Imagine McHenry County: Talking about Walking

Imagine a place where people can walk to the neighborhood store to get a carton of milk. A place where many kids can walk to school, walk to the pool, walk to the library. A place where folks walk to the bank, walk to the train, and even walk to work.

Okay, all this thinking about walking everywhere is making me tired! But, in a way, that's the point. Walking is exercise - and I know just one person who doesn't need more exercise! In other words, we can all do with a bit more walking in our daily lives.

Well, one of the interesting things that emerged from the Imagine McHenry County survey and public forum last year was that people want walkable communities. Sixty-three percent of people who attended the public forum thought it was very important to give people more transportations options, including to make communities more "walkable."

This notion actually correlates with another item that was identified as important to local residents: the ease of getting around by car, with 67% of survey respondents saying that this is important to them. Additionally, 82% of survey respondents thought it was going to be a big challenge in the future to have a county where it is easy to get around by car.

While some folks in some places seem to think that the answer to traffic problems is more and wider roads, it seems to me that more people are realizing that this old-fashioned idea of walking might be part of the answer. Again, 63% of the people at the IMC public forum thought it was important to create more options for moving around the county, including designing more walkable communities.

It is a fact that there will never be enough money - local, state, and/or federal - to build the roads that people want. There isn't even enough funding to maintain the roads we have today! We need to find new ways of solving the traffic problem - we can't expect to just throw more money at it.

I'm working from home today while new windows are being installed upstairs. Mid-morning, I took a break to walk to the bank. Our bank is 5 blocks away, and on my way there, I passed a grammar school, the high school, a rental shop, and a gas station with a convenience store. It occurred to me that I actually live in a walkable part of Harvard.

Thinking a bit beyond my walk to the bank, it occurs to me that a drug store, a hardware store, a pizza parlor, a diner, an ice cream shop, our auto service station, as well as assorted other small businesses are all within eight blocks if I walk in the other direction. I don't have to get in the car to visit any of these places.

The sad fact is that I rarely walk to any of those places. I hop in the car. It is much quicker. And, on a different day, I might have driven the five blocks to the bank. But not today. Today, I noticed that the weather was beautiful (70s, low humidity), plus I wasn't in a hurry to go somewhere. So, today I walked.

And I'm glad I did. I learned something. Or remembered something that I knew once upon a time.

When I was a kid, I walked to and from school - grammar school and then high school. I walked to the corner drug store for candy (or sometimes to buy cigarettes for my parents, but that's another story). I walked to my friends' houses. I could even walk to the beach - it was about a mile away, but it was an easy walk. My brother walked to the local barber. There was even a toy store near the drug store, and we walked there. We walked to the train station to meet Dad when he came home from work. And he walked to the station in the morning to catch the train into the City.

I know what you are thinking, and I'm just not that old!

This walking was a part of life in many "inner ring" suburbs of Chicago just 30 years ago.

Maybe it's time we remember how to build our communities like that again?

TLC's Bleg?

Apparently, there is a new term emerging in "blog-dom." That term is "bleg," and it refers to people who ask for donations on their blogs.

Why would someone do that?

1. Well, if you are reading an organization's blog, then you must have some interest in what they are doing, so maybe you would be interested in financially supporting their work?

2. They need the funds, and they figure that some people might not know that there is an opportunity to help support the organization that they are reading about.

3. It can't hurt to ask, can it?

There is a rule in fundraising that most people do not give money to an organization unless they are asked to do so. There are exceptions, but I believe that rule holds true for most.

I can share an actual experience I had where I broke the rule. Nearly six years ago, I heard about an organization and decided I wanted to become a member. I talked to their sole staff person, and he gave me a brochure. But, the brochure had no information about joining, other than some general statement that people could support them by becoming members. So, I asked the staff person what the cost of membership was, and he wasn't sure - said he would get back to me. I then checked the website, and the membership categories were listed there, as was the mailing address, so I wrote a check for $20 and put it in the mail.

What organization was this?

The Land Foundation of McHenry County (now TLC)!

