The drying mud flats and sprouting scrub grass that stretch from Dennis Johnson’s front door along both sides of his 150-foot gravel driveway toward quiet Stateline Road don’t look dramatically out of place for southeastern Crete Township.
Cropland and pasture stretch westward for hundreds of yards to a distant grove behind Johnson’s 10-year-old home. From the edge of the narrow, nondescript blacktop that fronts on Johnson’s property, fields roll gently eastward for as far as one can see into Lake County, Ind.
Male turkeys are near the roadside as buffalo graze nearby beyond a double row of chain-link fence, slightly uphill from a large, shallow pool of rainwater.
This is a serenely private, unincorporated rural neighborhood in what is one of eastern Will County’s more picturesque areas.
But appearances barely hint at unrest there, much less signal that it is a flashpoint for a potentially explosive interstate battle.
The problem is stormwater runoff.
Whose water is it? Where should it go, and how should it get there? What rights do property owners have to keep from being inundated? And what laws prevent one property owner from inundating another, whether the flow is across property lines or state lines?
Answers to those complex questions ultimately may decide the direction of development along southeastern Will’s border with Indiana.
On a smaller level, Johnson is simply hopeful that discussions begun several months ago will bring an end to a futile, four-year-long battle to keep surface water from swamping, for months at a time, the front of his 10-acre homestead.
Johnson, who said his front yard is now beginning to dry for the first time since last fall, blames his flooding woes on his Indiana neighbors. He said a berm they built on their side of Stateline Road about 10 years ago and their alleged failure to maintain adequately an adjacent drainage ditch severely impede the natural flow of stormwater runoff from his land.
He contended that if he were living on the other side of the border, Indiana officials already would have ordered the berm’s removal.
“I have just as much right as any resident of the state of Indiana,” said Johnson. “I feel it’s discriminatory to me not to take this water because I live in Illinois. God put that water there. God didn’t put Illinois and Indiana there. But here I am stuck in the middle of this border war.”
Johnson’s Indiana neighbors, Denise and Ron Raduenz, contend they already store their fair share of runoff, as evidenced by the rain-swelled pond that laps against the edges of their barnyard. Besides, they said, Indiana “nuisance” laws allow them to protect themselves from taking on more water, much less runoff induced by development in Crete Township.
According to Denise Raduenz, a decades-old, failed field-tile system east of the family’s 25-acre livestock farm is a major contributor to the problem, which turns about 10 acres to 12 acres of their property into a pond.
“Obviously, (Johnson has) got a water problem. I’ve got one too. I’ve probably got more water than anybody,” she said. “The answer to the problem is somebody has to fix that field tile. If they want to put all of these millions of dollars into subdivisions, let somebody put in $50,000 to fix the line.”
“They could save a lot of money on attorneys and lawsuits and all that sort of stuff . . . if they get that tile fixed,” she added, noting that it was only this year that talk of differences in state laws and of lawsuits began. “I know most of the people here, at least on the Indiana side, are willing to pay a part to get that tile fixed.”
The worst fear on the Illinois side is that, unless Indiana officials order the berm removed and bar other Indiana property owners from building them, the Johnson situation could be repeated and the flooding compounded.
At stake, according to Crete Township Supervisor Mary Ann Gearhart, is the ability of Crete and Washington Township, immediately to the south, to protect current property owners while in good conscience approving any future subdivisions.
Protests by Johnson and a group of Washington Township residents have temporarily held up approval of a residential subdivision in the area that they say will prove out their worst fears–unless Indiana intervenes on the berm issue.
Presumably because of the threatened lawsuits, Lake County officials won’t talk publicly about the problem. Telephone calls this week to county officials familiar with the issue weren’t returned.
A private meeting of officials from both sides of Stateline Road is set for Friday in Crete. Gearhart said she hopes a framework for a pre-emptive truce can be crafted at the session.
“We have to find some way to get (the Raduenz’) berm to come down,” said Gearhart. “The evidence of that berm causes the threat further down the border where we’re hoping to be able to site a subdivision. We can’t ask (the developer) to engineer in case there is a berm on the Indiana border.”
Gearhart said that based on previous discussions with Indiana officials dating to January, she is “very hopeful” that they can be persuaded to address the berm issue without anyone having to resort to a lawsuit.
According to Will County Assistant State’s Atty. Phil Mock, who has researched the issue, Will doesn’t have any standing to sue Indiana or Lake County drainage authorities. He said only Johnson or the Illinois attorney general’s office, on Johnson’s behalf, appear to be able to do that.
Mock said an expert with the Illinois Department of Natural Resources told him that the professed legal ability of Indiana property owners to do whatever it takes to stem the stormwater tide is, at best, a stretch of that state’s law.
“(Indiana’s) nuisance protection law only refers to surface runoff,” said Mock. “If (water) is in any way already channelized into farm field tiles, into ditches, then that nuisance law doesn’t apply and they have to take the water.”
Johnson said he intends to press Indiana on the issue, with or without Will’s involvement.
