I planted an oak day!

Fifteen bur oak seedlings were planted by six families at Queensbury Farm on May 24th as part of TLC's first annual "I planted an oak day". The day was an opportunity for local residents to have a hand in restoring oaks to the county's landscape.

One tree at a time, one acre at a time, one property at a time. 'Til one day, the County will be known as the place where oaks thrive!

The day was part of TLC's Project Quercus program to save, restore and replant the county's oak woodland resources.

Last year, the owner of Queensbury Farm placed a conservation easement on her entire 58 acres of land on Queen Anne Road. The Farm is like a blank slate that will be restored to wetland, prairie and savanna in the coming years.

The event raised about $150 for TLC's Third Generation Oak Fund.

Quiet No More

I want to share some facts about implementation of the County’s new Conservation Design Subdivision regulations.

Implementation is a joke.

The County staff are rapidly turning it into an ordinance to give developers the ability to dramatically increase density on sites, while virtually ignoring the natural resources, and mass grading the entire site (in at least some instances).

Oh, the problem isn’t the issue of “density bonuses” that some worried about, no, none of the projects that have been reviewed to date actually meet the standards for any bonuses, yet they are seeing density increases of 30-70%.

That’s right. How about a development that was previously platted with 60 1-acre homesites that is now winding its way through the approval process to resubdivide so to have 103 one-third acre homesites! Yep, that’s right, a 70% increase in the number of homes that will be built – a 70% increase in traffic, a 70% increase in spray-irrigated sewage, etc etc.

And to boot, they are mass grading the entire site – you can drive by it right now on Church Road in Coral Township.

And now there are folks who would like to submit the County’s ordinance for awards, and to highlight the “success” at the regional level. I am outraged.

There was a point in the conversation about the new ordinance where I encouraged people to support this step by the county board, thinking (naively) that perhaps with such a clear policy direction as is written into the ordinance, that surely, the staff couldn’t get away with screwing this one up too.

Well, I was wrong, and I am not afraid to admit it, and had I known then what I am seeing now, I would have fought adoption of the ordinance.

To the County Board’s credit, I do not believe that the majority of them are even aware of what the staff are doing to completely disregard the intent of the ordinance. They are not likely to realize what is taking place until the staff have moved enough “lots and lots of small lots” style projects through the pipeline, that an effective precedent has been set, and the County Boards’ hands will be tied.

I lay this travesty at the feet of the County staff – who work for the County Board – and I will be expressing that to the County Board at their meeting tonight. Something has to change, and soon.

It is time for those of us who care to speak up. There is so much at stake, and we need to remind the county board that there are a lot of people who care about the county and that we are looking to them for strong leadership.

The list of public abuses and failures is long when it comes to the Planning & Development Department – in just the last few years, I've seen them waste $400,000 on the failed 2020 plan, publicly attack volunteer planning commission members and the public during the 2030 planning process, fail to enforce the 4-year-old stormwater ordinance (have you driven by the intersection of Route 176 and Ballard Road?), and tell landowners that the motocross track operating in your back yard (ruining property values and threatening sanity) is permitted in the agricultural district! The list is long…

This is our county too, and I am sick & tired of watching a small group of people trying to destroy it.

Ephemeral Ponds

On April 19th, Mike Redmer from the US Fish & Wildlife Service gave a tour of ephemeral ponds in the High Point area of Alden Township to a group of about 15 local residents.

Mike slogged through several seasonal ponds in his wading boots, pulling frogs, salamanders, aquatic insects and other tiny critters out for the group to see. He has a magical ability to find these often "invisible" residents of the spring ponds.

Ephemeral ponds are those that do not hold water throughout the year, but are typically only flooded in the spring due to the winter snow melt and the spring rains that cause the ground to be saturated. The ponds exist long enough for frogs and other small animals to emerge, but then disappear as the ground dries up.

These small, fleeting spots play a critical role in the lifecycle of these aquatic animals, but they are not very well understood by most people. The Alden High Point area is one of the richest regions in all Chicagoland for these ephemeral ponds, and so provides a critical habitat area for frogs, turtles and salamanders.

The last photo shows three salamanders that Mike fished out of a window well near one of the areas that the group explored. He commented that salamanders often fall into uncovered window wells, and die because they cannot climb back out.

The Ephemeral Ponds program was held as part of a series of three landowner educational programs that TLC is offering this year in the Alden Township area. There will be a second program on May 12th covering headwater streams, springs and seeps and led by Cindy Skrukrud from the Sierra Club. The final program in the series will take residents on a tour of oak woodlands in the Alden area in June.