You don't have to rely on my imperfect note keeping at the LCTA Transportation summit last week for the results anymore, because I have a copy linked to this post here. I glanced at them and I was pretty close on all the important ones.
I was not going to post today because I was running late this morning, but as I drove to work and sat in traffic I noticed the sign indicating traffic information could be found at www.lakegov.info so when I got to work I went to the site and looked up the project at Fairfield and Gilmer (the one I was sitting at when I saw the sign) interesting site.
NOTE: This is a post that I ran last October about the Nippersink Forest Preserve Project, I have gotton a couple of questions about the project recently so I decided to repost it here. I would add that the proposed Synnesvedt project has a connection from the Millenium Trail to this park. One of my long range goals is to then get a crossing for 120 so we connect via a path to the homes on the south side of 120.
This is Round Lake’s 2006 CDBG (Community Development Block Grant) project. The Village received $77,500 in a grant from the federal government, administered by Lake County Community Development. It's a storm sewer/drainage project which includes approximately 1700 linear feet of road reconstruction, (curb and gutter and new pavement) taking place on Linden Drive and Sycamore Drive and some patching on Midland Drive between Linden and Sycamore and storm sewer throughout the project.
The trick or treat hours for Round Lake and the Round Lake Area will be Sunday, October 29, 2006 from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. We do this so kids can be out only when its light and parents are around and not at work. Safer! More light to see the candy, what a deal! Your village working for you! Just so you know this is what's left of Sean Gillette after I got finished with him last night in fantasy football, and since its Halloween like I thought it excellent to post here!
NOTE: This editorial was in yesterday's Daliy Herald and I thought was quite interesting and worth repeating. When I get some more time I am going to discuss this issue in a little more depth.Proponents would do well to avoid getting excited about any possibility of this project getting done in the near future. Why? Because the odds against such a development remain overwhelming.
Skeptics and outright opponents, meanwhile, would do well to realize that unless 53 is extended northward eventually, the idea will not simply fade. Why? Because Route 53 as now configured is the very definition of an unfinished project, a glaring impediment to moving north-south traffic effectively through northwest Cook and western Lake counties.
Route 53’s extension has been stalled for decades, blocked for a variety of reasons — some more legitimate than others, none as compelling as the reasons to build it. But its relegation to a dusty “someday in the distant future” file was further assured when the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, citing a lack of consensus among Lake County leaders, left it conspicuously off of its major redevelopment plan announced in 2004.
That’s about the time that Lake County leaders, stung by the criticism of their absent leadership on transportation issues, initiated a laudable drive to prioritize manageable and realistic proposals and to stand united in completing those projects. This process, culminated by an annual transportation summit, has spurred progress on such badly needed projects as a Route 120 bypass and the widening of Route 45. No one involved in this process expected 53 to appear on the agenda. With the toll authority rejecting it and the state having no money for freeways, there was no point wasting time even discussing such a large and expensive undertaking.
But Lake County residents, who know a traffic snarling point when they see it, mentioned Route 53 during public comment periods preceding last week’s annual summit. These public comments came just as state Sen. Jeff Schoenberg began talking about selling or leasing the tollway system. That idea — half-baked though it may be — has spawned hearings, serious debate and, of course, visions of a gold mine to be devoted on a long list of state needs, from pension funding to highway building.
Reasons abound to view a sale or lease skeptically, which does not mean that an administration and legislature desperate for cash won’t implement it anyway after the fall election. Even if they do, though, competing demands will be so intense that there is no good reason to expect that any or enough revenue would be earmarked for Route 53. Hence, the advice for proponents to keep near-term expectations low, very low.
The staunchest critics of the Route 53 extension fear the mere existence of tollway lease talk will breathe new life into an idea they want to kill. But the idea will not die because the extension offers benefits far too obvious. Some opponents argue environmental concerns, which could be addressed. Some argue that an extension would crowd traffic onto arterial roads throughout Lake County, as if scattering most of that traffic throughout Lake County and moving some of it on toward Wisconsin more effectively would be more onerous than the current 53 configuration dumping all of its traffic onto such roads as Dundee, Lake Cook and Routes 12 and 83.
