Activists push to save rare wetlands on school property
JOLIET, Ill. (AP) - Students, environmentalists and others are trying to convince officials at an Illinois junior college not to sell school property that includes a rare type of wetland to a developer who hopes to extend a road - an effort that comes at a time when the state's budget crisis has higher education institutions scrambling to raise money.
According to The Daily Southtown, (http://trib.in/2t6ujLN), the group wants to preserve what's called a fen - a wetland where water seeping through limestone becomes alkaline and limits the number of plant species that can grow there. It argues that the area is threatened by a developer's plans to build a mall on 265 acres near property owned by Joliet Junior College.
"We can't control the mall - they've bought the land," said Cami Provencher, a 19-year-old student who is part of the effort to save the sliver of land just inside the northern border of school property. "What we can control is what we own."
Activists who have voiced to the school's board of trustees their objections to extending the road say they are worried about the role the budget crisis might play in whether or not the trustees sell the property that would, at least temporarily, ease some of the budgetary pressure that has already prompted the trustees' decision to raise tuition by 20 percent.
It is not known how much money the developer, Peoria-based Cullinan Properties, would offer to pay the school for the land. Joliet Junior College spokeswoman Kelly Rohder said that the developer "hasn't made a financial proposal for the purchase of any land on JJC's main campus."
And Anaise Berry, Cullinan's director of marketing, said the company "can't comment on financial compensation at this point."
For now, both the college and the developer are waiting for the completion of studies by both the Illinois Department of Transportation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Rohder said the Army Corps study is expected to be done in no more than six months.