“Damn removal comes to Riverside.” OK, so I can’t spell, but I can envision what kind of nightmare is coming to the First Division. Heavy trucks and mountains of materials circulating around town.
The residents better pay attention or they are going to have box seats to a multiyear construction rodeo the likes of which you can’t imagine. The entire river front parkland – probably from Barrypoint Bridge to down around 280 Fairbank is going to be the staging area for moving thousands of truckloads of materials in and out.
Why doesn’t the village board demand that this project be staged from the south bank? There is a wide open space at Plank Road Meadow with a boat ramp already down into the river, and another site where materials could be dumped into the river just west of the gas station, and directly adjacent to the riverbank area they say they will restore?
Why don’t we insist that they stage the Fairbank Dam removal , which was to come after Hofmann, not before it, from the Forest Preserve District site at 39th street?
Why don’t we insist that they do the Swan Pond repairs first, not last, when they may run out of money? I’m asking, why? The residents pay the taxes for all this, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and Army Corps of Engineers just spends money. They spent $750,000 for just the report for this project.
Don’t let them start before every detail of the entire project is finalized. And don’t let them bring this mess to Riverside, and leave us to clean up their mess.
Donald Spatny
Riverside
