Lakewood sewer lift station has neighbors in two cities seeing red

LAKEWOOD – The village's new sewer lift station built on a grassy median in an upscale neighborhood looks just as out of place as it sounds, much to the annoyance of neighbors.

The 8-foot-tall power box and two large concrete pads with pipes, built in the median of Broadway Avenue at its intersection with Oxford Lane, is impossible to miss, even at a distance. Imposing on any day, it shines like a beacon on sunny ones, according to the neighbors, who also say that the constant hum of the machinery and the occasional whiff of sewage make it an offense to not only multiple senses, but also their property values.

And because the median marks the boundary between Crystal Lake on the south and Lakewood on the north, the village's decision has neighbors in two municipalities upset and wondering what Lakewood will do to remedy the situation.

Put into operation last month, the large box is impossible to miss from the home of Kirsten Kershaw, a pediatrician who has lived on the Crystal Lake side for 14 years. She sees it when she has her morning coffee – as for the smell, some days are better than others.

“The light just bounces off of it. It’s not camouflaged at all. Did someone think this was a good idea? It’s really hard to fathom,” Kershaw said.

The village built the station to move wastewater from the eastern part of town along the lake to its treatment plant on Haligus Road. Wastewater from the “East Sewer Area,” as village planners called it, had been taken care of by the city of Crystal Lake, but increases in rates and access to new funding made building a station to connect the area to Lakewood’s system economically feasible. The $2.4 million project was financed through a low-interest clean water program loan from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

Nick Backe, who lives on the Lakewood side, said neighbors were not informed of the extent of the project. He and his wife left for vacation in September, and came back to the finished product.

Over the past month, the power has gone out twice at the station, which besides the resulting smell, flashes a bright red light to let workers – and the neighborhood – know, Backe said.

“I understand why it’s needed, but where they put it, and how they set it up, is terrible,” Backe said.

A number of factors limited the placement of the station to somewhere along Broadway Avenue, said Interim Village Manager Shannon Andrews, who assumed the job after the station’s construction. For example, a high water table courtesy of Crystal Lake’s namesake lake a block to the north made several less intrusive sites financially impractical, and pumping a hole dry to install the station would have adversely affected the water flow of area residents on private wells.

“The location that [the village] selected was the most advantageous to be able to put the infrastructure in place and have it function as intended,” Andrews said.

However, village officials were unaware of how large the control box would end up becoming.

Upset neighbors in both municipalities met Tuesday evening with the Lakewood Village Board to discuss solutions, such as reducing the size of the control box or somehow disguising it, such as building something more aesthetically pleasing around it.

Village President Erin Smith said that the hourlong meeting was respectful and time well-spent, and that the possibility may exist to somehow relocate the box to a less-intrusive location, depending on what village engineers say.

“We are looking at whether or not we can change the size, or the location, of the box. That’s less likely than landscaping, but we’re not ruling it out,” Smith said.

Kershaw, who would like to downsize and move, said the station has made selling her home a harder task, and Backe raised the same concern. Several other homeowners who complained about the station did not want to be quoted, out of fear that appearing in a news story would scare off future potential buyers.

“It’s knocked the value of our houses down. We’re paying a high amount of taxes to look out the window and see this,” Backe said.

For Lakewood resident Deron Lichte, who lives down the block, the decision smacks of more than a little bit of hypocrisy – if a homeowner exceeded his or her building permit and constructed an eyesore that affected neighboring properties, he said, the village would order the homeowner to either fix the problem or tear it down.

He compared the village's "zero foresight" to High School District 155's decision to more than triple the size of Crystal Lake South High School's bleachers and put them too close to neighboring homes. The district was taken to court and lost, and had to scale back the expansion.

“I drive by it almost every day. It really is an eyesore. It was a really ill-conceived plan,” Lichte said.