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois.

Student Initiatives in Sustainable Agriculture Conference (March 31-April 1)

Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin, will host a student-focused conference on sustainable agriculture on March 31 and April 1, 2012. One of the keynote speakers is John Ikerd, a noted author and longtime advocate of sustainable farming; I’ve assigned some of his writings in my SUST and PLS classes.

See this post on the Schaumburg’s Sustainable Future blog for more details on the conference and how to register. It’s cheap ($30) and includes food and lodging. Very cool stuff is on the conference slate for people interested in community/college gardens and farms, sustainable agriculture, etc.