Ditch dispute leaves neighbor high and dry -- and that's the problem

Carl Heyden has spoken to anyone who would listen about the flood-prone drainage ditch easement that runs adjacent to his yard in unincorporated Prairie View, a small community north of Buffalo Grove and west of Lincolnshire in Lake County.

He's gone through Vernon Township, the county stormwater management commission, two county commissioners and the state's attorney's office. Heyden said a well-dressed man purporting to be a federal agent randomly showed up at his house last week to inspect the ditch.

But Heyden, 74, has been told the same thing by most everyone: His next door neighbors Mark and Lee Johnson have to give permission before anything can be done to fix the ditch - which is on their shared private property.

So far, only Heyden has signed a right-of-entry form that would allow a regrading project to begin. Mark Johnson, who controls 90 percent of the ditch, declined to comment when reached at his house Wednesday night.

The county proposed to remove silt, install a landscape fabric liner and fill in the ditch with large riprap stones. Former Lake County Commissioner Pam Newton, now the chief operating officer of Hawthorn Woods, tried to secure $5,000 for the project from the stormwater management commission fund - difficult to do, she said, because the money would be spent on private property. That money has since been appropriated elsewhere.

Heyden and his wife Adele have spent 37 years on Apple Hill Lane; they were among the first people to move to the block. But it was winter when they purchased their one-acre lot, and they didn't see the ditch until the snow melted away.

They say flooding in the neighborhood wasn't ever as bad as it is now.

Water enters the drainage ditch through two pipes and flows alongside the neighbors' properties until it empties into a sewer at Stevenson High School, located across from their backyards. The water runs under the school's baseball fields to a retention pond on the school's property, said Mark Michelini, Stevenson's assistant superintendent for business.

With heavy rains and stormwater runoff from a nearby farm, Heyden said the water builds up and stagnates in the ditch, sometimes 4 feet deep. Mosquitoes are attracted to the area. And then there's the smell, he said.

"You could go white-water rafting - that's how fast it goes. And it won't go away for weeks and weeks and weeks," Heyden said.

He said he tries to keep the ditch clean by pulling weeds and removing scum. One time, he said, he removed more than 30 buckets of debris. He's also found dead animals like skunk, possum and squirrels there.

In a letter sent to both neighbors last November, Steve Crivello, the chief engineer for Lake County's planning building and development department, wrote that the project would "provide positive drainage, stop erosion and stop water from ponding, which would improve the health, safety and welfare of the community."

But the funds would have to help more than just one homeowner - meaning both Heyden and Johnson have to approve, Crivello said in an interview.

Heyden said he believes the drainage ditch is a public easement. When he applied for a permit to build his fence in 1976, Lake County granted it with the condition that Heyden "didn't encroach on the public easement recorded for drainage," according to a letter from the county that he's since kept.

But the state's attorney ruled earlier this year that there's nothing more the county could do because it's a private matter.

Commissioner Aaron Lawlor, who took over for Newton, has only been on the county board for two weeks, but said he's already becoming familiar with the situation. Lawlor said county officials have told him that the Johnsons have threatened legal action against the county if it were to come onto the property.

"The ideal situation is for the two neighbors to come together and have a local solution," Lawlor said.