Wetlands still issue for fair

E-mail this story

Print this story

Share

By KEVIN P. CRAVER kcraver@nwherald.com

WOODSTOCK - The Army Corps of Engineers has asked the McHenry County Fair Board to cede control of wetlands mistakenly covered with construction soil to a land conservancy.

The corps wants the Land Conservancy of McHenry County to oversee and maintain 7 acres of the Country Club Road fairgrounds identified as wetlands, said Mike Machalek, corps senior enforcement officer. Workers on the neighboring Jewel-Osco shopping center dumped about 8,000 cubic yards of soil on 2 acres of the wetlands last year.

The corps also wants the fair board to pay about $7,500 to the conservancy to maintain the wetlands and finance any further remediation.

Fair officials are unsure whether they want to take that step, especially with a contract in the works to sell the 60-acre fairgrounds to Rubloff Development of Rockford for about $6.9 million. Fair representatives plan to meet with the corps this week.

"That's what they [the corps] would like to see as a way to resolve this," fair board President Richard Crone said.

"That's their desire to have that become a conservation area. As I understand it, [the land conservancy] would provide another layer of protection to ensure it remains wholly wetlands."

A tip led federal investigators to the site in September, where they determined that Hummel Excavating was dumping soil onto wetlands.

Former fair board President Larry Eddy, who said his maps identified the land as farmland, despite cattails and other wetland plants, said a groundskeeper gave Hummel authority to dump on the site.

The board received notice Nov. 4 from the corps, threatening fines and legal action unless the site was restored.

Members quickly hired Excavating Concepts of Woodstock to remove the soil for about $16,000, or $2 a cubic yard.

Although Rubloff would own the wetlands, a conservation easement would prevent it from being developed, conservancy Executive Director Lisa Haderlein said.

The conservancy, founded in 1991, holds 16 such easements in McHenry County, totaling 260 acres.

"We have easements in subdivisions and private land," Haderlein said. "We've never done anything like this as a result of an enforcement action."

The corps' Machalek said $5,000 of the fair board's money would finance long-term maintenance of the site. The remaining $2,500 would cover any remediation work still needed, and any money left when work is finished would be refunded to the fair board.

The corps plans regular inspections of the fairgrounds to ensure that no seeds of invasive species in the dumped soil take root in the wetlands.

"Now we're going to see what comes up, but we'll have that $2,500 sitting in an escrow account managed by the McHenry County Land Conservancy," Machalek said.

Crone said Rubloff is aware of the wetlands situation. Rubloff Vice President Robert Brownson could not be reached for comment Thursday or Friday.

This year's Aug. 4 to 8 fair will be at the fairgrounds, but fair officials want to relocate by 2005, citing traffic problems and development surrounding the property.

The board has narrowed the search for the fair's new home to two sites - 131 acres at Route 14 and Rose Farm Road in Woodstock, and 106 acres on McGuire Road east of Harvard.

Machalek also has asked the fair board to remediate about one-third of an acre of wetlands used as a dumping site by the McHenry County Highway Department, which used to have its headquarters on what now is the Jewel-Osco site.

The fair board's wetlands area is part of more than 20 acres of wetlands south of Route 120 that is connected by drainage pipes to a 50-acre wetlands area north of the road, Machalek said. Wetlands are protected because of their ability to retain and purify stormwater, and their role as a habitat for plant and animal life.

Filling in or altering wetlands must be authorized by the corps of engineers.