(The following story by Stewart Warren appeared on the Herald News website on September 21.)
CHICAGO — At the CenterPoint Intermodal Center, the diesel trucks go on forever.
In a single hour, hundreds rumble through Elwood’s 2,200-acre industrial park — and the place is open around the clock, seven days a week. Some bring cargo in, others haul it out.
The yard is a transfer point for goods, a spot to shift materials from a train to a truck, or a truck to a train. Experts say Will County’s unique network of highways, interstates and rail lines is the perfect place for that kind of work: It’s very close to Chicago but not nearly as clogged with traffic.
So faucets, film, fitness equipment, flooring, furniture, you name it — anything and everything, goods from all over the world, pass through CenterPoint on the way to parts unknown.
When it opened in October 2002, CenterPoint was the economic pride and joy of Will County. It brought the promise of more development to sleepy little Elwood. There were hundreds and then thousands of new jobs. At the time, everyone was high on CenterPoint.
In the years since, other intermodals have been proposed for Will County and neighboring Grundy County. One is coming to Crete; another is in the works for Wilmington Township; the planning continues for the Seneca I-80 Railport; and CenterPoint is opening a sister intermodal south of Joliet.
But the atmosphere has changed. As time goes on, people are learning about intermodals and they have a lot of questions. What will the truck traffic do to the roads? Thousands of trucks belching diesel fumes — what about the pollution? And there is the possibility of other, perhaps more sinister, hazards.
So far, there’s only so much that anyone can do.
Eye-opening brochure
In February 2007, Jill Hornick came home from work and saw a flier on the front door of her house in Crete Township’s Balmoral Heights subdivision.
“To our neighbors,” it began. “As you may know, CenterPoint Properties has recently assembled and purchased approximately 850 acres of land located near your home.”
Hornick, a single mother who bought her house because the neighborhood seemed safe and quiet, didn’t know anything about it. Then she opened the glossy brochure that also was attached to her door knob. There was a photograph of a cargo container being removed from a train at the Elwood intermodal.
“It was a humongous facility, very industrial,” she said. “I am like, ‘Oh, my God, there goes my property value.'” Standing in her front yard, she can see the land set aside for the intermodal.
Although Hornick’s neighborhood is in unincorporated Crete Township, she learned that the village planned to annex CenterPoint’s land, bringing it within the town’s boundaries. Not long afterward, Hornick attended some public hearings about the proposed annexation and learned that other residents had been caught off guard by the village’s plans.
“People spoke of their concerns, and everyone said the same things: the truck traffic, the quality of life, and how fast all of this happened, without any notice.”
She began networking with other people who attended the same meetings, trading phone numbers with Laurie Summers, another Crete Township resident. They eventually formed Will County Residents for Responsible Intermodal Development, a citizens’ group that’s been pushing for rules to govern intermodals, including the creation of some sort of oversight committee to study their effects.
They also want someone or something to monitor the air quality of schools and nursing homes near intermodals, and an alert system to notify the public when there’s increased pollution. They want diesel emissions on trucks and heavy equipment to be controlled. And they want the costs of these improvements to be paid by the intermodals’ developers.
“Not taxpayers,” Hornick said.
In January, the group asked the Will County Board to create an oversight committee. Although the idea was kicked around earlier this year by the board’s executive committee, there was more discussion at a recent meeting at the request of board member John Anderson, D-Monee. He recently sent a memo to all the board members urging action.
“This is not anti-intermodal,” he said. “I want to take a closer look and see if we can improve on the downside and the upside.”
Like Hornick, many people live in unincorporated areas very near intermodals — but the intermodals are inside the boundaries of a city or village, Anderson said. The municipality controls the intermodal, leaving the citizens in the unincorporated areas in the lurch.
“They don’t have adequate representation,” he explained.
After devoting some time to the issue, county board Chairman Jim Moustis, R-Frankfort, decided the land use committee should examine the county’s ordinances because they don’t address intermodals. Anderson was somewhat disappointed; he’d like to see the creation of a special group or committee to study the situation and make recommendations.
On the other hand, county government might not be able to do much about them anyway, he admitted. Most of them are annexed into municipalities.
“I can’t stop the village of Crete from building an intermodal, and I can’t make them build it in such a way that it doesn’t affect people outside the village,” Anderson said.
‘Our own backyard’
Since the 1850s, members of George Buck’s family have farmed land near Lorenzo Road and Interstate 55. His brother lives there now, rotating three fields of corn, beans and wheat.
The property boasts a mile-long stretch of frontage along the Kankakee River, one of the state’s prettiest and cleanest waterways. “It is a fishing part of the stream where we are,” Buck explained. “It is a great asset to the county.”
