Neighbors concerned for groundwater if garage built with Anderson Road park

GRANGER — Nobody quarrels with the proposal of a new county park with a restored prairie, woods and trails on what now is mostly farmland at Anderson and Beech roads in Granger. In fact, Granger residents have been longing for more park space in the county’s northeast corner.

But several neighbors of the location take issue with highway garage that’s coming with the possible deal, tucked into seven acres at the southwest corner of the property.

Chief among their issues is the shallow level of groundwater at the site, which consultants measured in December at four to seven feet below the surface. They worry that salt or fuel might spill and seep through the sandy, easily drained soil and foul the private wells on which the neighbors’ homes rely.

October 2022:Contamination issues raised as parks board weighs deal for new Granger park

County Engineer Sky Medors and a consultant at the architectural firm DLZ say there would be several measures to protect the land and groundwater from any contamination, all required by the Indiana Department of Environmental Management.

Such precautions don’t ease the worries of John Sill, who lives across the road on Anderson and who retired two years ago after 31 years of running his own environmental testing and consulting firm, Heartland Environmental.

“The fail-safes do fail,” Sill said. “I saw that all over the country. It depends on how well your company takes care of it.”

He’d organized a town hall meeting March 12 that drew well more than 200 residents to talk about the issues. When asked if anyone supported the garage, apparently, no one raised their hand.

The deal now hinges on the St. Joseph County Parks board. They’ve been asked to sign a memorandum of understanding — already signed by all three county commissioners — to allow both the new park and the highway garage.

Parks board President Larry Catanzarite, who’d be the one to sign it, said last week, “I’m not signing this until we get everything cleared up.”

The parks board’s next monthly meeting will be at 9 a.m. Tuesday at St. Patrick’s County Park, but, Catanzarite said, the board won’t vote on the memorandum then.

Rather, he said, he first wants to allow a public town hall meeting for concerned citizens to gather with parks and county officials, a meeting that county Commissioner Derek Dieter said he’s hoping to organize soon. A place and date have yet to be set.

The parks board has been waiting 23 years to turn the land into a park — ever since the parks board purchased the total of 115 acres in November 1999. But the county government had never presented a way to pay for building the park until last fall, when officials also looked for a place to build a new garage.

Medors said the current garage on Cleveland Road, just east of the Indiana Toll Road, is in need of repair while he said a recent study has shown that the Anderson Road property, 0.6 miles west of the Elkhart County line, would enable snowplows to clear and treat roads with "quicker access to Granger than we currently have.”

Medors said the current garage can’t be closed and eventually be demolished without opening a new one.

“If we can get a park built as well as a garage, that’s a win-win,” Steve Slauson, executive director of the St. Joseph County Parks, has told commissioners. “What the parks board doesn’t want is something that’s environmentally unfriendly. But for myself, I don’t think the county would build anything that would cause these types of issues. But I think the residents are looking for some reassurance of that.”

The memorandum also offers a clause that simply encourages a trail connection to Granger Paths trails. That, too, represents residents’ hunger for more and safer access to green spaces in Granger, now limited by its narrow rural roads and subdivisions where developers never included trails or parks.

Would water safeguards work?

Medors called the proposed garage a “satellite” site that would mostly be used in the winter for salting roads, but it could be used occasionally in summers to chip-and-seal roads. Because it also would be used as a fueling site for county vehicles, he emphasized that county police cars would also be drawn to the area more often.

He said the salt would be stored inside of a barn on top of a concrete pad. Trucks would be loaded on concrete. There would be procedures in case of a spill, he said, so that any possible runoff would be less than what already drains off of roads and intersections.

The site would require a stormwater protection program, audited by IDEM.

September 2022:New Granger county park could emerge from highway garage deal

Stephen Kromkowski, an architect with DLZ, told commissioners that the fuel would be stored in an above-ground tank with a double wall. If there’s a leak, there’s an automatic shutoff valve, and he said the leaking fuel would go to a holding tank “so it’s not running out of the area.”

