Comment EI-21829
Received or sent (printed as 4/7/2016)
My name is David Hallberg and my family has operated a farm in southern Porter County,Indiana for six generations. Our area has experienced a large population growth due to urban sprawl from Chicago and Gary with people seeking a better quality of life in the country. As a result, our county roads are becoming increasingly overburdened with traffic. It is our opinion that cutting across all our roads with a railroad will dramatically increase this problem, making travel highly hazardous for all involved. In addition, our rural communities rely on local emergency and fire departments to respond to disasters. The railroad will compromise the response time for these agencies, critically hampering to their ability to preform their essential services. Another major concern is the natural watershed of southern Porter County. All drainage from Valparaiso, south has to go to the Kankakee River. It is our belief that the proposed railroad would greatly influence the drainage by acting as a dike, prohibiting the natural flow of water and forcing it to limited relief points, therefore overburdening our current ditches and causing flooding and extreme soil erosion in the process. Much of our land is used as collateral for loans which provides capital for our business. We feel that the railroad will devalue our property by over 50%, therefore limiting our ability to stay in business. In most cases, the land represents life savings for the owners. Finally, I feel that the railroad's main source of income will result from hourly transportation of coal and oil. Both are commodities that our current scientists state need to be eliminated and replaced with alternate sources of energy. We see the railroad, if allowed to exist, going bankrupt in five years, leaving a disaster behind.
Submitted by: David Hallberg · hebron, INDIANA
The Board publishes this comment in its environmental-comment table for this proceeding. It is quoted here as printed; nothing is inferred from it, and it states the commenter's own position in their own words, not this record's.
Permanent address docketyard.org/d/FD-35952/comment/EI-21829 · back to the docket sheet