Since I don’t live in the area that voted on the Kishwaukee Valley Water Authority I didn’t get any of the opposition’s mailings.

I heard about one from Joe Wiegand’s Taxpayers Alliance of Northern Illinois and asked for a copy.

On the outside is the corn crib with the “NO WATER AUTHORITY” sign painted on its side. I’ve run that picture on McHenry County Blog. The text under the sign is

Most farmers agree,
bad deals come in a hurry.

Maybe that’s an old agricultural saying, but I’ve never heard it before. There are a couple replications of his groups blue and white signs, too.

Inside this 4-page mailing are the

I hope I can give you an idea of the effect of the different sizes of type.

Then, there’s what I assume is the same list of reasons that Wiegand handed out when he held his first round of press conferences.

Inside the message runs across two pages:

The 2-page spread has six maps.

With two of the maps one can look at aquifer lines for the Kishwaukee Valley with the boundaries of the Kishwaukee Valley Water Authority proposed by A-LAW, the Alliance for Land, Agriculture and Water. The Authority boundaries run primarily along straight township lines (see map on the lower right), while, of course, the underground water supplies in the aqufer (see map with blue to the other’s left) do not.

It argues with regional planning.

I would note that in the late 1960’s I attended a Northeastern Illinois Planning Commission hearing at Woodstock’s Opera House. That hearing lead to the finger plan of developing the six-county area.

Guess what?

If this plan to have growth follow the railroads out of Chicago had any effect, I can’t imagine what that effect was.

So, please excuse me if I think public officials whose elections are largely financed by developers will act in my lifetime to manage out underground water resources.

The Illinois Economic & Fiscal Commission wrote a report on water resource management in the 1970’s and recommended state legislation.

None passed.