Amy Lavalley and Carrie Napoleon, Post-Tribune
Residents opposed to the Illiana toll road have a new transportation project to consider — a freight rail line that will run from Wisconsin through Illinois, southern Lake County, Porter County and into LaPorte.
Victoria Rutson, director of the Office of Environmental Analysis in the Surface Transportation Board in Washington, D.C., sent a letter Friday to the Lake County Plan Commission, disclosing the plans and the start of the scoping process, which will include a handful of local public hearings.
Great Lakes Basin Transportation. plans to file under federal law either a petition for exemption or an application to construct and operate an approximately 278-mile rail line from LaPorte to near Milton, Wis., according to the document
"The construction and operation of the proposed GLBT rail line has the potential to result in significant environmental impacts," Rutson wrote. Due to the potential impacts the board's Office of Environmental Analysis determined the preparation of an Environmental Impact Statement was necessary. The scoping period is the first step in that process.
News of the plans caught Lake and Porter county officials by surprise.
Lake County Commissioner Gerry Scheub, D-2nd, said he was unaware of the plan until the letter was received by Ned Kovacevich, Plan Commission director.
"We are just looking at the whole thing right now," Scheub said. "There are no benefits for the people in Lake County ... It's all negatives for the folks that live in Lowell."
Scheub said officials will begin working on an alternative proposal Wednesday to present that takes the rail line through a more northerly route. He said infrastructure already is in place including bridges and viaducts that would help keep traffic flowing.
"It would be a tragedy to Lowell if it went through downtown," Scheub said. A railroad crossing Indiana 2 would cause traffic delays and cut off access to emergency vehicles, he said. Constructing a viaduct could eliminate small businesses.
Scheub said the plan offers no economic development opportunities to the town and will produce no new jobs.
"There are really no benefits to Lowell," Scheub said.
Bob Thompson, planning director for Porter County, first got a heads-up about the rail line from a Boone County, Ill., official last week, but didn't receive official word of the proposal until Tuesday.
"I would have liked to have a little more notice on it," he said, adding the developers are trying to get out of doing an environmental impact study, "which could be lengthy and very expensive," thought he doubts the Surface Transportation Board will exempt them.
He is unsure what the county's recourse will be in handling the proposed rail line.
"They're trying to relieve the bottleneck of all the railroads in Chicago," he said.
He said he didn't know what it would mean for Porter County, adding the proposed route would be just north of Hebron through the southern part of the county.
Porter County Commissioner Laura Blaney, D-South, also learned about the rail line Tuesday, and that it will go directly through her family's property in Porter Township.
"I have not finished all of my information gathering but of course I'm not too excited about having 110 trains come through my property every day," she said, adding her family built their home in the rural area because there was nothing nearby.
Like other officials, she was surprised by the news and feels like Porter County has not been included in the process up to this point,
"So far, I don't see any benefit to Porter County but admittedly, I still have a lot to learn," she said.
While public meetings on the rail line will be held in Lowell and Wanatah, none are scheduled for Porter County, which Blaney sees as a red flag.
"I wonder if there are no meetings in Porter County because the people of Porter County have spoken up for themselves in the past. Remonstrance against projects that don't benefit us has been strong," she said, noting a proposal for a landfill also near where she lives and near Boone Grove Middle School; objections to the Illiana toll road; and a movement last year against an industrial hog farm just south of the Valparaiso city limits.
Lake County Councilman Eldon Strong, R-Crown Point, and state Sen. Rick Niemeyer, R-6th, said they did not know about the plans until they received a copy of the letter from Kovacevich.
Strong said he and Niemeyer were together Tuesday discussing the letter and trying to learn more about the plan. Strong said at this time details are vague.
Kovacevich said he, too, was surprised.
"I knew nothing about it until I got the envelope from my desk when I came back from lunch (Monday)," Kovacevich said. He said it is difficult to determine from the information available at this time the exact route the rail line would take but it appears to go through south Lake County.