Rock Island Botanical Preserve and The Cedar River Valley

The Cedar-Wapsie Group of the Sierra Club needs your help to defend the Rock
Island Botanical Preserve and to protect the Cedar River Valley from the
proposed $86 million Highway 100 freeway project.  This project, if built,
would locate a freeway immediately adjacent to the Rock Island Botanical
Preserve next to Xavier High School, destroy a native sand prairie that is
home to the threatened Byssus skipper and other prairie species, and cut
through the heart of the Cedar River Greenbelt north of Seminole Valley
Park.
On the west side of the river, the project would cross Morgan Creek and
Silver Creek, endanger the Hanging Bog Preserve, and take the Holland
Orchard
and many homes in Wienicke Circle.

What we need is for you and other citizens to express your opposition to
this
project to the Iowa Department of Transportation (IDOT).  You can make your
comments to the IDOT court reporters at a public hearing at Xavier High
School on Wednesday, September 12, beginning at 5:00 p.m., at Xavier High
School, or by writing letters to James Rost, IDOT, 800 Lincoln Way, Ames, IA
50010 no later than September 24, 2001. In addition to the environmental and
quality of life issues noted above, other areas for possible comment include
the lack of need for the project, especially at the cost of $86 million, and
the additional traffic it would add to Collins Road.  Emails may be sent to
Mr. Rost at [log in to unmask]

If you would like to learn more about the affected environment before the
public hearing, please join the Cedar-Wapsie Group's outing to the Hanging
Bog Preserve on Saturday, September 8 (meeting at Mt. Mercy College parking
lot at 10:00 a.m. and driving to Hanging Bog Preserve by 10:30 a.m.), and
our
outing to the Rock Island Preserve on Wednesday, September 12 (meeting at
4:15 p.m. at the Linn County Conservation Board's parking lot on Preserve
Lane, right before the public hearing at Xavier High School). The Hanging
Bog
outing will be led by Prof. Neil Bernstein, professor at Mt. Mercy College
and member of the State Preserves Advisory Board.  The Rock Island Preserve
outing will be led by Frank Olsen, a local lepidopterist who discovered the
Byssus skippers living at the Preserve and also in the proposed freeway
corridor.

For more information, please call Rob Hogg, Cedar-Wapsie Group Chair, at
319-247-0223 (h) or 319-362-2137 (w).

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