A more legitimate concern is raised by those who worry that injecting Route 53 into the summit process now could siphon time, energy and attention from affordable and doable improvements to arterial roads and innovations that will improve traffic flow now. That would be an unfortunate result. But there’s no serious sign of that occurring. Yes, a majority of participants in last week’s summit voiced support for extending 53, but only on the explicit conditions that it not drain money from smaller projects on the drawing board that no serious planning be done unless, somehow, sufficient money shows up.
Under those conditions, why not reaffirm long-term interest in 53?
Today's matchups in the elite Mayoral Invitational Fantasy Football League are as follows.
NOTE: This appeared in the letters to the editor in todays Daily Herald. I would love to hear some feedback on the comments section. More then likely I will respond with a counter letter refuting some of the obvious inaccuracies. Act now to block Route 53, again
Recent events should raise the fears of concerned Lake County residents that recent efforts to “improve” Route 120 have been a ruse to revive the moribund Route 53 extension.
The current plan for Route 120 is essentially the east-west segment of that failed effort. The Route 53 plan failed because it did not address the transportation patterns of the impacted areas of our county very well, and was outrageously expensive.
For decades, the battle over Route 53 has sapped the money and efforts that could have been used to progressively improve the key arterial roads in our county. That is what transportation experts have repeatedly concluded needs to be improved to handle the current and expected traffic flows. Put simply, wasted efforts to force Route 53 through Lake County are why the county’s roads are in the mess they are in now.
At the Sept. 20 transportation summit, your elected officials got the opportunity to “vote” to put Route 53 back on the county’s transportation agenda. This year’s “vote” had the same odor as last year’s rigged vote. The 2005 summit organizers put Route 120 as the lone project in one of five categories, allowing the proponents of a six lane superhighway to make the claim that there was “consensus” that the project should be funded.
Several concerned Lake County residents have been keeping tabs on the Corridor Planning Council as they clumsily disregarded Illinois’ Open Meetings Act requirements such as announcing meeting subjects and locations in advance. CPC leader Bill Gentes even announced that the recent $2 million grant obtained through the efforts of Rep. Melissa Bean would be used to fund Stage 1 Engineering for his pet plan. But doesn’t this skip the legally mandated Feasibility Study and Environmental Impact Statement?
They may seem inconvenient when you are convinced that your plan is the only desirable one, or perhaps when you think nobody is watching.
Or maybe they would highlight the fact that a boulevard alternative proposed by leading planners would handle expected the traffic flow at a lower cost, and without destroying some environmental treasures, and creating a concrete barricade across affected neighborhoods.
Now their true plan is out of the closet. The people who want a plan that will genuinely benefit the area’s current and future residents will now have to swing into damage control.
The momentum that had been started is in danger of grinding into the gridlock of the false choice of Route 53 or nothing.
Contact your municipal, township, county, and state representatives now and tell them that we are tired of this stalemate. Tell them to take 53 off the table now, before the damage multiplies. Your legislators may be red-faced as they realize they were duped, or worse, that their scam has been exposed. But better that they are embarrassed than us all having to endure another 15 or more years of stagnant investment into our transportation infrastructure.
Ted Lazakis
Long Grove
Today is my birthday, I have been told it happens once a year! The picture captures me at my finest in mayoral excellence! Sound asleep, plotting evil on Volo, whipping the other 9 chumps in the Mayoral fantasy football league, mayhem on assorted trustee's, paving over the anti 120 forces all at the same time!
The Village sponsors many things, among the recent things we sponsored is the Grant Township 5K Field of Dreams race. As a perk of sponsorship they sent me an extra shirt. Its a white XL T-shirt with the race logo on it, and the sponsors in back. I got one for my plodding finish in the race 49th out of 120, and don't need another T-shirt in my closet.
