Progress can be plain ugly (12/28/07)

The face of progress is seldom pretty, but this is downright ugly.

The long-delayed Indiana Department of Transportation project to improve Ind. 167 through Dunkirk is under way, and Dunkirk residents right now have to be wishing the whole mess could have been delayed forever.

Ind. 167 - Dunkirk's Main Street - has been scarred, and it's going to take years before it can fully recover.

The state project involves paving, new water and sewer lines, sidewalks, curbs and gutter, and street lighting.

It also involves the removal of dozens of mature trees that have lined Main Street for generations. By this week, the stretch from Highland to the downtown had been turned into a war zone, with stumps replacing trees. And the scene was the same south from downtown to the city limits.

Engineers for the project can point to dozens of reasons for taking the trees down, of course. Some were dead or dying. Others are simply in the way.

But that doesn't make the damage any less painful for those who care about the Dunkirk community.

Our understanding is that the project calls for a number - though not all - of the trees to be replaced. And the replacement trees will be infrastructure-friendly locusts that will never provide the canopy of summer shade.

That's small comfort.

A better response - one that Dunkirk should consider the moment INDOT's minions finish the job and move out of town - would be a concentrated, city-led program of restoring the Main Street landscape that has been lost. - J.R.[[In-content Ad]]