Gov. Jim Edgar signaled Wednesday that he doesn’t intend to change his mind about putting a prison in the middle of a stretch of western Illinois prairie, despite mounting efforts by environmentalists to have the project moved to less pristine ground.
His comments on the prison, to be built when the federal government pulls out of its 13,000-acre Savanna Army Depot on the Mississippi River, came on the same day the plan was roundly criticized by environmental groups speaking before a citizens committee that advises the state’s Department of Natural Resources.
The Army has occupied the site since 1917, when it fenced in a 13-mile strip of land along the Mississippi to store munitions during World War I. That fence also protected thousands of acres of Illinois sand prairie and backwater woods, making it such a rarity in both the state and country that conservationists say it should be left alone and the prison moved elsewhere.
Although the governor did not entirely rule out the possibility that a new site could be chosen, the prairie prison project increasingly is sounding like a done deal.
“At this point I have no plans (to change the proposal),” Edgar said Wednesday. “But . . . we’ll listen. We’ll take a look.”
The plan would bring a 1,100-bed maximum security prison to the economically strapped region south of Galena.
“There is a real need for additional (prison) bed space,” Edgar said. “If we hadn’t had this agreement originally on the division of the land, then I would have understood (the concerns).”
Under a plan hashed out by the federal government and a local redevelopment authority, more than 9,000 acres would be preserved and about 3,000 acres set aside for housing and industry to help rebuild the economy after the Army leaves, taking hundreds of jobs with it.
Some of the land controlled by the redevelopment authority consists of “brown field” sites, mostly old Army buildings and bomb packing plants. Conservationists want the 140-acre prison site, now slated for the prairie, moved to the brown fields, though the state says none of those sites are suitable.
After the governor’s surprise announcement in April that the state would build a prison at the depot, it took time for groups such as the Sierra Club and Openlands Project to ask the governor to reconsider.
Recently government-funded organizations, including the Illinois Endangered Species Protection Board, also have weighed in against the project. That board’s chairman, Lawrence Jahn, wrote a letter to the governor, asking that he re-examine his decision regarding “one of the last vestiges of Illinois’ precious natural heritage.”
On Wednesday the Department of Natural Resources Advisory Board, a citizens group appointed by the governor, met in Quincy and heard from those opposing the prison.
About 50 people attended the meeting at the Quincy Holiday Inn and heard from representatives of eight environmental groups, including the Audubon Society and Nature Conservancy.
“I’ve never chained myself to a sand prairie, but I’m willing to try,” Eugene Gray of Hanover, representing the Natural Area Guardians and Northwest Prairie Enthusiasts, told the advisory board. “We think there is an opportunity for the DNR to say `We can find another place for the prison, but we can’t find another place for a sand prairie.’ “
The state’s natural resources department–which has raised new concerns about whether light pollution from the prison will hurt the remaining prairie–only can make recommendations to the corrections department.
But Brent Manning, the DNR’s director, said the project represents a reasonable compromise anyway.
“Once the pie was finally divided up there was (agreement) from all groups because we have saved the largest backwater area on the Mississippi River and there are expanses of sand prairie that will be saved,” Manning said. “There are a whole lot of things that enter into the equation, economy being one of them.”
