Navistar can come back to public table

I am writing in response to recent letters and articles in which residents who challenge Navistar continue to be characterized as scurrilous, misinformed and paranoid.

The latest Navistar and village of Lisle PR strategy is to vilify and seek reprisal against the challengers and to amass a social network on Facebook. Many of the newcomer "recruits" have chosen to ignore the actual truth in favor of the Navistar fabricated version. They cite the proposed six diesel test cells as insignificant to the environment, but fail to recognize the central issue of Navistar's refusal to agree to pollution limits once they receive zoning approval. There is a huge, measurable increase in pollution if they move the originally intended 66 diesel test stations.

The village has refused to impose air quality limits on Navistar and subsequent permission to increase emissions will come from the same zoning commission that was willing to approve the 66 test cells the first time around and unbelievably waive a required environmental impact study. Once Lisle approves zoning, getting an EPA permit is as stringent as applying for license plates and will set an industrial zoning precedent that will change the character and air quality of the Arboretum Village forever.

This deal was almost a year in the making and there were no written emissions guarantees, no jobs guarantees, no zoning compliance and no cost/benefit analysis of what taxpayers would receive for $100 million in subsidies from a state that's broke. For that kind on money, we should not have to trade clean air for jobs. If Navistar still wants the Lucent campus they can and should come back to the table (the public one, not the backroom one) with written job guarantees and emissions limits in hand. Any public official who demands less is inhaling too many diesel fumes.

Richard Wilkie

Lisle