Comment EI-23359
Received or sent (printed as 6/4/2016)
In May of 1850 Wyoming Township in Southeastern Lee County was layed out and surveyed. Over the course of generations fences were strung, roads laid, and bridges built to benefit the residents. I became a steward of the ground forty years ago with the first of two land purchases in the township, now totaling over 160 acres. Both parcels are hilly, with ample areas of high erosion when rainstorms occur. Since our purchase, we have taken 12 acres out of production to act as filter strips to mitigate nitrogen run off and erosion. Thousands were spent sculpting the hills with terraces to, eventually after hundreds of years, have flat portions of fields much like generations upon generations of Chinese did in the hills to feed their families. The Lee County Soil Service provided us guidance and supervised our work to improve our ground for ourselves and generations to come. And yet, our work is far from complete. We are still acquiring rock to prevent wash outs at fence lines and fixing drainage tile. The fields are not static. They are living, breathing entities that have their own personalities. We know which spots are sandy, which may have the best soil for miles around, and even those spots where we dropped a socket years ago. (and hope we can find again) The lines carved in the township may not be natural or straight today, if they be road or fence, but they were put in to benefit the people who live there, whose ancestors fill the small country cemeteries in the area. A railroad with no intention of stopping carved through our hillsides benefits us as much as plastic bag floating in the wind. It was used by somebody to buy something we didn't want, and left littering our field for us to farm around.
Submitted by: Jeannie Van Horn · Earlville, Illinois
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-23359
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