September 20, 2006 
Our Public Works Department completed a project on the NE corner of 134 and Cedar Lake Road in front of the Veterans Memorial. This brick sidewalk matches the other sidewalk accents in our downtown. We will now have handicapped access sidewalks on all four corners of this intersection.
Well last week was week one of the Mayors Fantasy Football Challenge. I had 9 people challenge me. The scores were:
Here is a picture of my driver Daniel Rude and his lovely princess (note the crown) assistant Kayla Rude in our candy delivery vehicle right before parade. We had a great time, Daniel has a future as a NASCAR driver! My shoulder is doing better, thankfully because I got a good workout lobbing candy into the crowd.
In a continuing effort to keep my hands off the laptop I am posting part two of an excellent article in last week Daily Herald on water. I have written about our water issues in the past here and here for you to review. For those of you interested my shoulder is doing much better and I am exercising immense control in not writing some thing about the 120 Bypass CPC we had tonight!When most people in the Fox Valley and western Lake County turn their faucets, they tap into a process that began decades before. More than 100 years ago, water pouring out of suburban faucets this minute started its trek with a fall from the sky — in western Illinois, Wisconsin or even Minnesota.
After hitting Earth, the water seeps down, sometimes hundreds of feet below the surface, and then heads east. Over months, years, even centuries it creeps toward Chicago’s suburbs. Water pressure and slopes in the Earth pull and push the water into aquifers, layers of rock filled with water.
In the suburbs, wells reach down into those aquifers and pump the water up to pipes, and then to homes from Lake in the Hills to Batavia. This might sound strange to some, but it’s not as odd as another popular myth. Local engineer Larry Thomas sometimes still has to dispel the tale that the water around here somehow comes from Lake Superior.“No, it comes from Boone County. Sorry. It’s just not quite as romantic,” said Thomas, chief operating officer for Crystal Lake engineering firm Baxter and Woodman.
Water stays hidden
Northern Illinois homes sit above rock- and water-filled layers of ground called aquifers. “It’s a firm surface. It’s not hollow. It’s not a river running underground. It’s not a hollow underground lake you can put a boat in,” said Al Wehrmann, director of the Center for Groundwater Science at the Illinois State Water Survey.
When rain falls onto the Earth, what doesn’t end up in rivers slowly makes its way to the aquifers. The water then travels from west to east down an underground slope toward Lake Michigan or the Fox River.
In this area, there are two main types of aquifers from which we get drinking water. Shallow aquifers are nearer to the surface — normally 30 to 400 feet down — and consist predominantly of sand and gravel deposits packed with water. If one was opened, it would look like mud. Beneath them, under 600- to 2,000-foot-thick layers of rock, lie deep aquifers.
The deep aquifers consist of large layers of limestone and sandstone. Water creeps through this porous stone at sometimes an inch to a few feet a year. There are other deposits of water even farther down, but for now they largely remain untouched. The water is too salty or contains too many chemicals to be drinkable.
In southern Illinois, most deep aquifer water is too salty to use for drinking, which is why many communities outside of northern Illinois rely primarily on rivers or man-made lakes called reservoirs for water. Elgin and Aurora also use water from the Fox River.
Going deep
In this area, deep bedrock aquifers are far more favored than their shallow counterparts. That’s because in deep aquifers, the water is plentiful, easy to find and, normally with a little treatment, fine to drink. “You can drill just about anywhere and hit water,” said Dave Kublank, Algonquin’s chief water operator. That’s predominately thanks to the terrain.
Shallow aquifers are more like pockets of sand and gravel filled with water hidden among clay and other dry sediment. Deep aquifers meanwhile, are flat, thick and long. Many can stretch over large swaths of the country.
The Ogallala aquifer, for example, stretches from southern South Dakota through Texas. Therefore, there isn’t a problem locating them, like there is with their shallow counterparts. Although it’s more expensive — drilling a deep well can cost $1 million, versus $650,000 for a shallow well — it’s worth it, local water operators say.
