Glad to see Jean and Ben will back for 4 more years. Joe please join them in fighting the good fight.
You really need to be admired as you have volunteered to spend every other Monday night with Sacchi, Shevitz, Reynolds and Gorman.
Riverside needs you in the fight against the Gang of 4.
Before anyone jumps on me I do realize that the RCA could not find anyone to run under their banner.
Another great old-tyme Riverside election where one party of candidates run unopposed. Out of 5900 registered voters 2600 entered the voting booths, and each of the three candidates got about 1900 votes, which means that 700 people chose not to vote for anyone on the ballot. And turnout was less than 50% of the registered voters. I note that all these candidates drew more than twice the umber of votes than the retiring Trustee got in his last unopposed run, and more than all the candidates did previously (I think) in the last election. I suspect turnout was related to the Dist 208 referendum. It wasn't much of a contest, but anyway, this time there won't be any losers to whine and complain.
I congratulate all the candidates and hope they will get off their chairs and question and challenge and argue and propose and look for better ways to do things. I'm sorry they were unopposed because my dog missed the signs and campaigning.
And congrats to Michael O'Brien on his election to Dist 96. - even without the Landmark endorsement.
Spatny, Was it not you who said "the past is prologue"? Here's a link to an article that was in the Landmark back in December
http://www.rblandmark.com/main.asp?Search=1&ArticleID=6913&SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&S=1
The best is when Shevitz stated
"RCA had discussions with several residents about the possibility of running for village board," the statement read. "For most, the time commitment involved to serve was a major concern and was the main factor in RCA's and potential candidates' decisions, as it is a significant commitment for those with professional and family obligations."
I'm starting to think that the RCA is a one trick pony.
I happen to prefer contested elections. I like the idea that people can be asked where they stand on an issue and not just get elected by one vote when running unopposed. It is my personal view that after the Rec Board brouhaha nobody wanted to sign up and run for anything. Much that was said on that issue turned out to be wrong or misleading. I think it is running fine now with its budget, a director, assistant, and a commission. I think it's cleaner, but I personally would not have made that the big issue of the past two years - I think the potentials for problems with the dam removal far outweigh any other issue currently around. I suspect people rose up against the D 208 referendum because that looked like more money out of their pockets in very tough times.
I only voted for one person in the election yesterday, Joe Ballerine, because he didn't vote for this Dam Removal project and told me he wanted it to be looked at more closely. All the sitting trustees voted for it and I won't support anyone who did that. Anyone. I have written many letters and asked a lot of what I feel are important questions about this pending project because I see real dangers in it that have been ignored or passed by. For instance: I wrote this today to the Olmsted Society house Mission Statement suggests they are favor of preserving Riverside's heritage.
"You need to correlate the new "50% Plan" with the old. It is all one project, one plan with three features in Riverside and one upriver, and it was the old "Final and Approved" plan that was vetted - supposedly - by the Village and the Commissions. That's the only one that anyone ever saw until this came out, and it wasn't finished. As it was never finished the Corps now calls it "preliminary", so it can't be used to grant the easement. In asking for that resolution to grant the easement Gorman stated that the plan was complete, yet we now see the plan is only at the 50% stage. It is illegal to proceed on this basis.
The dam side cuts are shown at 37.5 feet, and the transition cuts, at one to one, will be about five feet - covering in total about 236 feet of the 258 foot dam.
The original plan called out 21,000 cu yds of contaminated sediment above Hofmann, and removing 3,000 cu yds by excavation before breaching the dam. I queried a Corps engineer about the new plan and got this reply:
I wrote: "I read through the proposal and see that it still calls for removing and
dewatering 3000 cu. yds of sediment from the first hundred feet behind the
dam prior to dam removal. How is that to be accomplished? I assume it will
be some kind of suction device working over the dam and spilling it into
dewatering containers down below the dam that are then craned out, or hauled
out by trucks via the FP staging site. Is that correct? In the cost
breakdown I didn't see any space for that bid, or is it to be included in the
dam removal segment?
