2030 Land Use Plan Vote Tuesday

Tuesday night at 7pm, the McHenry County Board will meet to vote on the proposed 2030 Land Use Plan that has been 3 years in the making.

In the last few days, several people have asked me my opinion on the plan. Let me sum it up this way:

I think the plan should show all undeveloped and unincorporated areas west of Route 47 as farmland or environmental resources. I have several reasons for favoring this approach:

1. It puts the County clearly in the position of supporting farmland and groundwater protection - resources that will benefit all county residents.

2. It sends a message to municipalities that the County is going to stop approving developments in the unincorporated areas of the County - this type of development is more expensive to all county residents (more expensive for the schools, more expensive for emergency responders, more expensive to maintain the extra roads, etc etc).

3. It puts the County in the best possible position to start working collaboratively with municipalities on Intergovernmental matters such as groundwater protection, fuding for road maintenance, and even future growth boundaries to ensure the land and water resources available are used in a sustainable way that benefits all residents -- today and in the future.

I believe recent news articles support this approach:

• Agritourism grows in County (without farmland, we have no agritourism, and it is big business!)


• Fire Destroys home in unincorporated area north of Crystal Lake (because the home was in an unincorporated area without fire hydrants, tankers full of water had to be brought in by departments from McHenry and Lake county communities to fight the fire)


• Industrial Solvent present in local water supplies (article is archived since it's from December 2009) - notices were sent out to residents in Crystal Lake and Fox River Grove letting them know that levels of Trichloroethylene (TCE) in the local water supplies are at half the legal limit.

Think about it, as currently drafted, the plan purports to encourage future development to occur in or adjacent to existing municipalities -- a style of development known as "compact and contiguous." Yet, the plan shows vast areas of unincorporated land as being developed for commercial, industrial or residential uses in the future, BUT it has NO requirement that the development occur only through municipal annexation.

What this means is that a developer can use the plan to gain approval of a project that is NOT compact or contiguous, but is consistent with the plan map. And there isn't much the county board can do to stop them if the project is consistent with the map.

Take a look at the map, especially the area by Marengo and Union. The purple areas are proposed Commercial/Office/Research/Industrial areas and the yellow parts are planned for rural residential development. Thousands of acres of each use on land that is currently farmed. Thousands of acres underlain with groundwater that is highly vulnerable to pollution.

I repeat: I think the plan should show all undeveloped and unincorporated areas west of Route 47 as farmland or environmental resources. Someone suggested to me that this would be the absence of a plan, but I strongly disagree with that notion.

To plan for farmland and enviornmental resources in the unincorporated areas does nothing to stop municipalities from annexing land for development.

The best way to make it clear that the County is serious about wanting future development to occur in municipalities, to protect precious groundwater resources and to ensure there is a thriving agricultural industry in the county in the future, is to have a County Land Use Plan (aka a plan for future development in unincorporated areas) that reflects what the County Board would actually approve in the unincorporated areas.

The next question is "What can we do?" The short answer is to call your county board members and tell them what you think before they vote Tuesday night.