Even when you do want to use them, shallow wells can prove elusive, or dry, as Campton Township residents have discovered in western Kane County. “It’s really limited around northern Illinois where you can get shallow water,” says John Dillon, Batavia’s water superintendent. “You have to go out and really look for it.” While water from deep aquifers in this area often must be treated for radium, the water they yield is typically better and more protected from chemicals than shallow aquifers, because they are farther from the surface. And they typically can be depended upon to provide a steady flow of water for residents. The average house in the United States uses 350 gallons per day. To provide that, a typical well around here will pump between 1,000 and 2,000 gallons a minute.
Because of the popularity of deep aquifers, the wells are pulling water out faster than rain water is replacing it. And that’s where the worry lies. “We’re going to find the deep bedrock system is not going to be able to sustain the deep withdrawals it is presently sustaining,” says Scott Meyer, associate hydro-geologist with the Illinois State Water Survey in Champaign.
There was an excellent article in the Daily Herald a few weeks agao on water and the issues facing Chicagoland and Lake county in general. While my shoulder recovers from its flare-up of bursitis I will let you enjoy them.Suburban sprawl spurs traffic jams, but new roads eventually relieve bottlenecks.
New homes bring more kids to crowd classrooms, but new schools ease the squeeze.
As bulldozers continue to stretch the suburbs, however, another predicament grows, unseen yet inevitable.
By the time today's toddlers graduate from college, among their top concerns will be a scarcity of a simple yet almost irreplaceable commodity.
Water.
Globally, the United Nations says more than half the world will be living with water shortages within 50 years.
Nationally, the issue is so serious a congressional panel issued a 2003 report on scarcity entitled, "Water: Is it the 'Oil' of the 21st Century?"
Locally, the suburbs will not be immune.
Experts in environment, planning and geology all say swaths of suburbs in Kane, Lake and McHenry counties could face serious water shortages in the next 20 years.
The number of people will rise, but the water available will remain the same - putting a squeeze on supplies.
Outlying towns will feel the brunt of the problem first. Unable to draw water from Lake Michigan, they instead must tap into underground pools called aquifers.
Sand and gravel make up some aquifers and lie no more than 100 feet below ground. Some aquifers form in layers of bedrock, up to 1,200 feet down.
Nature alone refills these aquifers. Rain falls and the ground absorbs the water, which trickles down into sand or rock.
Towns sink wells into these pools and pump the water up.
A century ago, when the first wells poked area aquifers, no pump was needed. When first tapped, aquifers would spew water 30 feet into the air.
"Now after a century of use, that water level is 600 to 700 feet below land's surface," says Allen Wehrmann, director of the center for groundwater science at the Illinois State Water Survey.
With water use increasing as the population swells, water levels will continue to fall -from a few inches a year to a few feet depending on location.
"They're pulling it out faster than they can recharge," says Harry Hendrickson, former head of groundwater education for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.
Think last summer was bad, when the drought sparked water restrictions?
"The water demands we're seeing now because of the dry weather could be a normal demand we see in a wet year in 30 years," Wehrmann said. "And then what do you do when you have a dry year?"
Only when drought reaches out and touches homeowners, or when water bills go up, do water discussions dot government meetings.
Either those discussions continue to flow, or the water in long-term won't, warn experts who've been studying water availability in Chicago's collar counties.
Supply and demand
The math is simple.
Today, 7 million people live in the six-county northeastern Illinois region.
They use 630 million gallons of water per day, or 90 gallons of water per person per day -average use of all Americans, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
In 2020, population forecasts show the six-county region hitting 9æmillion people.
If the average holds, they'll use 810 million gallons of water each and every day.
Statistically, there will be enough water overall to accommodate that demand.
Realistically, however, the distribution of growth and existing water sources won't match up. Many towns, because of money, geography or federal limits, can't tap into Lake Michigan.
That means they must rely on the water down below - which will be in short supply as soon as 2020, according to a Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission study.
Kane and McHenry counties sit in the bull's-eye of water worries because they're chiefly reliant on well Among the townships at risk are Batavia, Dundee, Geneva, Rutland and St. Charles in Kane County, and Algonquin and Grafton in McHenry County.
