August 19, 2009 - 736 words
Residents organize against Alden Road project
MIKE NEUMANN - The Woodstock Independent
The McHenry County Department of Transportation is planning on an improvement project to Alden Road that could cost $20 to $25 million in federal taxpayer money for roadwork alone, plus many additional expenses.
The project, according to MCDOT, if approved by the McHenry County Board, would include the reconstruction of deteriorated pavement, the regrading of drainage ditches and installation of new crossroad culverts to improve stormwater drainage along the road and the widening and reconfiguring of intersections as safety enhancements.
The improvements would be made from Charles Road to State Line Road.
"The purpose of the Alden Road project is to rebuild the pavement due to sub-base (the load-bearing layer of the pavement) failure and to improve safety, as there are many geometric deficiencies (ways that a new road design can improve safety and meet additional construction standards)," said Wally Dittrich, the county's design manager. "In general, a 30-foot wide corridor on each side of the roadway is being proposed. However, that is a worst-case scenario, and the MCDOT will be working to minimize impacts wherever it can as the detailed engineering process moves forward."
No schedule is set yet, but MCDOT said it plans to acquire additional right-of-way and easements sometime next year. Construction of the first phase of the improvement, the scope of which has yet to be determined, is tentatively scheduled for 2011, pending project readiness and right-of-way availability. Construction on subsequent phases of the proposed improvement currently is not scheduled.
Some residents question why Alden Road was chosen ahead of other projects in the county.
"The county started the phase I design for Alden Road in 2006 because it found that it was resurfacing Alden Road every couple of years," Dittrich said. "The MCDOT has a pavement management program for all 225 centerline miles it maintains and no other road is resurfaced that often."
Residents living along Alden Road have complained about the project's scope and the lack of communication between MCDOT and residents.
In April, MCDOT sent the 200 houses on Alden Road a notice about a hearing concerning the plan. The letter did not indicate that the county would need to acquire additional right-of-way from property owners, which would require cutting down hundreds of trees and eliminating other buffers, porches, septic fields, wells, barns and even sections of houses. While the county claims this is the "worst-case scenarios," both Alan Plane and Chris O'Dea, residents living along the proposed improvement path, doubt the county will choose different easement widths in different areas.
At the public hearing, Plane learned that the bank of trees he had planted years ago -- some of which soar higher than his home -- would be cut down, removing the buffer between his home and the traffic whizzing by at 55 mph.
When others learned they would suffer similar fates, they formed the Alden Road Alliance, a grassroots campaign aimed to halt the Alden Road project.
"They've left an awful lot of questions unanswered," Plane said of the group's dealings with MCDOT. "It's been up to us as a group...to squeeze out all the answers."
The alliance has contacted key community members, including township officials and county board members. A representative from the alliance attends each of the county board and transportation committee meetings. O'Dea said he is constantly researching the project, and that the group presents only what it has established as fact, never bringing hearsay into the argument.
In addition to sending letters to residents of Alden Township who are not on the project's path, Plane and other members of the alliance have tagged hundreds of trees that would be removed.
"We only tagged people's trees if they were comfortable with it," Plane said, noting that every property tagged with a ribbon or ribbons represents a property owner against the project.
Both O'Dea and Plane explained that the alliance isn't necessarily against improving the road if it is in the state MCDOT claims. But they said the main motivation is to significantly reduce the right-of-way the project would require.
"If you were putting a new road through a new area, then great, these are all the features you'd want in a road," Plane said, quickly noting it is not a new road, however, and that hundreds of people have established homes along the route.
Information about the Alden Road Alliance can be found at www.aldenroadalliance.org. The MCDOT Web site is www.co.mchenry.il.us/Common/CountyDpt/Highway.
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