Comment EI-23652
Received or sent (printed as 6/11/2016)
In our country we speak of environmental impact. We talk about the changes in quality of water, the soil, wildlife, and plant life. I’m advocating today for the quality of life for the bipeds—the humans. I want my needs to be as important as those of a fish or bug. Others have been more eloquent and more factual, so I won’t waste your time with redundancy. I won’t speak for others, only myself. I want clean water, clean air, peace and quiet, and our farmland. In the years I’ve lived here, there have been two earthquakes. And if I recall correctly, my home is about five miles from the epicenter. There has been movement of structures here at my house after the earthquakes. With the tremendous amount of fracking done here in LaSalle County, we are very likely to have more earthquakes. I fear a disruption of the tracks resulting in a spill of something hazardous such as oil, chlorine, or ethanol. Two underground natural gas pipelines run within about a mile of my house. One is 13 inches and the other is 30 inches. I am very concerned about the rail traffic compromising the pipelines and putting me and mine in peril. One of the environmental impacts to consider is the water supply. My water table would be about 25 feet under their trains. If there is a spill and they contaminate my water-- the water I drink, bathe in, use to wash my clothes and water my livestock, I have no doubt they’ll pay a fine. But they don’t pay the real consequences. I do. Forever. I have no confidence in their corporate doublespeak about mitigation. I don’t believe them. I believe they’ll lay their track and run their trains and always grab for more. More land, more noise, more pollution, more intrusion. I don’t believe they care at all about my needs. Mitigation means to reduce the severity, seriousness, or painfulness of something. Over and over in their proposal I see the words “as appropriate.” I have no confidence in their estimate of the appropriateness of my needs. When it comes to precious resources such as pure water, clean air, and fertile farmland, there is no possible mitigation; only elimination. Their versions of aesthetics differ too from what they want to see in my backyard and what they want to see in their own. I doubt they run freight through their neighborhoods. One of the differences between city life and country life is population density. Many of us move out here to avoid the traffic, noise, pollution, and lead a simpler life. We buy fewer goods and services and do all we can to keep local. City life is consumptive of both goods and services. They use more and throw away more. Just like Lee County is being turned into a Chicago dump, with truckload after truckload of city garbage going west on US 30 to dispose of suburban waste, our land is being threatened to turn into a giant road to get more junk IN. We don’t want to be their dump or their highway. We want our peace and quiet. When we moved out here in 1983, the old-timers would speak of a time before the fields were tiled, when, as children, they could ice skate from one little town to the other. These fields in LaSalle County cannot be farmed without tiling. This is prime farmland, some of the richest in the world, and is a finite resource. Damage to the tiles, many of which the location is long forgotten, causes flooding and crop loss. Our soil here is mainly silty loam, supremely fertile, but always in need of careful stewardship. I don’t often mess in the business of others. I concern myself mainly with my corner of the world. In order to minimize pollution and decrease my carbon footprint, I’m driving my third Prius; and in it I combine trips to decrease the impact further. If you look on Google maps, unless they’ve been updated, you’ll see the first of my two solar installations. I don’t use coal, gas, or oil for electricity; I use sunshine for 120% of my electric needs. I garden here organically as I have for 33 years, raising clean meats, fruits, and vegetables for my family’s use. I don’t just talk the talk, I walk the walk; and I do it in a place where the water comes out of the ground clean and the air is fresh. I can see the Milky Way at night. I can hear birds in the morning, ride my horses into the woods and see wild deer, red foxes, red tail hawks, owls, bald eagles, and turkeys. These tracks would lie directly between my home and these woods, making it difficult if not impossible to ever enjoy them again. I beg you to stop this greedy, wasteful, frivolous, ego-driven plan for the Great Lakes Basin Railroad.
Submitted by: Mary Ann Waits · Stop GLB Railroad, member · Earlville, IL
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-23652 · back to the docket sheet