Some spots in DuPage, Lake and Will counties could run into some of the same shortages, experts say.
Naperville Township in DuPage County, Hanover and Rich townships in Cook County, and DuPage and Joliet townships in Will County could be in jeopardy.
The communities in Cook and Lake counties now drinking Lake Michigan water, however, shouldn't think they have no worries.
The rate at which outlying areas tap into aquifers ultimately affects how fast Lake Michigan gets replenished.
"It's like a ripple effect," warns state Sen. Susan Garrett, a Democrat from Lake Forest who has been sounding the alarm in Springfield about long-term water shortages for several years.
The bull's-eye
McHenry County's Groundwater Resources Management Plan predicts the county's population growth, and corresponding surge in water demand, will rise 73æpercent, to about 63 million gallons per day, by 2030.
While there's enough groundwater in the county as a whole to yield 120 million gallons per day, the report warns certain townships may be in trouble given that the distribution of water usage won't correspond to the water supply.
Algonquin, Grafton and McHenry townships were named in the report as in need of monitoring for water shortages by 2030, and Dorr, Nunda and Burton townships were considered to be areas of growing concern.
The future of Kane County's water supply also has been cast in a stark light, though a comprehensive account of its situation still is under way.
Kane County commissioned a five-year study to map the availability of water underground and calculate the future demands of the region. The report by the Illinois State Water and Geological Surveys is due out next year.
"The geological study will enable us to literally take slices of the county in any direction - north, south, east, west," said Paul Schuch, Kane County's director of water resources. That, in turn, can help guide future growth in the county.
Lake not immune
Because so much of Lake County sips water from Lake Michigan, many residents there may feel like water shortages can't affect them.
Philip J. Rovang, Lake County's director of planning, building and development doesn't sound so certain.
About 40 percent of the county draws water from Lake Michigan, but whether enough water exists below ground for the other 60 percent is unclear.
"We project that by the year 2020, there's going to be 280,000 residents living in western Lake County who will have to rely on non-Lake Michigan water," Rovang says.
That doesn't bode well for the county, since some officials are concerned certain aquifers are already being overtaxed.
A study of water availability is due out in a few years. It will provide a much clearer picture of what to expect.
"As soon as the results of the studies start coming in, then we can start reacting," Rovang says.
The water supply could also impact future job growth.
The county estimates 71,000 jobs will come to the county by 2020, a 20 percent increase, but that won't happen if there isn't an ample supply of "This is really a critical issue facing Lake County from an economic development standpoint," Rovang warns. "If we cannot guarantee a water supply to a future business, they're not going to come here."
Outlook dismal
While projecting future water problems is an imperfect science, the decline in well levels is more measurable proof that groundwater aquifers are under stress.
DuPage County suffered a steady drop in well levels before most of its towns switched to Lake Michigan water in the 1990s. Over 80 years, the water table in the county dropped 700 to 800 feet.
Since Lake Michigan saved the day by largely relieving DuPage of its dependence on groundwater, the well levels have climbed, but "it's not coming up as quickly as anticipated," Hendrickson said.
That could be because so much of the land is paved over, making it more difficult for rain and snow to soak into the ground and recharge aquifers.
According to Hendrickson, about 24 percent of DuPage County has been paved over, and "eastern Kane County is headed that way."
People who manage wells see it, too.
Former Huntley Utilities Superintendent Will Smith said some wells don't pump as much water as they used to, and the water levels are slipping.
"Every year they drop down 10 to 15 feet," Smith said.
Experts mean to sound the alarm, but not raise a panic. The future is manageable, they say, as long as communities start planning now.
"Our populations are getting to the point where we are reaching the (the end of) easy availability to draw water," said Larry Thomas of the Crystal Lake engineering firm Baxter and Woodman. "Now we have to start thinking about how we're going to allocate the water, how we're going to fairly distribute the water."
