Prospect Heights residents wary of cost of lake water

A scheduled Saturday meeting of the Prospect Heights water committee became an unofficial informational session where the verbal exchanges occasionally turned testy. Some of that had to do with the wording of questions on a 2015 mail-in survey asking residents about obtaining water from Lake Michigan versus private wells.

The official meeting was postponed to a later date due to the lack of a quorum of water committee members. Yet the two present members, Prospect Heights City Clerk Wendy Morgan-Adams and Bob Korvas, stayed for almost two hours to answer questions from the dozen or so people who turned up for the meeting in the basement of the Prospect Heights police station.

From a show of hands, the majority of people in attendance were opposed to efforts to obtain Lake Michigan water. Some also took umbrage at the survey's questions that implied that well water wasn't safe or clean.

A good portion of the session involved Korvas explaining how a Special Service Area (SSA) is formed by residents who want to bring about improvements for a select area of town. Back in 2009, Korvas successfully spearheaded what was then known as SSA 6 to get a $2.8-million pipeline to bring Lake Michigan water to the Lake Claire Estates subdivision.

Homeowners on Wheeling Road who were opposed to SSA 6 were at the meeting and voiced their displeasure with extra charges on their tax bills to pay for the infrastructure bond.

Morgan-Adams extended an invitation for those in attendance to join the water committee and to submit suggestions for questions for subsequent water system surveys.