I noticed that the planting and stabilization area is now figured at a little
more than 5 acres, but before it was 8.8 acres, and that was when it was
proposed to work just 100-200 feet above the dam. Now it is longer, the "new
land" areas look to be much larger, yet the acreage is smaller. How is that
possible?
It appears that since the river above the dam has places where it will only
be 50 feet wide or less, and extends further upstream, the area should be
greater, not less. Also, if/when this happens, the banks of the river below
Hofmann and above Fairbank will be much more exposed, especially the south
bank which regularly floods, but I don't see any work called out for that
area. Is any work planned for there?
DS
He answered: "Recent surveys showed virtually no sediment accumulation upstream of the dam,
and that no sediment removal will be needed. Fines do accumulate upstream of
the dam during low flows but get washed out during storms. Additionally the
sediment in-channel is not the same as the contaminated sediment of the
banks."
What recent surveys? When? Where? By who? These guys - the Army Corps engineers - admitted at the November meeting when we argued about the dewatering containers on Fairbank Road they and their engineers had never been within 200 ft. of the dam as it was "too dangerous." There were - obviously - no no surveys conducted between November and now, so this is just BS, a flagrant case of moving the goal posts.
At the November meeting I specifically asked the Corps Project Manager about how many truckloads of clean fill it was going to take to cover the 8.8 acres of exposed sediment their plan at the time was going to produce, as pert the EPA rules. One of them piped up and said "they weren't going to do that anymore, they had another plan." That was when I got them to admit that the old plan was "preliminary." At that time there plan called for working 100-200 feet upriver and I kept telling them that was not enough, and then Arlen Juhl said "then we'll go 1000-2000 feet, whatever it takes." I told him how about 2.5 miles to the Golf Club and he just scoffed, but now you can see that the exposure above Salt Creek will be even more drastic than below. And they will do nothing about it.
The EPA requires them to cover contaminated sediment with 9" of clean fill. That's in the last report. When they were talking about working just 100-200 feet upriver they said it would result in 8.8 acres needing to be covered. Now the new plan covers about up to Metz or just short of Coonley Road, but the area is down to 5.5 acres - even though they are showing coming out over 200 feet from the south bank. How is this possible? Easy, you just say "there is no sediment" and then you don't have to cover it. But you still have to live here, and that stuff is ugly, sticky goop when wet and fine and talc like when dry. It will wash out and get on the banks to Swan Pond and below, and when it dries out it will blow all over hell and gone.
This is a pure "bait and switch." One of the reasons given for doing this project was to remove the sediment impounded above it, but that costs. So now there is phantom data to show it's not required. It is dangerous to proceed on this project until the plan is 100% completed and fully scrutinized. I cannot support anyone who acts otherwise. And why has the Village never answered any of my letters and/or addressed the issues I have raised. The meeting we had in November was a real dog and pony show where every hard question was answered with something akin to "Trust Us." That's not good enough.
King G -Past is Prologue. We nearly lost the Arcade through a precipitous action. I don't want to lose the river scape the same way. These were the approximate comments I gave at Monday night's Board Meeting, which was not televised live because of the change of venue. So I offer them here:
April 4, 2011
Good Evening Ladies and Gentlemen:
Tonight I want to inform those who are here and those at home about some aspects of the dam removal program of which you may be unaware.
I’ve scrutinized the revised 50% draft of the Hofmann Dam removal all 304 pages plus the drawings and ancillary documents, and made some calls and paid some visits because, when you look closely and ask questions and write e-mails and visit offices you learn something, and I would like to pass on what I’ve learned to the Board and to the residents who are going to be affected by this project. Not just during the three or more year construction period, but forever. Because that is what this will do - change Riverside FOREVER. What we are going to lose here we will never get back.
I’ve been working on a script, and watching some old movies, so I thought I’d call this report to the residents The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. Getting right to it...
