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Joliet
agrees to help fund Kendall County water study
Chicago Tribune
- 6/19
With
an eye toward future westward growth, Joliet officials have agreed
to help pay for a federal groundwater study to determine if neighboring
Kendall County has enough to quench the city's thirst.
In
an expenditure approved earlier this week by the City Council,
officials will contribute $4,285 for the three-year study, set
to begin this summer.
The study by the U.S. Geological Survey will look at groundwater
quantity in Kendall, a rural county where people and towns rely
on wells. The Kendall County Mayors and Managers Group recently
proposed the $85,000 study, to be funded by the county and 10
other towns.
In
1996, Joliet annexed land in southeastern Kendall County. Developers
have been building homes in the Joliet part of Kendall since 1997.
"We're
going to be a very big part of Kendall County someday and we are
very interested in participating in this study," City Manager
John Mezera told the City Council.
"The
study will concentrate on the quantity of water and whether anything
can be done to enhance that," he said. "It will also
[consider] activities that could contaminate the water source."
The
idea for the study did not come from the recent controversy over
Joliet's proposal to build a sewage-treatment plant in Kendall
County, Mezera said. Kendall residents opposed the original plan
to build close to the banks of the ecologically fragile Aux Sable
Creek, leading officials to locate it a mile from the creek.
A
committee of the Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission recently
endorsed the city's revised plans for the plant. The Illinois
Environmental Protection Agency is reviewing Joliet's application
for a permit.
The
plant would have a capacity of 7.7 million gallons of discharge
per day, enough to accommodate 70,000 people. Joliet officials
say that it could take decades of growth before the city's population
in Kendall reaches 70,000.
In
another matter, the council approved an expansion request by Morning
Star Mission, a downtown homeless shelter. The plan calls for
moving the mission, housed since 1992 at 350 E. Washington St.,
to a former fire station on the same block.
The
mission, which serves about 40 men, plans an expansion to serve
women and families, said Executive Director Marilyn Farmer.
The
agency was founded in 1909 by Joliet barber Peter McCarthy as
a non-denominational group to address the needs of the poor. The
mission is the only shelter in Will County that serves three hot
meals every day of the year, Farmer said.
"You
do an outstanding job," Councilman Warren Dorris said of
the mission.
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