This is the most painful post I have ever written! For good reason, I have a nasty, painful case of bursitis in my right shoulder and I can't mouse or type much for a few days, so I will either not post or give you re-runs of great posts from the past!
We shoveled some serious hardware out of the Round Lake Park District 5K on Sunday morning. From left to right, Village Engineer Erika Frable holding her gold medal won her age division and finished 13th overall. Michael Blum holding his silver medal for his age group, Al Villasenor holding bronze for his third place and his 17th place finish, lastly me clutching my silver medal in my age group, which is one color better then last years bronze medal.
Went to see Hootie and the Blowfish in concert last night at Ravinia. Had a great time with some great seats about 17 rows back at the concert. My daughter had a great time as well, she loved the opening act who I thought was so dull, I can't even recall the singers name. Most of my pictures turned out very blurry, as I expected, but this one is the best of the bunch.
I get lots of spam! I use a software called Ella to keep it out of my inbox, and it works quite well. I also set up MS Outlook to archive my spam every morning at 6:00 am which I did not realize that it would give me a daily count of how many emails I get via Spam. I glance almost every day, and its always in the 400's. Which means that I got from Friday morning at 6 am to Saturday morning at 6 am, 441 spams! I also got 134 normal emails and 10 for some reason that ended up in the "junk mail" folder, which to me is the same as spam, not sure why it gets past Ella.
Yesterday at high noon the new web site debuted. We had the same look for 5 years, and the village board thought it was time for a change. For those of you who don't recall the web page history of Round Lake's web page, I will give your the quickie version.
The Madrona School for District 46 is taking shape! This is looking at it from the south.
About a month and a half ago I was running on the Round Lake High School Track on a Sunday afternoon, and had just completed a long (for me) run and was standing on the track drinking water and gasping for breath. The last few laps of my run I had watched four young men walk down the hill from Macgee and across the baseball fields. As they ambled toward the far end of the track I continued to watch them as I was recovering from my run, since my car was parked in the approach to the track with no one else around, the windows were open and my wallet was tucked in the glove compartment.How can this be?
How can experts warn of impending water shortages, yet the Great Lakes, the world's largest single source of fresh water, flourish nearby? Forget aquifers and wells - why can't everyone just tap into Lake Michigan? Because history, geology, law and, of course, money all stand in the way.
Lake Michigan supplies water to Indiana, Wisconsin and Michigan as well as Illinois. We, however, live alone under legal limits on how much water we can draw from the lake because we're the only state that takes much more water than we return. Illinois once reciprocated more evenly, but a 1900 cholera epidemic changed things. Sewage flowing down the Chicago River into Lake Michigan was contaminating the water supply, fueling the epidemic. Engineers reversed the flow of the river and built the Sanitary and Ship Canal - removing 673 square miles from the Great Lakes Basin.
The rain and wastewater that seep into that land no longer returned to the lake, flowing westward instead. This redirection of what is called recharge away from Lake Michigan drastically cut into Illinois' contribution to restocking lake water levels.
Decades later, after years of interstate legal wrangling over the inequity of use and return, the U.S. Supreme Court in 1967 set the limits that stand today. While many in Lake County and almost all Cook and DuPage residents rely exclusively on the lake, for those living in the rest of Lake County and all of Kane and McHenry counties, lake water remains little more than a mirage. They're not forbidden from tapping into Lake Michigan, but the hurdles are high.
Gaining access
Lake Michigan feeds 200 water systems in Illinois, filling fish tanks in Chicago's Shedd Aquarium to hot tubs in Hoffman Estates. A complex system of pipes and pumping stations delivers lake water to 7æmillion Illinoisans - more than half the state's population.
That's why the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, the lake's state-appointed guardian, is picky about allowing access. To be eligible, a town has to prove that tapping into the lake would be more cost-effective and practical than tapping into the ground.
"Obviously, as you get farther and farther away from the lake itself and from regional water systems, that test gets more difficult," said Dan Injerd, director of Lake Michigan programs for the natural resources office of water resources.