THE GOOD is that the Army Corps now says if they go forward they will do the actual dam removal portion of this job from where I advocated back in September, from the south bank at the 39th Street Forest Preserve. That should keep hundreds of trucks and lots of heavy macinery off our streets. Lots, but not all. And of course, when I went to visit the FP District headquarters two weeks ago and talked with the man in charge of granting easements he told me he hadn’t seen or spoken with anyone from the Corps or IDNR about this project for more than six months - but perhaps they have the intention to do so.
One of their intentions is to remove whatever is left of the previous “legacy dam or dams as they call them that are up behind the present dam. This is important to remember - they still can’t define what is out there, so it means they haven’t been there to survey what is left. And I’ll tell you why that is important next.
THE BAD, as usual, is a little more complicated than the good. I call it The Case of the Missing Sediment. And that’s quite a feat to make that amount of this dreck disappear. You may remember that we were previously told that there were 21,000 cubic yards of contaminated sediment above the dam, and that the closest 3,000 cu. ids. or 15% of it would be excavated, dumped into denaturing containers, drained and hauled away., so that it wouldn’t wash out and lodge on the banks downstream.
Now 3,000yards is at least 300 heavy truckloads that previously were supposed to be loaded and dewatered above the dam n Fairbank Road, and sowhile I was happy to keep that work out of Riverside i Was curious as to how that would be done working from below, in the wet, so to speak. The contract calls for removing sediment before beginning the dam removal, but seing no reference to how that would be accomplished, I emailed one of the Corps engineers working on this project and got this surprising reply on 3/31, six weeks after the draft calling for the removal of 3,000 cubic yards of sediment was published online.
“Recent surveys showed virtually no sediment accumulation upstream of the dam, and that no sediment removal will be needed.”
Now wait a minute - one of the big reasons for removing this dam was because of all the contaminated stuff that had accumulated - so much that they were calling the river “dead” if I remember correctly. First, when I questioned these guys about why they were doing this crazy project it was because the fish wouldn’t like the contaminated PCB laden sediment, and now, suddenly, it’s not there. This latest draft containes pages of chemical analysis charts that says this poison is out there, and calls for removal of 3,000 cubic yards of it and the stabilization of the rest, and now suddenly it’s not there. And when were these proposed surveys done? The contract still calls for the chosen contractor to conduct a survey in ten foot squares for the first hunred feet above the dam to determine the amount, depth and location of the sediment there, and now, before that is done, they claim there is no sediment. Does anybody else whiff the faint aroma of performing seals here? Remember when I said going for the Little Dam first, and saying it was in Lyons was “bait and switch.” Well here we are again, with the same MO. And there’s more.
Back at the meeting in November I asked Mr. Juhl if he enjoyed his boat trip on the river to go out and see what remained of the old dam and he said they didn’t go out to survey the “legacy dam” because it was too dangerous to go near the present dam. In fact he admitted that none of the engineers had ever done any work closer than 200 feet of the dam. That was in November. No one has been out on the river since. So how is the sediment removal not necessary?
And even though I’ve been told that there is no sediment above the river I found this note on a drawing: “All newly exposed bank shall be planted and protected within one day of becoming exposed.” Now why do you suppose they specify that? Could it be that the contaminated sediment that is all over up there is as fine as talc, and when it dries it will blow everywhere? And what's going to happen up and down river where they aren’t doing any work andthis condition occurs?
Don’t forget - they still want three year easements for the parkland along Fairbank Road so they can create fenced areas for equipment and supplies and entry /exit to the river for what they call “Bank Access, Staging and Storage.” Inother words, dealing with the messy part of the job. So there will still be hundreds of truck and lots of mavinery and cars coming and going and tracking this goop all over town.
