Comment EI-24963
Received or sent (printed as 7/15/2016)
My name is Gene. My grand children are the 6th generation of Moenches to work, use and enjoy this farm. The proposed location of the railroad is touching my livestock breeding farm and runs parallel to it for 1/2 a mile. It could potentially end the way we exist in this location. I know that is of no concern to the people who want to force this on us, so I will just leave it at that. I have two legitimate concerns which beg consideration on your part. I listened to several good arguments against this project. We attended two of the organized meetings. However, I never heard anyone address the following... all the information submitted was to describe the imposition on our safety and the instrusion on our lifestyles which we have chosen by living in this community, not to mention the devastation to our property values. All these concerns stem from living with this, as if someone will write a big check and it will exist right where they have plotted it... What I wonder is how they plan to build it without doing immense damage to our roads, our air and our water. They will interrupt the response time of our fire department and police department. It will disrupt peoples commuting to and from work, moving of agriculture equipment and most of all the safe transporting of young school children. The length of time and the amount of materials which will be transported through our community is going to be unimaginable to me. Our infrastructure will not support such a construction project. The other item which concerns me is the permanent damage it will do to an already fragile drainage system in an area which has a very unique ecosystem. This area was formed by the Kankakee Torrent. Please look up on the Indiana dot gov website under Kankakee Torrent. Lake Michigan was a prehistoric pro-glacial lake which actually started as Lake Chicago. As the glaciers melted the topography of this area was changed from a plain to an area that was one of the largest marshes in the US. The unique topography and wildlife in this area are the result of the retreating glacier. This area is a permanent low lying continental drainage divide between the great lakes and the Mississippi River. This proposed track would create a permanent dam through this basin in Illinois and Indiana. There has been a continuous effort to deal with the draining of this area north of the Kankakee River since long before my great grandfather bought this farm in 1926. Much of it won't support a 4-wheeler for months of the year...it is hard to imagine it supporting freight trains. The Kanakee Torrent was a catastrophic flood that occurred 14,000 years ago. The Kankakee River is a path cut by the torrent. This unique are supports a fragile balance of wetlands, woodlands and rolling farms. It is ideal for livestock and the wildlife including mammals, fish, birds and waterfowl. Once outside of this small diverse area there is very little support for the species that reside here...beaver, mink, red fox, muskrat, deer, coyotes and even an occasional bobcat and long tail cats as well. The waterfowl is almost a complete set of all that exist...bald eagles nest here as well as sandhiss cranes, osprey, golden eagles and prairie chickens...walleye, pike, northern pike, large and small mouth bass and numerous pan fish as well as bottom feeders all exist in this area. It is all dependent on the fragile balance of the drainage system...The train would be a permanent dyke which would disrupt it all... If this train is truly necessary, which is questionable, it should absolutely be put well south of the Kankakee River where the topography is the original plain, not carved out by the torrent. The area well south of the river has none of these uniques qualities which were created by the glacier torrent. Again, please view the Indiana dot gov website and look up DNR and Kankakee River...This process to build and maintain this nuisance will permanently damage a fragile ecosystem which has been evolving for 14 thousand years. Thank you for your consideration, Gene and Angela Moench
Submitted by: Gene & Angela Moench · Valparaiso, 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-24963 · back to the docket sheet