Geneva grants trail easement

After two meetings packed with debate and questions, Geneva Town Council approved Monday a resolution granting a 25-year easement to Adams County for a strip of land between Rainbow Road and U.S. 27.
The trail proposed for the land became contentious when residents around Rainbow Lake expressed concern about the potential for high E. coli levels from horse manure at the trailhead's parking lot.
That issue arose after the Adams County Health Department found that horse manure entering a storm drain at Dollar General, 650 N. Main St., was causing high E. coli levels in Rainbow Lake. Residents from around the lake attended Geneva’s Oct. 6 council meeting to voice their concern that, while that problem is being fixed, there’s still a threat from the trail’s parking lot, which will be near a drain and pump station that feed water to the lake.
Since then, the Rainbow Lake Homeowners Association and South Adams Trails have discussed a filtration system of plants that might help.
The “biosoil” system would use plants with roots 3 to 4 feet deep, which would take up nutrients in manure, explained Roger Kottlowski, a project manager with Commonwealth Engineers, the firm designing the trail.
“We’re still really disappointed in the fact that we were not given a chance to move the trailhead,” said Jim Arnold, president of the association. “We still want that trailhead moved. It’s in a horrible location.”
But moving it, as SAT vice president Randy Lehman explained at the previous meeting, would require Indiana Department of Transportation approval.
“Having worked with the state on grants, they are not flexible,” Bill Warren, a former Geneva clerk-treasurer, said this week.
Arnold said that, since the trailhead could not be moved, he had two requests, which were neither approved nor denied when council passed the resolution. He wanted Terry Smith, environmental director at the health department, to oversee the biosoil installation, and to have it in writing from council that the trailhead will have no buildings other than the already-planned restroom.
“How many more dots are you going to put on that paper?” asked Janice Dustman, referring to the restroom plotted on a map passed around.
Nothing further would be built without local input, Lehman said.
Arnold also asked for South Adams Trails to say it had been dishonest about the trailhead’s proposed location, noting that with many Rainbow Lake residents present, it would be “the perfect time for the committee to look around and say to the association members here, ‘Yes, we deceived you.’”
Warren said there had been a public hearing after the final location was decided, though as clerk-treasurer he found it can be difficult to make sure everyone affected by an issue is aware of meetings about it.
“I don’t think (deceiving you) was their intention,” he said.
Lehman told the association members that while he was sorry they felt deceived, “I don’t really feel that ever happened.”
Echoing Warren, he said any changes to the plan have been presented in public meetings.
“If people have not been coming to the meetings but the meetings were there, that is their own fault,” said Gary Hendershot, a Geneva resident who does not live by the lake.
He advised the council members to “vote with their conscience” and said that if the trail plans were public knowledge the easement should be granted, but if they had “dropped out of the air and shocked everybody” it should not.
The public meetings included two about an environmental study, Kottlowski said.
“INDOT didn’t feel originally that enough public participation was brought forward,” he said, so the department requested another meeting.
“I don’t care who was having meetings and we were supposed to know about them,” Rainbow Lake resident Mike Yates said. “The whole thing stinks of a nefarious motivation.”
Council members Dick Clutter, Jim Timmons and Agnes Schoch approved the easement with the understanding that South Adams Trails will pay for the biosoil. The $21,110 the group is paying in compensation for the easement will be earmarked for taking care of potential contamination problems related to the trail.
“I think it’s going to work out,” Dustman said after the meeting. “I just hope and pray that everyone lives up to what they were saying.”