Hawthorn Woods residents face more problems

The residents served by the Glennshire water system are staring at a fairly big pile of problems.

Now, they're saying, another burden -- that of high taxes -- has been thrown onto the pile by Ela and Lake counties. In Hawthorn Woods' semi-annual town hall meeting Thursday night, residents served by the Glennshire system said they've been looking at as high as 25 percent increases in the assessed value of their homes.

"Buyers are seeing the potential $25,000 cost to the system," said resident Bob Kunath. "As a result, the market value of the homes have been affected ... There's at least a $25K hit when we go to sell the homes."

Residents served by Glennshire learned last year their county-owned water system needed to be completely replaced after numerous violation notices from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency. The county said its purchase agreement, signed in the 1970s, shows that residents would have to pay for the new system, which could cost as much as $6 million.

"The Glennshire water system has experienced more than its share of difficulties," Mayor Keith Hunt acknowledged. "There's been a lot of talk back and forth."

The village recently offered to buy water from private water supplier Aqua Illinois and resell it to the 224 homeowners served by Glennshire. Previously, those residents had been given the option either of going with a new county system or a new Aqua system.

"If (the village plan) works for you, great, if not the other two solutions are still on the table," Hunt said, later adding that if the village held a meeting with both Glennshire homeowners and county tax officials, perhaps a new vote could be taken on the kind of system residents would like to see.

The village floated the idea of buying water wholesale after members of Citizens For Equitable Water Solutions, a Glennshire residents' group, said concerns surfaced with a new Lake County water system.

"(The county) would be charging a water rate that was probably about 60 percent higher than what they currently charge," Hunt said.

As other towns in Lake County and elsewhere begin to deal with their own aging water systems, more areas could see similar problems. Just last week, Hawthorn Woods joined a handful of Lake County communities researching how much it would cost to get water from Lake Michigan. The village, in concert with Long Grove, approved an $8,000 study to research how and at what cost Lake Michigan water could be obtained.