As well, the fuel tank would sit on a concrete pad with curbs, surrounded by natural plantings to help with filtration.

“Our plan is to put measures in so there won’t be harm to the environment,” Medors said. “Will a spill never happen? I can’t say that, but we have a plan in place.”

"They say they’re putting in an oil-water separator under the (concrete) pad," Sill said. “That’s only as good as the people who run it.”

Of all the issues with the garage, Catanzarite said, his main concern is the groundwater, noting that his own well would be affected if the site was contaminated.

“I drink from the same straw,” he said.

But, having owned a business that had to install a fueling station, he vouched that IDEM is indeed strict in its protective measures.

Contractors would build up the soil where the garage would be built. But, even if a potential spill takes years to move through the ground, Sill argued, it still endangers the water and residents.

Neighbors raise other concerns

Among other issues, some neighbors are concerned about extra noise and light from the trucks.

The memorandum would require the county to plant landscaping so the garage isn't visible from the park or roadway. Medors said it also would help to dampen any noise.

He said trucks wouldn’t be coming in and out of the garage constantly. On winter nights, he added, they would be in small numbers.

Neighbors have worried that roadkill would be collected at the site and, even if temporary, that could lure wildlife like coyotes that endanger their pets. One resident has claimed he’d seen roadkill at the current site on Cleveland, though Catanzarite said he hasn’t been able to find any similar claims.

But Medors said roadkill wouldn’t be collected or processed at the site.

County news:Mix of support and skepticism for Motels4Now at council meeting

Neighbors raised concerns about a widening project for Gast Ditch, which runs along the southeast corner of the park property, and whether it would hurt the watershed. But Medors said that’s a separate, unrelated project to make Gast what’s known as a two-stage ditch.

Watershed experts hail two-stage ditches for improving water ecosystems and slowing the speed of floodwaters. That project is being paid for with a Lake and River Enhancement grant from the Indiana Department of Natural Resources.

One map shows a shoulder along Anderson for vehicles to decelerate. Apart from that, Medors said, there aren’t plans to widen the road.

Crane Industrial Service Co. has its office and truck and equipment storage at Anderson and Beech, which is directly adjacent to the potential garage site. Sill said that the business doesn’t cause any real traffic. A crane may leave in the morning and not return for at least another week, he said.

Need for trails and access

On March 14, the county council approved a list of pandemic American Rescue Plan money for projects, including $2.7 million to develop the park. The satellite garage would be paid for through a general obligation bond that the county approved last year.

Dan Schaetzle said that during his campaign for his District C county council seat, which includes Granger, he’d heard “overwhelming support” for a park on Anderson, but he'd he also heard from people who wanted their roads salted.

The nonprofit Friends of Granger Paths group, which has been pushing for and coordinating those trails over the years, has avoided taking a position on the highway garage. But, like other neighbors, President Gary Babcoke said it welcomes the potential park and any trail connection.

The county memorandum doesn’t provide any money or teeth to create trail extensions, though Schaetzle has promised to push for them.

Plans sought:County council hits pause on Portage Manor so ideas to save it can develop

The Anderson site is at least 2.5 miles from the nearest Granger Paths trails. Any trail connection, Babcoke said, would most likely be 1.6 miles to the west along Anderson, then one mile north along Bittersweet Road to meet up with a short stub of a trail that now intersects with the trail along Indiana 23.

The county already has easements along Anderson that it could use. The challenge, he said, would be the expense of building the trails. The payoff, he said, is that it would connect several neighborhoods.

There’s something else that’s missing, he said.

The county has been working with the public over the past year on its comprehensive plan for infrastructure and development. Babcoke recalled giving input in the transportation aspects of the plan. And he noted how people in three of the plan’s eight “pillars,” or focus areas, recommended that the county create an active transportation plan for residents on bikes, on foot and on other nonmotorized travel.

"We need an active transportation plan for the county,” he said, “to attract people to live in it.”

South Bend Tribune reporter Joseph Dits can be reached at 574-235-6158 or jdits@sbtinfo.com.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Granger neighbors raise concerns over Anderson Road county garage park