Public Comments from November 18th, 2021 Airport Board Meeting

Written statements provided by the speakers:

Amy Doll, Friends of Illinois Nature Preserves

Airport Commissioners – I would like to respond to Chairman Cicero’s comments in the Rockford Register Star, written on behalf of the airport commissioners.

We agree. 

We agree that the airport expansion is vital to the region's economy.

We agree the jobs it will bring will have a great positive impact on local communities.

We agree that Chicago-Rockford International Airport is a jewel in itself.

We agree on…almost everything!

We agree except for one bit of the plan: the idea we have to destroy Bell Bowl Prairie to do it. It doesn’t have to be expansion or prairie.  As Governor Pritzker shared here with us earlier this week, "As we protect our environment, we can do so while creating jobs  …. we don't need to have a trade-off here.”

Bell Bowl Prairie is just a fraction of the airport's 3000-acre site. These 14 acres are unique, irreplaceable, un-moveable, and totally unlike the thousands of acres of nearby conservation land mentioned. Like the airport, they are a resource – in this case of biodiversity – but one we’ve not even begun to fully understand, like a library of books in a language we can barely read. In the future, as we decipher more of the language, this resource might help people grow more resilient crops or solve other problems we can't yet even imagine – but only if it is not destroyed.

Bell Bowl Prairie is one of the last few places where people can experience and study what Illinois looked like hundreds of years ago. Destroying a piece of vanishingly rare nature would be destroying something that makes Rockford special. To unnecessarily tear up Bell Bowl Prairie is to squander something that improves our lives and our children's future quality of life. Conservationists also prioritize people - Sparing this prairie is for the benefit of this and future generations.

Laws and governments may not work perfectly, at no one’s fault. We should have averted this situation early, but we didn’t. Now that the ecological importance of the site been made clear to all, following the spirit of the law requires a serious second look at some details of the plan.

We understand that designing airports is complicated. We recognize that an eleventh-hour redesign is not optimal. We sympathize. But we live in the country that both went to the moon and that set up the National Park System. We turn challenges into opportunities. We are confident that as Illinoisans and Americans, with characteristic grit, ingenuity, and clearsighted optimism, we can come together to find good solutions.

This is not an “us versus them” situation. We commit wholeheartedly to working with you, and federal, state, and local governments to achieve solutions that are, as Illinois Nature Preserve law puts it “at highest and best use for public purpose.” Citizens and agencies across the country recognize the importance of both the Rockford Airport and Bell Bowl Prairie, and they can help us, if we make a good case together.

I would ask that those in the audience that want to work with you to save this prairie and to develop the airport would stand up.   And there are thousands and thousands more across this community and across the state that will stand up to help make the case for both developing the airport and saving the prairie.

Brad Roos, Sustain Rockford

I am Brad Roos and I am the president of Sustain Rockford, and I want to thank you for suspending the airport expansion work until at least March 1, 2022.

A lot of people spoke out strongly about saving the Bell Bowl Prairie. Looks like you heard them. Thank you.

My perspective on our airport’s expansion is through the lens of community sustainability. I like the description of holistic sustainability as those things which sustain “Economy, Environment and Equity – the 3 Es.”

I have a bachelors and masters degree in Chemistry and Environmental Studies from the University of Illinois. I have been active in environmental issues since the gasless Sundays of the ‘70s. I learned about community sustainability when I attended a 500-person, 2-day conference, “Growing Sustainable Communities,” in Dubuque, IA in 2016. It was at that conference that I heard about communities – more and more communities – adopting robust, holistic sustainability plans. And that they were using these plans to guide all aspects of their programs and projects.

Grand Rapids, MI – I recently spoke with one of the 4 (!) sustainability officers in their City government, Annabelle Wilkerson. I called to ask Annabelle for a copy of their current sustainability plan. She said, “We don’t make a separate sustainability plan anymore.”

“Sustainability has become so central to our thinking, to our values, that we incorporate sustainability into everything we do now.”

I have heard the same from other cities in the growing network of sustainability-driven cities and regions.

Our Rockford region sustainability plan will embrace the economic benefits of the airport expansion… the “Economy” component of the 3 Es. Our Rockford region sustainability plan will also guide us in making the airport  expansion Environmentally sustainable.

Not just the Bell Bowl Prairie – although preserving the, 8,000-year old dry gravel prairie ecosystem would seem like an obvious part of such a plan. It’s an asset not a liability – a rare and valuable asset at that

Our Rockford region sustainability plan will guide us in designing the airport expansion to conserve water and to preserve the soil. Our Rockford region sustainability plan can even guide us to design the airport expansion in such a way that it is part of our critically important efforts to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 45% by 2030 and to become carbon neutral by 2050.

Last week’s 500-person GreenTown Conference was our community’s first step in developing our regional sustainability plan.

But why wait for that plan to be finished? Why not incorporate sustainability design elements now. These design elements are not new. 

The Chicago Department of Aviation has already produced a Sustainable Airport Manual and there are certainly many more such design manuals and airport sustainability case studies readily available to us.

Both UPS and Amazon have set aggressive sustainability goals including meeting the COP26 goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050. Unless they are ‘green-washing’ I would think that they would applaud us for modifying our design to become more sustainable. I assume they are watching.

Bottom Line:  Let’s re-design the airport expansion to benefit both the Economy and the Environment. 

I ask that you work with design experts to modify your expansion plans to include preserving the Bell Bowl Prairie and to make the expansion more sustainable. Let’s not wait until March 1 to make those modifications. Let’s not waste the next 102 days waiting for someone else to tell us to do what we already know is right.

Based on this issue’s extensive news coverage, the country is watching. Let’s show the them how to do it right – how to do it sustainably. In fact, let’s knock their socks off!