Settler's Hill cross-country track opening delayed a year

Runners who circled a fall 2019 date on their calendars in expectation of a new cross-country course at the former Settler's Hill landfill will have to recycle that dream.

The opening of the long-awaited course is at least a year behind. The delay stems from a failure of the initial plan to attract the clean soil needed to form the actual course.

County officials opened the site to a clean fill operation last year. The operation charged contractors to dump their clean soil at the site.

The hope was to get the soil needed for the course and earn up to $250,000 from the dumping operation to help pay for the nearly $3 million in construction costs.

That plan fell about 100,000 cubic yards of clean soil short of the goal for 2018. About 120,000 cubic yards of soil is still needed to complete the track.

Now there's a new plan. The first part involves continuing the clean fill dumping operation to collect soil.

However, to get as much clean fill as soon as possible, there will be no charge for contractors to dump their fill at the site.

If that still doesn't bring in enough dirt, the county board signed off on a new deal that will allow the contractor building the course to draw from a borrow pit of up to 30,000 cubic yards of clean soil. That deal will add up to $258,000 to the project cost, which has a ceiling of $4 million set aside to make it happen.

County board member John Martin, who represents the area outside Geneva where the course will sit, said the borrow pit is insurance to keep the project moving. The goal remains to get the necessary dirt at no cost.

"We are confident the dirt is there," Martin said. "What we can't control is the rhythm of delivery. It rained all last spring. There was no dirt. If we'd had a borrow pit then, we could have kept things going. It would have been more efficient and more cost-effective.

"We don't intend to use the borrow pit for the whole thing. It's just too expensive. But we've got to get it done. The project can't languish."

Martin said if the new plan comes off without a hitch, construction will finish no later than September. The course then needs time to seed. That would put the new open date in the fall 2020.