I recall this personal experience whenever we send out membership renewals, when we insert a giving envelope in the newsletter, and when we send out a special appeal towards the end of the year! You have to ask people for their support, or else how do they know that you need it?

Most people (not that I am saying YOU are "most people") would have quit after the staff person was unable to answer their question. Many others would not have tried to find the website! I'm not saying that I'm special, it's just that I'm probably more stubborn than most folks, so I kept trying until I figured it out! And then a year later, when I was the first full time Executive Director at TLC, I tried to make sure that none of our friends - or potential friends - were left wondering whether or not their support was needed!

So, if you are already a member, THANK YOU! Our members make it possible for TLC to accomplish the wonderful things we do! If you are not yet a member, please take a moment to join - we need you! Visit: http://www.conservemc.org/membership.htm

Food & the Environment

I am reading a Barbara Kingsolver book "Animal Vegetable Miracle" - her first non-fiction book. It's about her family's year of living as close to the land as they could - raising their own food, and making the decision to buy only local food (with a few exceptions like coffee, flour & chocolate).

I'm not far into the book yet, but I like what I have read.

The family decided to move from Arizona to the family farm in Virginia (in the Appalachians) - they had grown increasingly concerned that living in Tucson was unsustainable. Not only was their food imported from who knows where, but their water was brought in from the Colorado River - a River that supplies water to millions of people before reaching Mexico where it is little more than a brackish trickle. One alarming thing was when they were told by the local government not to use their tap water in fish tanks because it would kill the fish. Presumably, the problem was high mineral content not chemical pollution, but even so, I know that would give me pause. Another stunning fact was that the average product item in the grocery store has travelled 1500 miles. How else do you think we get tomatoes in January?

While reading along, a recent conversation with one of our board members came to mind. While talking with Haje Black, owner of Saulte! Farm & Vineyard in rural Woodstock, I said something about the price of organic produce being a deterrent for some folks. She quickly replied that the cost of one chemotherapy treatment is $25,000 - in other words, it's all about priorities.

Another recent news story also came to mind: the high rate of human food imports from China that are rejected by the FDA -- even though the FDA only inspects about 1% of shipments. Some of the items rejected in April included apple juice, apple concentrate and frozen fish (which was deemed "filthy").

To me, the lesson learned from the story was that other nations do not have to meet our standards for food products that they ship here. They can use chemicals that are banned in the US because they are known to cause cancer. We have no control over their production processes, so for instance, fish often contain high levels of antibiotics that are illegal here. Why? Because the fish are raised in such polluted waters that they are sick, and need the antibiotics (and anti-fungal) medication to live long enough to get to market.

Think about the recent tragedy where many family pets died after eating pet food that was manufactured with a contaminated ingredient shipped from China. They were deliberately adding an industrial chemical to a pet food ingredient to increase the protein content of the product to boost the sale price. We only found out because dogs and cats became ill and died.

So, where is this story leading? It leads me to one simple conclusion: buy local food. Know where your food comes from - not just the country of origin, but the actual farmer.

We do that with beef, buying what little beef we eat at the Woodstock Farmer's Market from Michele Aavang of Willow Lea Farm. Sure, it costs more, but I know that it doesn't have steroids or pesticides or hormones in it. I also know the cows are treated humanely. How do I know this? Because I know the farmer.

It's the same idea with the CSA farm share from Salute! (which should start in a couple of weeks). I know Haje. I have been to her farm and met Michelle the full-time farmer. I have toured the fields. There is no doubt in my mind that the produce we receive each week for 20 weeks (June-October) is fresh & organically raised.

There was a great statistic in Kingsolver's book: if everyone in America ate one meal a week that was comprised of all local ingredients, our nation would save millions of barrels of oil EACH WEEK! That's just from the reduced transportation of our food.

One meal a week. Any one meal. It could be breakfast on Wednesday!

Imagine & McEnvironmental Summit

I just realized why I haven't posted anything in two weeks. Every time I would open up the blog to start a new post, I would see the cute picture of the tiny toad, and think "how cute!" - then whatever I was going to write about would mysteriously evaporate from my brain!

