For now, they appear on Du Page County planning maps as little more than a grouping of color-coded stars, circles, squiggly lines and amoeba-shaped blots of green and gold.
But if and when the time comes to pick the route the proposed Fox Valley Expressway would take through Du Page, those indicators of special
environmental or developmental conditions within the north-south highway corridor could become major hurdles for planners to overcome.
Members of the Du Page County Regional Planning Commission got their first glimpse Wednesday at a compilation of the potential environmental and developmental detours that will be faced in a proposed route running through the western part of the county.
The problem areas include archeological and other historical sites, areas containing endangered or protected species of wildlife, open space, wetlands, flood plains and major areas of future locations of homes, businesses and industry on what is becoming limited available land.
Some of the sensitive areas depicted on the map include the West Chicago Prairie, Pratt`s Wayne Woods Forest Preserve, the proposed tri-county state park and several major residential and commercial developments existing or planned for St. Charles and Aurora.
The Du Page highway study area runs roughly from the Du Page-Kane Counties border to Illinois Highway 59, and north to south, from the Cook County border to the border with Will County. Overall, the proposal under study by the state would involve a highway linking the Wisconsin border and Joliet in Will County.
Introduction of what amounted to a local environmental impact map Wednesday night marked the completion of a three-part study by the Du Page Development Department.
”What we`ve done is identify a number of environmental variables that we wanted to look at and plot on a map, which will be useful for us as IDOT (the Illinois Department of Transportation) continues its work” on the freeway proposal, said county planner Deborah Fagan.
The first two parts of the study, presented in June and July, assessed the transportation and economic impacts of the proposed roadway. A final report is to be presented to the commission in October.
The major findings of the study so far indicate that failure to build the expressway would not have a significant impact on the county`s overall job-growth picture; and merely building the freeway won`t be a magic elixir for curing the already serious problem of traffic congestion in western Du Page.
Although she offered no conclusions in making the latest report, Fagan said after the meeting that it was clear that there was no easy or unobtrusive route through which a new major roadway could be built through Du Page that would not affect sensitive areas.
But she also said that the broad corridors currently under study by the state are substantially wider than the actual right-of-way that would be needed to build a highway and that it might be possible to skirt or ease the impact on many of the potential environmental roadblocks.
