Will County land-use officials inched closer Tuesday toward declaring a moratorium on all future development along the southern county line next to Indiana until a thorny, bistate dispute over flooding in the area is resolved.
In a move that didn’t appear to surprise anyone,including Crete Township-area developer Richard Dykstra, the County Board’s Land Use Committee voted unanimously Tuesday to deny a request to subdivide nearly 95 acres of farmland near Goodenow and Stateline Roads in Illinois.
Though finding no fault with Dykstra’s plan to prepare his Crete Township site for construction of more than 50 single-family homes, the committee concurred with the recommendations of the county’s land use department and the Will County Planning and Zoning Commission in denying the subdivision.
The type of preliminary plat approval sought by Dykstra does not require a vote by the full County Board. The committee decision can be appealed directly to the Will County Circuit Court for review, and attorney Raymond Feeley, who represented the developer, said he was prepared to file immediately, according to Crete Township Supervisor Mary Ann Gearhart.
Feeley declined the county committee’s overture Tuesday to table the subdivision request, pending a relatively quick resolution of a drainage dispute with a Lake County, Ind., property owner living nearby on Stateline. Feeley said he would have agreed to another delay if he believed the overriding issue, whether Indiana drainage law was being interpreted and enforced properly, could be resolved within 30 or 60 “or even 120 days,” he said.
Dykstra filed his subdivision request with the county last year. It already had been tabled for several months at the zoning commission level, according to Feeley.
“There is nothing more we can do,” he said.
County officials acknowledge that Dykstra’s subdivision is properly engineered for drainage, provided the natural runoff can flow unimpeded into Indiana, as it does now.
Will County officials fear that in approving the subdivision, Indiana property owners living immediately east of Stateline could follow the lead of a neighbor to the north and construct berms in an attempt to hold back runoff of what some Lake County residents consider to be “Illinois water.”
In good conscience, Gearhart said, she could not vote to approve any subdivision that runs the risk of exacerbating flooding on either side of Stateline.
An Indiana law allows property owners to do whatever it takes to protect their property, including constructing berms to fend off storm-water runoff. A drainage hearing is expected to be held in Crown Point, Ind., next month to determine if a disputed berm complies with the state’s rule.
