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Chicago Conscious Choice
October 2006

The Creeping Exurban Threat

Mayo Underwood has had a successful organic seed farm near Woodstock, IL for years now. But a new exurban residential development next door is threatening to upset the local ecology and poison her groundwater

By Patrick Salem

Mayo Underwood believes in miracles. As the silver-haired woman walks through the Eden that is her organic seed farm in Woodstock, Ill., she tells of a motorcycle accident years ago in Wyoming that nearly crippled her.

“I had the same injury as Christopher Reeve,” Underwood says pointing out a river of scar tissue cascading down her back. “The doctor who did the operation was from the Mayo Clinic and had just moved to the hospital I was taken to.”

Besides the surgeon’s skill, Underwood credits her vegetarian lifestyle for her fast healing. She says that the enzymes and energy of her body weren’t distracted by the digestion of meat and were available to repair the damage from the accident.

She may need a miracle again if a developer can persuade the Woodstock City Council into approving a controversial development.

Underwood established her organic seed farm at a time when organic operations were seen as expensive hobbies of the healthy-living fringe. But as the demand for organic has grown, she laments that she has had to turn customers away because she can’t produce the valuable seeds fast enough. Her gardens and greenhouse—all certified organic —produce hundreds of species of seeds including some rare and endangered plants.

“That’s the Hopi red dye amaranth,” she says pointing to a tall, burgundy, plant with thick stalks and broad red leaves. “It’s an edible plant and produces a great colored, natural dye for clothing.”

Underwood considers herself a steward of the Earth and holds the Iroquois belief of preserving the Earth for “the next seven generations.”

She is meticulous in caring for both the natural and cultivated plants on her property. Visitors walk in straight lines and at right-angles to avoid inadvertently stepping on something rare. Natural plant species grow on Underwood’s property near two rare fens—wetlands characterized by continuous sources of groundwater rich in magnesium and calcium.

Certain plants that grow in the fens exist nowhere else on Earth. Fens form from glaciers that have melted, depositing their water in layers of gravel and sand. The two fens on Underwood’s property feed two more fens downhill on McHenry County Conservation District land (MCCD). The groundwater also feeds a small pond to irrigate all of her plants.

All of this is threatened by the burgeoning housing industry in far-flung exurbs of Chicago—the region lying beyond the suburbs of a city, usually inhabited by the wealthy in a sort of American version of the landed gentry. As the suburbs have largely absorbed these outlying regions, new exurban projects begin further afield and the cycle continues.

Woodstock, best known for its town square—featured in the 1993 film Groundhog Day —is a town of 20,000 on the crossroads of U.S. 14 and Illinois 47, about ten miles south of the Wisconsin state line. Since the late 1990s, Woodstock has experienced a steady growth of cookie-cutter subdivisions and McMansions. The cultivated fields of corn and soy along Route 47 are being supplanted for townhouses and subdivisions.

Just to the south of Underwood’s organic operation is a 9-acre wooded plot of rolling land were a developer wants to put 20 single-family houses. The proposed “Reserve of Woodstock” abuts land owned by the MCCD.

Development would require clearing and grading 37 percent of the land for the street alone, but the developer would “try to save as many trees as possible on the building sites,” Joe Gottemoller, the attorney for the developer, told the Woodstock City Council at a contentious meeting in August. Gottemoller kept insisting his client wasn’t interested in litigation over the project but he brought a court reporter to record the meeting. He was unmoved by dozens of citizens who protested what they called a “serious threat to valuable natural resources.” Opponents spoke about the potential destruction of the fens by diverting surface water or contaminating groundwater—thereby threatening Underwood’s organic operation too.

When the city proposed de-annexing the property, Gottemoller said there was nothing to stop his client from clear-cutting the land for the value of the timber and grading it flat to plant crops. After this statement, the five-member council tabled the vote on the development until September 5, although it was clear that Gottemoller’s client didn’t have the votes that night.

There were several conservation district volunteers at the meeting, but no official spoke for the MCCD. Keith Shank, who does impact assessments for the Illinois Department of Natural Resources (IDNR) and was on hand to advocate for endangered bird habitats, said that an MCCD official should have spoken to the city council, but he was not surprised to learn that no one did.

There was one MCCD official at the meeting: Joe Gottemoller, the attorney for the developer, who is the President of the MCCD Board of Trustees. Gottemoller has represented other developers in projects near conservation district land.

By law, the IDNR must be consulted whenever there is potential harm to protected species of animals or plants, so Shank has experience with developers with plans to denude the land of trees. But he has no enforcement powers over developers and is often frustrated at the destruction of natural resources.

But, according to Shank, it’s not just the destruction of trees at the Reserve One site that would have an affect on the surrounding property. Upsetting this natural balance invokes the butterfly effect—the proposition that a butterfly flapping its wings in Beijing can cause a tornado in Paris, or stop one in Wichita Falls—small changes today can have a huge effect on the future. Introducing a little bit of nitrogen into a water system can cause an algae explosion and deplete oxygen, killing organisms in the water.

Shank also laments how homeowners create more chemical pollution to the land than even large agribusinesses do using aerial spraying. Whereas each farmer figures the cost of pesticides into profits, so that is in their best financial interest to use as little as possible to protect their crops, homeowners in suburban and exurban developments buy huge bags of pesticides for their lawn on the theory that if one treatment is good for the lawn, two or three treatments must be better. All that toxin ends up in the groundwater.

“Most pesticides work by interfering with cellular biology,” Shank says. “Safe levels of these chemicals are determined by how much will kill you. Sure exposure will make you sick, but if the sickness is minimal then the chemical is said to be safe.”

He says that requiring the use of organic fertilizers and creating covenants for homeowners associations banning the use of chemical pesticides are simple things that developers can do with minimal costs. Shank says that working within the constraints of the ecosystem of the property means less work for the developer too.

“If you live in an area like (Illinois) that used to be covered with marshes and wetlands, having a basement means you’re likely to need a sump pump that can run constantly,” Shank says. He scoffs at the claims of the hydrogeologist hired by Gottemoller for Reserve One who told city council that development would have no affect on the surrounding land whatsoever.

Since Gottemoller’s experts go unchallenged, his ability to deliver approval for projects along preservation land is strengthened. One employee of the MCCD says that district employees believe that speaking against the project publicly would cost them their jobs.

Because Underwood runs a seed farm rather than a produce operation, her demise could have a butterfly effect on organic operations across the country. Organic producers would have to either hold produce back to create their own seed stock or find other sources of seeds. Rare plant species that she cultivates could disappear entirely. With the potential damage to the fens on her property, it would be easy to call Underwood a crusader resisting a siege against nature, but she resists that label.

“I’m not against anything,” she says. “I’m for the land.”

Ed’s note: In what can only be called an amazing turn of events, on Tuesday Sept 5th the Woodstock City Council unanimously rejected the “Reserve of Woodstock” development plan.

Patrick Salem is a Chicago-area writer.