Folks, as it stands, they are going to proceed with whatever they think up and we won’t have anything to say about it unless we use the one tool we have left to halt this thing - the granting of the easement for the Little Dam. If we don’t act to stop this now we are in line for anything these guys want to do, any old job, anyway they see fit, because they will draw their contract between the Corps and the contractor, and we get whatever they want to do. We shouldn’t be letting people from somewhere else come into historic Riverside and do this kind of shuffle - remember we went for that once before with the Arcade and came close to losing it. Both dams are wholly within the Rivrside Historic Architectural District and integral features of that district as registered, and saying the Little Dam is in Lyons is bogus - it doesn’t touch Lyons anywhere. If they want to work at the Little Dam let them get there from the Forest Preserve - if they can do it for Hofmann they can do it for Fairbank Dam.
Now for THE UGLY - the REALLY UGLY is the outcome, the part that future generations will have to live with, with only old photos to show them what we once had here, the reason why there is a Riverside.
First, now the “notching” of the Hofmann Dam, which was previously 150 feet or 60%, is now extending an additional 37.5 feet on each side at half height, in effect altering 90% of the dam’s total length. The drawings they published show that these wings will still be there to catch trees and such at high water, but at low water or even at their “normal flow” the river will not even fill the center gap nor the central span of the Barrypoint Bridge.
Their “normal flow” drawings now show large areas - they say it is about 5.5 acres - that will be exposed immediately above the dam when the water level drops - perhaps 8-9 feet. This will create “new land” which is to be seeded and planted with native wetland plants - mostly grasses - because remember, these “new land” areas will still flood over when the river rises above 6-7 ft. on the gage. Today for instance, with the river at around 4 ft., they will be partially inundated. And since it won’t be all level, it will trap inaccessible pools of water that will provide for mosquito breeding.
For those who haven’t seen the latest drawings, let me describe what the river will look like if this project goes forward. Where the broad water is currently lagoon like just above the dam it is about 400 ft wide. When the dam is removed it will be receding to less than 50 ft. wide in some places. Their own drawings show it will be less than the width of this room. And since it will be - by their estimates - 3-7 feet lower, in the areas where these grasses don’t wash out you will hardly see it from Fairbank Road.
Upstream of about 280 Fairbank and all around to 31st Street, where they are not doing any work, you will have just what I forecast back in September, 30-40 ft. or wider debris-laden exposed mud banks on each side of the river - and that’s at what they call “Normal Flow.” We often have long periods, as we did this year, that are lower flow levels than that. The residents up along Maplewood can say “Bye-bye” to the river as we all know it.
And this project will extend right into the CBD, right outside here in the center of town, because the Swan Pond regrading will require the movement , by their own estimate, of almost 15,000 cubic yards of material - stone and topsoil and sod and seed and fertilizer and all the rest - coming right down here next to the library. That’s another 1500 big heavy truckloads rolling in and out along with all the rest of the equipment, workers cars, etc. And after all this the Swan Pond will still flood.
The way this program lays out is that first - soon - they will come in and tear up the park around the Little Dam and bang that out. Then they’ll go away. Next year will be the Big Dam, and all that mess, and no doubt the sediment that suddenly isn’t there spreading all along the banks and river bed down stream. Then there will be the replanting and, when that washes out, the replanting, etc., ad infinitem. Further north along the river, no planting, nothing except more responsibility for the Village. But don’t call them to come and fix anything - they won’t have any more money.
This project needs to be totally reevaluated. It is clear that it is no longer going to offer benefits that outweigh the risk and the yars of mess. Once the work begins on the Little Dam we will be locked into this whole, sorry project and totally in the dark as to the outcome. These people have never removed a dam in Illinois and have no outcome data to support their claims. We are letting them experiment iwth historic Riverside. Only by saying STOP!, now, can we avoid what will be a sorry outcome for the Village after enduring years of mess and chaos.
