[BCNnet] FYI: Preserve the forest preserves - Chicago Tribune Editorial

[Randi Doeker - Chicago]

Randi Doeker
Chicago

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Preserve the forest preserves 
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June 18, 2005

Even the deer in Whistler Woods looks perplexed, its tawny ears pricked up as it stares across the
blooming prairie grasses from the edge of the tall hardwood forest.

In 1995, the owner of a steel plant across the street tried to trade 50 acres of land for 26 acres
in this Cook County forest preserve. The idea was rejected by the Forest Preserve District. Now the
new owner of the plant, Mittal Steel USA, is preparing to offer the county a different land swap in
hopes of obtaining 21 acres of Whistler Woods for a possible industrial expansion.

The notion of a swap was a bad idea a decade ago. It's a worse idea today. Now, as then, proponents
argued that Chicago's south suburbs need more economic development. They're right. But squandering
land that taxpayers wisely set aside for perpetual enjoyment isn't the way to achieve more than a
tiny fraction of the industrial rebirth this region can accommodate.

County politicos are lining up for and against the land swap, which involves an existing Mittal
plant in Riverdale, just outside Chicago. Dave Allen, a spokesman for Mittal, says the plant needs
the 21 acres before it can propose that its parent company invest in an expansion. In return,
Mittal would give 31 acres to the district.

This is one case in which more isn't better. The land offered by Mittal is disconnected from
Whistler Woods and wouldn't add to the density that allows forest ecosystems to thrive. What's
more, the land is much scruffier than the Whistler Woods parcel, thick with buckthorn and other
undesirable plants.

Allen says that only after getting the forest preserve land and persuading Mittal to expand would
the Riverdale plant be in a position to add jobs. To hear the chatter in the south suburbs, though,
you'd think a land swap would guarantee 75 new jobs. That may be a case of heartfelt local wishes
trumping inconvenient facts.

By law, the district's sacrosanct purpose is to acquire, preserve and protect natural lands. For
the most part the district has done just that--resisting countless proposals to shave off shards of
land for worthy purposes. That resistance is why Cook County has something unique among the
nation's major metropolitan areas: an emerald necklace of forest preserves.

Laurence Msall, president of the Civic Federation of Chicago, notes: "The people who sacrificed,
who fought, to preserve this forest land knew there would be hundreds of good ideas for other uses.
But when they wrote the charter, they said no."

What's more, the Cook County Board, which doubles as the governing body for the district,
strengthened its regulations last year to bar land transfers "inconsistent with the defined mission
of the district." No exceptions for steel plants.

Some Cook County commissioners use their district's unwavering policy against land transfers to
explain to eager developers that, no, you can't have "just a corner" of a forest preserve for a
strip mall or other job-creation project. If the Forest Preserve District makes an exception in
Riverdale, the pressure for more and more exceptions, all across Cook County, will be intense.

Commissioner Carl Hansen made the point perfectly when the last steel plant land swap was proposed
in the 1990s: Forest preserve property can't be justified on the grounds of its economic benefit,
he said then. Because if the goal were to maximize the profits on lands that earlier taxpayers set
aside for all of us to enjoy today, then the district would have to sell every acre it owns.


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