"The global transportation networks that feed our cities transport plants, animals, and disease around the world, to places they were never meant to be. A few of those organisms become invasive: multiplying in the absence of natural predators and wreaking havoc. In the American Southwest, tamarisk trees native to South America have spread across the landscape, sucking up scarce water and crowding out native species. Chestnut blight, Dutch elm disease, sudden oak death, Asian longhorned beetle, emerald ash borer--for trees alone, the list goes on and on. 

"In the Great Lakes, an aggressive virus thought to have been imported in the ballast water of international ocean-going ships is devastating native fish. The virulent illness has already affected some 37 species of fish, including salmon, trout, perch and white bass. Almost every species caught commercially or for sport in the Great Lakes' $4 billion fishing business has been hit."

The two paragraphs above are from an article co-written by Michael Gallis for the September 2007 issue of American Forests Magazine - yes, the SAME Michael Gallis introduced last fall (2007) by former mayor Leigh Morris (now toll-road czar) as someone who could solve the problem of constipation in LaPorte County.

Near the end of the article, Gallis and his co-authors say in conclusion, 

"We desperately need a radical new way of thinking. We need a vision that results in creative new ways of meeting human needs, one that resists the urge to rush to judgment with quick, easy solutions. Solutions to the nature-and-network conflict are neither simple nor quick. What works in one place will not work in another because both nature and the network are unique in that place. First, though, we must determine the place. Political boundaries, like cities and counties don't work; they slice into the natural system and the human network." 

You can see the whole story online at this link. It's a BIG pdf file so will take some time to download the entire September issue of the magazine. This is HIGHLY recommended reading. We couldn't agree more with the content.

It is our belief that Dr. Gallis clearly favors the efficiency of large logistics facilities but is also well aware of the unfavorable environmental impacts that come with them - and he understands the need to minimize those impacts. We believe he might well consider 3000 acres of prime Indiana farmland to not be the best location for such a facility in northwest Indiana if any suitable alternative location were available. Seems to us, land in Lake county previously occupied by heavy industry along rail corridors and now standing vacant would provide ideal locations for intermodal and logistics facilities.

For that matter, Will County has embraced the intermodal concept and is currently planning and/or operating up to four such facilites. There's obviously room for a LOT of growth there before capacity is reached. Reaching capacity may take a LONG time in the current economic environment.