The Little Dam is useful as it is. It stops the invasive Zebra Mussels from going further upstream. It was built at an angle to direct water toward the Swan Pond in time of flood and thus help keep the inundation for our neighbors in Riverside Lawn to a minimum. It’s impoundment water slows the velocity of the river as it careens down toward Library Hill at times of flood. It is a place that is peaceful and where the sound of the water cascading, the heron fishing, the ducks quacking offers respite and masks the noise of the traffic from Ogden Avenue. It is a precious resource for people and animals of all kinds, this tiny, precious island of tranquility, just nine miles from the Sears Tower. Why do you want to destroy it?
There are so many questions yet unanswered. The project has changed so much, and so much potential harm and liability lies within it, that the village has ample grounds to rescind the easement that was precipitously granted back in September. At that time the excuse was that the plan was 100% finished, which it clearly is not. No one yet, after the expenditure of about $1.5 million can answer the questions I raise with anything better that “Trust Us.” That’s not good enough. That’s too dangerous for Riverside. Ladies and Gentlemen, it still is not too late to prevent this fiasco from altering Riverside forever. But you must act.
King G - next time you see a Riverside Police Officer take a look at the shoulder patches they wear, and use for the Department logo.
Don, I am sorry the RCA failed you yet again. You prefer contested elections and they failed to provide that. You want a deeper discussion on the Damn removal issue and they fail to give you that. Are you really going to keep backing them up? The Gang of Four just want you to get behind them, not get in front of them.
I oppose all who are putting the village in jeopardy - and I consider that this Board is - but that's my take, not perhaps anyone else's. I have a single issue quarrel with them. And I challenge them to answer my questions with factual answers, not "Trust Us." I don't trust them to handle the dam issue. Period. But I also don't share your views that they are evil, etc. The Rec Dept imbroglio was a tempest in a teapot from my perspective, a buch of people whining about the loss of their fiefdom - again my view. When they were offered a chance to be on the commission they decided instead to beat their drums - for nought. (This does not apply to Mr. Gangware - who's a good guy and I think had just had enough.) I defy anyone who was thumping the tub before November to show me where the Rec department was harmed.
I think this village had one-party rule/one view rule for far too long. Again that's just my personal view. But these are tough times and the Board faces tough decisions and a bleak outlook for improvement. I think people that are 50 today have no prospect of having the kind of opportunity to relax that I have had. And those kids I see out my window on the Hauser playground, I have no idea hat they will do. But I would always try to help them.
When I was going to RB we had seven policemen on the force, top to bottom. Now it's nineteen. That costs money, and in tough times people seem to demand more yet moan about paying for things, because, probably, some of them have bitten off more than they can chew and perhaps one in four is upside down.
The title of this thread is bogus. None of the winners were opposed. There were no opposing candidates of any stripe. So if only the candidates voted they could have won one-zip. What tells for me is that 700 people bothered to vote and didn't vote for them.
What it tells me and everyone else, is that the RCA is over. No one said they are "evil". Amateurs, complainers, second-guessers, and other things, but not evil.
It also tells me that even if 700 people did not vote for them, not one person could get scrounged up to run with the RCA brand. Reminds me of ValueJet, Milli Vanilli, and many of these pharmaceuticals that get recalled after the truth gets discovered. Too bad people had to find out the hard way.
Draw your own conclusions - I think you're reaching. I think you confuse this as some great opportunity. It's a thankless job. I predict that if any/all of the losers from last time run against them, should they decide to rerun, the same thing will happen. n my book they've done OK for tough times, we just differ on the dam issue
In my experience, while many people profess to be dissatisfied with government at all levels, they can't pick out anything concrete they would do better. If they don't screw up the dam deal I think they'll win again, if they run, if they aren't burnt out by all the carping. That's just my view, but I hear from perhaps a different group of people.
That would have to be a very different group of people you're hearing from. The gang of four are not going to run again. They got a dose of reality and its clear they are in way over their heads. They don't know what they're doing. Even two years later. Its not so easy to balance budgets and maintain certain levels of service. When are they going to get to the rip it all down- top to bottom -line by line audit? Any day now...
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