We had a committee meeting outside on a picnic bench last night - it was very pleasant. We heard a couple of different frogs in the pond, or maybe it was a toad and a frog. The mosquitoes weren't bad until the sun set - which was when we promptly ended the meeting!

The committee - our Outreach Committee - had a couple of important issues to discuss:
1. what is the status of the Imagine McHenry County project, and
2. what is the purpose of our Outreach Committee! (The second item was resolved quickly, while the first prompted quite a bit of discussion!)

Imagine McHenry County, for those who do not already know, is a project that was started about four years ago by the McHenry County Economic Development Corporation (MCEDC) to bring stakeholders together from the many interest groups in the county for the purpose of developing a shared vision for the county's future. Imagine conducted a communitywide survey in March 2006, followed by a community workshop in May 2006. The results were compiled and circulated, presentations were given to community groups like the County Board and the Council of Governments, and then on May 8, 2007, the Imagine board held a strategic planning session to determine where we go from here.

Now, a little background: I tried for two years to get appointed to the Imagine board. The former director of the MCEDC fought my appointment as the representative for the "Environment" special interest group. She wouldn't even return my phone calls - not even when I offered to take her to lunch to get to know her, and to talk with her about Imagine! Well, in November 2004, I was finally appointed.

So, once the board positions were fille, we had to figure out what we were going to do. We had some meetings with Ron Thomas, former director of NIPC (Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission), who talked with us about a similar effort he had been involved in up in Racine Wisconsin before coming to NIPC. He also had information on other similar programs around the country.

The gist of all the programs was that they included diverse stakeholders in a project to promote quality of life in the community - in terms of affordable housing, environmental quality, open government, good schools, traffic congestion, air quality, etc. A common theme was that the projects sought to involve many people from the community in crafting a vision for where the community wanted to go, and then kept them engaged in working on figuring out how to get the community there. They were all grassroots in that they did not look to the powers that be for approval - rather they sought to reflect the community will, and to engage the community.

Well, this is where Imagine has had a hard time getting traction. While we gathered information through a survey, and held a community workshop, we did a horrible job of following up with the participants to share the results with them, and to keep them engaged. It has been a year since the community workshop, and I feel like the board is no closer to having a shared vision, or in knowing how to move forward.

In the meantime, while Imagine has been spinning its wheels, the McHenry County Environmental Summit has emerged to bring all of the county's environmental groups together. We met in March and May, and came up with an agenda. We even started a blog to help us share information with each other, and have created three subcommittees to work on an environmental scorecard, conservation ordinance development, and communication.

And it isn't like the people working on the Enviro Summit don't have other jobs - it isn't like we aren't squeezing this "one more thing" into already full lives. The big difference is that we have a shared passion - a shared commitment - reflected in the mission and principles that we are developing together. And we all genuinely believe that we can make a difference by working together - that rising waters float all boats, and that the community of enviro organizations is stronger when we unite around the things we can agree on.

Maybe that helps explain why Imagine has had such a hard time. What unites us? Why do we all sit at the table other than because we were asked (or in my case, pushed our way on)? The mission was written before anyone was asked to join the board. The composition of the board was determined by the MCEDC who then sought to control the board membership - to the point where some early appointees actually dropped off before they even had all of the positions (23 spots) filled.

I think there is a lesson to learn here.

TLC's land protection efforts continue

At the May 7th TLC board meeting, permanent protection will be granted to nearly 94 acres of McHenry County land! Both project have been in the works for a couple of years.

Dutch Creek Conservation Area, a 37.5 acre TLC easement at Dutch Creek Estates subdivision in Johnsburg adjoins property owned by MCCD and another Dutch Creek easement held by the District. The easement comes with a long-term management agreement for the wetlands, riparian area along Dutch Creek, and the upland buffer areas. Funding for the management will be paid through the Homeowner's Association.

Haligus Road Sedge Meadow (I just came up with the name), a 56.4 acre wetland and upland buffer area in Lakewood at the Woodland Hills subdivision will be preserved forever by TLC through a permanent conservation easement combined with a long-term management agreement that will be paid by the Homeowners' Association.