About two years ago, Ridge Property Trust proposed the Ridgeport Intermodal, said Buck, who has the Werden Buck Co., 55 E. Webster, Joliet, a brick yard established in 1888. The developers want run pipes through his family’s farmland to carry storm water away from the Ridgeport Intermodal and dump it in the Kankakee River, Buck said. The family hasn’t agreed to the idea yet but is involved in negotiations with the developers, Buck said. They want to do the right thing.
“They will blacktop over 2,000 acres. All that rain water has to run some place, other than flooding their buildings,” he said. “Our initial concern is for the diesel, the salt — all the bad stuff that could possibly run into the Kankakee River — we are trying to protect the river.”
And they don’t want to ruin the quality of life in Wilmington Township.
“This is a nice farm area. Who wants to look at ugly 1 million-square-foot warehouses? And it’s in our own backyard,” he sniffed.
So they’re working with an engineer who is studying the situation. Like Hornick and Anderson, Buck thinks there should be some way to control the development of intermodals so everyone is happy — not just the developers and the world’s merchants.
“We are a bunch of farmers. It is hard to analyze their proposals and see the effects,” Buck said.
Back in Elwood, someone else is concerned about another aspect of the intermodals and their industrial parks. About three years ago, Police Chief Dave Albert realized that the village actually was comprised of two separate and distinctly different jurisdictions: a small farming community and a huge industrial complex. And his 11-man police department must protect both.
“It’s a balancing act,” he said.
So he organized the Intermodal Rail Consortium, a group comprised of members of the FBI, the U.S. Marshall’s Office, the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs, and various local police departments, among them Joliet, Will County police, state police, Elwood police and many others. They’ve already met twice this year and probably will gather again next month.
Although every town is different, their police departments handle issues that are fairly similar: burglaries, domestic disturbances and bar fights, for example.
“An intermodal is a completely different type of law enforcement,” he said. “If you have a town of 2,000, a relatively small farming community, how do you deal with the issues a large intermodal brings to your jurisdiction … Joliet has had the EJ&E Railroad in its boundaries ever since I can remember, and they understand the EJ&E Railroad — but it is not the same as an intermodal.”
Many of the towns included in the group have intermodal proposals on the table, he said. So the meetings give the members a chance to discuss how to handle the possibility of domestic terrorism, shipping issues, cargo thefts and the best ways to secure large facilities.
“We’re trying to do a training project on how to protect an intermodal,” Albert said. “Our meetings have been a lot of information sharing — intermodals mean all kinds of new traffic, all kinds of new people coming to town from all over the country.”
For Elwood police, the addition of an intermodal meant more traffic safety enforcement, for example. “You have to make certain that you don’t have people driving over the speed limit, that the vehicles have proper lighting, that they are braking properly and obey the stop signs and traffic signals,” he said.
In the beginning, they had to be extra vigilant until the truckers got the message. “They learned they had better obey the traffic laws and make sure their equipment was working properly or the Elwood police would stop them and give them a ticket,” Albert said.
His other concerns haven’t been quite so easy to resolve. CenterPoint is a trade-free zone, Albert said. Many of the goods that move through there are manufactured in the Far East.
“Are we always certain of everything that comes into our facilities?” he asked. “Hypothetically, there could be a bomb, or human trafficking, or drugs, guns. If you have 11,000 vehicles coming in and out of the facility on a daily basis, you can’t check every one of them.”
If a truck driver breaks the law while heading into the intermodal, the police try to check the vehicles, he said. By law, they aren’t allowed to go into sealed containers. Only customs can do that.
“I don’t want anyone hurting our country, and I feel a responsibility to protect the country as much as I can. The only way that I believe you could probably know is to check every container,” he said.
Albert would like to be able to check suspicious containers.
“We have seen accidents, and the truck’s manifest said the load was clothing. When the container rolled over, there were machine parts, not clothing. That makes me nervous,” he said.
He also would like to see some sort of communication system for information sharing in unusual situations. “Hypothetically, some airplane could be flying low and taking photos of the intermodal. I’d like to be able to notify everyone.”
Spreading awareness
Meanwhile, Hornick has spent more than a year learning about intermodals and then educating others. In August, the Will County Residents for Responsible Intermodal Development had a booth at the Will County Fair for the second year in a row. The first time they were there, most people didn’t know anything about intermodals. This year, many were well aware of them and expressed concerns about increased truck traffic.
“Not many people were aware of the diesel problem,” she said. “We were trying to educate people on the health effects of diesel pollution.”
For Hornick, the cause became even more personal earlier this month. Her father, a 78-year-old retired truck driver who lives in Wisconsin, was diagnosed with lung cancer. Her family has been told that he might not have long to live.
“I can’t help but wonder how much the exposure to diesel emissions contributed to the problem,” she said.