Comment EI-26022
Received or sent (printed as 5/3/2017)
My American Dream: Every hard working American has dreams and goals and inspirations. My father's was to move out of Rockford, IL and buy a small farm in Roscoe IL, back in 1964. My Grandpa and Grandma moved to (at that time) rural Rockford in the 1920's establishing our family's original homestead. Dad wanted to get out of the city and have a nice homestead in the country, to re-establish the family homestead. Somewhere to raise his son (me). Move forward to 1995. Everybody is selling their farms to developers, and in one year, we ended up with over 20 next door neighbors. So we moved again into rural Shirland. Bought a farm there. After Mom and Dad passed, my wife, son, and I took over the farm. We have small acreage, 1/2 mile off the road, down a narrow lane, into our utopia in the woods. Now Mr. Patton decides he wants to STEAL our land, displace hundreds of families, to build a pie-in-the-sky railroad and tollway through our lives. A railway with no committed customers! Stealing land by eminent domain for private investor gain! If STB allows the railroad to be built where GLB proposes, the crossing will be at the end of our driveway. This is our only access point to ingress / egress our farm. I have a disabled wife of 18 years, and a 16 year old son that has hopes of being able to continue the farm. Now GLB decides taking land by eminent domain, displacing families, or in our case, putting the train at the end of our lane, blocking our only route of evacuation in the event of a derailment, all for private investor gain is somehow a good idea. No committed customers! No evidence of necessity for the project! So many unanswered questions! What about response times of emergency services? I have had an attempted break in, a home invasion, and a medical emergency. EMS response times were 13 minutes, 16 minutes, and 14 minutes respectively. That is without roads being closed in our area. Without waiting for trains to cross. Ask yourselves, would you want this for your family? Neighbors? Do you want to be displaced so somebody with wild dreams and more money than they will ever need can make more money? Please consider a No Build" response to GLB's proposal! Save our farms! "
Submitted by: Torin Manley · Shriland, 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-26022 · back to the docket sheet