Dutch Creek is considered one of the highest quality headwater streams in the Chicago area. Uncommon fish species like the Orangethroat Darter and various types of minnows are found there. While the development will have road crossings at two creek branches, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Army Corps of Engineers, and US Environmental Protection Agency made sure that the construction of the road culverts would not disturb the fish during their spawning season which started about April 1.

The Haligus Road Sedge Meadow had not been thoroughly studied until a wetland delineation report was prepared for the subdivision proposal. With management, TLC expects to see this site flourish, much as the Prairie Ridge Fen in Woodstock dramatically rebounded over the last 10 years through our on-going management.

Both projects will provide excellent opportunities for local residents to experience what I like to call "Neighborhood Nature." Frogs, toads (like the baby American Toad in the above picture), turtles, and an abundance of birds will reside at and visit both sites. Dutch Creek will continue to provide a home for many uncommon fish species, and together, people and nature will thrive!

Cicadas (or is it locusts?) are coming!

There was an excellent article in the April 22nd Chicago Tribune Home & Garden section on the upcoming "invasion" by the 17-year periodic cicadas, brood XIII.

These red-eyed bugs were last seen in this area in 1990 - I lived in Vermont then, so do not remember that invasion, but I do remember the one prior - 1973. The noise. The bugs. The bulgy red eyes. The noise.

Well, they are set to return in late May. In 1990, they emerged on May 25th. Their emergence is triggered by their body temperature. Once they reach 64 degrees, they emerge from the soil and begin their brief above-ground lives!

Here is a link to Ms. Botts' blog Chicago Gardener: http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/chicago_gardener/2007/04/nymphs_no_probl.html

As she points out repeatedly, cicadas are not evil - they may have bulgy red eyes, and may fly into people sometimes, and may seem to be everywhere, and of course they make that noise, but they are not evil. The insects have just one purpose when they emerge - to mate with other cicadas. Once that is done, the females lay their eggs in tree branches, and then they all die off - leaving those cool-looking shells behind.

The only caution I have found is to cover newly planted shrubs and newly planted small trees with tulle (ballerina skirt netting), but only if you actually have cicadas in your neighborhood. If your neighborhood did not have them in 1990, you will not have them this year. And , if your subdivision was built since the cicadas last appearance, you likely will not have them because the soil that the nymphs were living in is now gone.

So, if you are a light sleeper, buy some ear plugs, but otherwise, just sit back and enjoy this marvel of nature - years from now you will be talking about where you were during the 2007 cicada invasion!

Here is a link to another website: cicadamania that has links to a lot of cicada-related information. http://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/category/brood-xiii/

Mixed Election Results

Congratulations to MCCD for a big referendum win. The $73 million will help preserve about 4500 acres - just over 1% of the land in the county. Our community's future needs this, and so much more!

Nunda Township had mixed results - the open space plan passed by a good margin, but the funding to implement it appears to have failed by a couple dozen votes. I think this is the fault of the state statutes that dictate a rather onerous process for townships to establish and fund open space programs. The statutes require putting two questions forward, and even dictate the specific language that must be used.

I certainly hope the township goes for it again - they were so close, and despite what the local paper says, the township open space effort is not a duplication of services! Most of the township is not covered by a park district, and the parcels targeted for purchase (about 700 acres) will never be protected by MCCD. Here's to a successful vote next time!

The Water Authority vote failed. Kudos to the folks who at least got the issue into the public arena. I suspect that not only did the big blue signs (that the Illinois Assn of Realtor's money paid for) have an impact, but the vote represents the lack of awareness among the populace that there even is a problem. As long as unlimited water comes magically out of the tap, I suspect that most folks won't even think about where the water comes from!

Sadly, TLC member Dorothy Otis lost her re-election bid for the Marengo City Council. She will be missed!

Finally, three more TLC members are now elected officials! Congratulations to Nancy Gonsiorek, Marty Sobczak and Michael Walkup on their recent election victories. Nancy, President of the Wildflower Preservation and Propagation Committee, was elected to her local school board, Marty, retired teacher, was elected to the Greenwood Village Board, and Michael, owner of Walkup Heritage Farm in Crystal Lake, was elected to the Crystal Lake Park Board.