Among the agency's top priorities is making sure towns already getting lake water have enough to sustain them as their populations grow in the future. Illinois today isn't using all the lake water it's entitled to, in part because we're paying back a water debt racked up in the 1980s, when we exceeded the court-imposed limit.
The state is making good progress paying down the debt, Injerd said, in part because infrastructure upgrades in Chicago are preventing the waste of water through leaky pipes and hydrants. Once the debt is repaid, the state will have more flexibility to meet the water demands of the northeastern Illinois communities.
Counting the costs
Still, outlying towns can convince state officials that lake water is the ideal option. High radium levels in the groundwater made deep wells an undesirable water source for Plainfield, 30 miles away from the lake on the outer edge of Will County.
The fast-growing village has spent almost $8 million to run two miles of a 20-inch pipeline to Bolingbrook and build water storage and pumping stations, said Derek Wold of the engineering firm Baxter and Woodman, which consulted on the project.
Luckily for Plainfield, the Illinois American Water Co. had built a $40 million, 42-inch pipe to run from Bedford Park to Bolingbrook for the specific purpose of selling water to interested communities. Plainfield got its permit in 2001. The new infrastructure remains under construction.
The group approach
Six communities in suburban Cook County took a different route. Twenty years ago, Hoffman Estates, Mount Prospect, Elk Grove Village, Streamwood, Hanover Park, Rolling Meadows and Schaumburg banded together to create the Northwest Suburban Municipal Joint Action Water Agency.
Together the towns built a $120 million system to connect to Chicago's water supply and distribute the water to the participating communities, said Joe Fennell, the agency's executive director.
The project included 54 miles of transmission mains, a large pumping station near O'Hare International Airport and several smaller pumping stations along the route to maintain the pressure to move the water along.
With the luxury of lake water, however, came a responsibility not to waste it. Each community had to adopt strict conservation practices to ensure they weren't wasting water through leaky pipes and hydrants or through evaporation by watering lawns in the middle of the day.
"In return, there's no worry about wells drying up or the water table dropping," said Kenneth Hari, Hoffman Estates' director of public works. "Plus, there's low hardness, and it's a more high-quality product."
Watching the limit
Even if a town has the wherewithal to access the lake, the state must ensure new allocations won't one day harm compliance with federal law.
That means figuring out if bringing one town online will prompt several more to follow suit and factoring in how weather patterns affect the state's removal of lake water, so its level doesn't dip excessively.
Lake experts also carefully watch the water level underground, as the two sources are interdependent. Lake Michigan is partly fed by groundwater that seeps into the lake, so when communities in the outlying suburbs overuse the aquifers, they leave less to replenish the lake.
The relationship also can be beneficial, however, as towns that switch to lake water are required to stop using their deep wells. This relieves the stress on groundwater, said Jeff Wickenkamp, a member of the Southern Lake Michigan Water Supply Consortium.
A finite source
Such was the case in 1980, when an amendment to the Supreme Court decree allowed Illinois to grant Lake Michigan water to 86 more municipalities in DuPage and Cook counties. The deep well levels in the areas had been declining as a result of rapid growth and the water quality was suffering. The mass switch from groundwater to lake water allowed water levels in the deep aquifer to rise.
Unfortunately, Wickenkamp said, recent growth in places like Kane County are causing the aquifers to again approach the low levels of the late 1970s. Geologists until now have had trouble seeing anything but a fuzzy picture of how much water is truly hidden in the rocks. Therefore, ultimatums demanding change can't be issued. "The science is not there to definitively go to a town and say, 'You're not doing what you need to be doing,'æ" said Wickencamp. And in the end, Injerd says, Lake Michigan itself is a finite resource and can't be the only answer. "Obviously, we don't have an endless supply," Injerd said. "And at some point it's possible we'll have to say, we're really tapped out."
