Lake Calumet area under attack by developer

Public Meeting on the Development of the 134th Street Marsh
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
6:00pm to 7:30 pm.

Henry Clay Elementary School
13231 S. Burley Ave.
Chicago, IL 60633-1492

The Avenue K Wetland Neighbors requests your presence at this public meeting. The Chicago Department of Environment along with Alderman John Pope, Chicago’s 10th Ward, are convening this meeting to allow developers to reveal the plans for a massive housing development to be constructed along 134th Street, including development of the 134th Street Marsh parcel, which was targeted for preservation in the Calumet Open Space Reserve Plan. [The area is on the southeast side of Chicago between William Powers Conservation area/Wolf Lake and Powderhorn Lake and Prairie FP.]
Please come to the meeting and demand that the promises of the Calumet Open Space Reserve Plan are kept by our elected officials.

The developer’s website is: http://www.134thstreet.com/ At the website you will see that the developer is trying to pitch the project as environmentally sensitive and leaving in place green spaces. There have been pledges to create Blandings Turtle habitat in the pond that is now a part of the 134th Street Marsh. The developer has also stated the eastern part of the marsh south of 134th Street and ponds and sections of woodland north of 134th Street would be kept natural.

However, the Avenue K Wetland Neighbors can attest that the landscape the 134th Street Marsh has been stripped of its trees and fill from unknown sources is being trucked in by the semi load to raise the parcel’s elevation. It is unclear what best management practices, if any, are included in the developer’s plans to address groundwater recharge, the stormwater burden on the municipal sewer system, and preserve the water quality of nearby Powederhorn and Wolf Lakes, to name just a few concerns.

Moreover, at the website you can view the density of the proposed housing and see how much encroachment on the marsh is planned. The plans appear to call for converting the marsh into a retention pond, removing all vestiges of the natural shoreline and wetland. Housing would enclose the remnant of the marsh on three of the sides. It seems this would alter the once natural wetland deemed a critical connector between Powderhorn Lake and Wolf Lake into just another artificial retention pond.

Beyond concerns about whether the 134th Street Marsh will be developed responsibly, the shame is that the parcel is being developed at all. The Calumet Open Space Reserve Plan identified this specific property on page 23 as having the priorities of “acquisition, then ecological management.” The description of the 134th Street Marsh in the Calumet Open Space Reserve Plan states, “This marsh parcel could connect the William Powers Conservation Area with Powderhorn Lake and Prairie…. [P]rotecting it would create a wildlife corridor for passing from one portion of the Reserve to the next.”

Please come and support the Avenue K Wetland Neighbors at this public meeting to voice your concern to the developers about their plans as currently presented, including the alteration and encroachment on the 134th Street Marsh, as well as your dismay for our elected officials who allowed this critical component of the Calumet Open Space Reserve Plan to fall through the cracks and potentially become lost forever to development. Your attendance at the meeting on March 11 is critical.

Michael J. Fischer, Esq.
Counsel and Spokesperson