I am taking the weekend off to reflect on doing virtually nothing other then drink mojitos, sail, play golf, attend some block parties and perhaps gamble on the horses at Arlington. All desirable skills for a Mayor on Labor Day! So enjoy this discourse on Labor Day!"Labor Day differs in every essential way from the other holidays of the year in any country," said Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor. "All other holidays are in a more or less degree connected with conflicts and battles of man's prowess over man, of strife and discord for greed and power, of glories achieved by one nation over another. Labor Day...is devoted to no man, living or dead, to no sect, race, or nation."
Labor Day, the first Monday in September, is a creation of the labor movement and is dedicated to the social and economic achievements of American workers. It constitutes a yearly national tribute to the contributions workers have made to the strength, prosperity, and well-being of our country.
Founder of Labor Day
More than 100 years after the first Labor Day observance, there is still some doubt as to who first proposed the holiday for workers.
Some records show that Peter J. McGuire, general secretary of the Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners and a cofounder of the American Federation of Labor, was first in suggesting a day to honor those "who from rude nature have delved and carved all the grandeur we behold."
But Peter McGuire's place in Labor Day history has not gone unchallenged. Many believe that Matthew Maguire, a machinist, not Peter McGuire, founded the holiday. Recent research seems to support the contention that Matthew Maguire, later the secretary of Local 344 of the International Association of Machinists in Paterson, N.J., proposed the holiday in 1882 while serving as secretary of the Central Labor Union in New York. What is clear is that the Central Labor Union adopted a Labor Day proposal and appointed a committee to plan a demonstration and picnic.
The First Labor Day
The first Labor Day holiday was celebrated on Tuesday, September 5, 1882, in New York City, in accordance with the plans of the Central Labor Union. The Central Labor Union held its second Labor Day holiday just a year later, on September 5, 1883.
In 1884 the first Monday in September was selected as the holiday, as originally proposed, and the Central Labor Union urged similar organizations in other cities to follow the example of New York and celebrate a "workingmen's holiday" on that date. The idea spread with the growth of labor organizations, and in 1885 Labor Day was celebrated in many industrial centers of the country.
Labor Day Legislation
Through the years the nation gave increasing emphasis to Labor Day. The first governmental recognition came through municipal ordinances passed during 1885 and 1886. From them developed the movement to secure state legislation. The first state bill was introduced into the New York legislature, but the first to become law was passed by Oregon on February 21, 1887. During the year four more states — Colorado, Massachusetts, New Jersey, and New York — created the Labor Day holiday by legislative enactment. By the end of the decade Connecticut, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania had followed suit. By 1894, 23 other states had adopted the holiday in honor of workers, and on June 28 of that year, Congress passed an act making the first Monday in September of each year a legal holiday in the District of Columbia and the territories.
A Nationwide Holiday
The form that the observance and celebration of Labor Day should take were outlined in the first proposal of the holiday — a street parade to exhibit to the public "the strength and esprit de corps of the trade and labor organizations" of the community, followed by a festival for the recreation and amusement of the workers and their families. This became the pattern for the celebrations of Labor Day. Speeches by prominent men and women were introduced later, as more emphasis was placed upon the economic and civic significance of the holiday. Still later, by a resolution of the American Federation of Labor convention of 1909, the Sunday preceding Labor Day was adopted as Labor Sunday and dedicated to the spiritual and educational aspects of the labor movement.
The character of the Labor Day celebration has undergone a change in recent years, especially in large industrial centers where mass displays and huge parades have proved a problem. This change, however, is more a shift in emphasis and medium of expression. Labor Day addresses by leading union officials, industrialists, educators, clerics and government officials are given wide coverage in newspapers, radio, and television.
The vital force of labor added materially to the highest standard of living and the greatest production the world has ever known and has brought us closer to the realization of our traditional ideals of economic and political democracy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the nation pay tribute on Labor Day to the creator of so much of the nation's strength, freedom, and leadership — the American worker.
A couple of people (not me) from the village took a trip over the village yesterday via helicopter. Davis Clark gave me some great pictures and I choose these three. The first is of the wetlands in Valley Lakes, the second is of the Police and Public Works with the extension of Cedar Lake Road visible as well. The third if of Park View.
