ALAW is a self-described "grassroots" group organized in 1996 against McHenry County's stillborn 2020 Plan for development. It turned up again two years ago in the battle over a failed Kishwaukee Valley Water Authority to regulate water supplies in Boone, DeKalb and western McHenry County.
Berendt said she would post the names of ALAW members on the group's website except for two "silent members", one a government official and one a "prominent member of the community".
Click on the following for more of this story: FirstElectricNewspaper: Transparency Group To Reveal Membership
ALAW’s web site is: https://sites.google.com/site/landagricultureandwater/home To date no list of directors or members has been posted. The following description is taken from that site:
Welcome to the Alliance For Land, Agriculture and Water (ALAW). Our mission is to inform, educate and influence the use of area natural resources, for the purpose of preserving and protecting open land, agriculture and water.
We first organized in December 2005 to defeat a destructive, environmentally unsustainable McHenry County, Illinois, 2020 Land Use plan with our Fix-It-Or-Nix-It campaign. We went on to petition and campaign for the Kishwaukee Valley Water Authority (KVWA), and although the measure was defeated, we succeeded in raising awareness of the critically sensitive nature of our water supply. For more information on the Kishwaukee Valley Water Authority effort or the Fix-It-Or-Nix-It campaign, click on the links at the left.
As the County Planning Commission works to develop a 2030 Land Use Plan our task force, The McHenry County Green Alliance continues to monitor the 2030 Plan progress. The McHenry County Green Alliance is a task force of McHenry County residents who want to preserve the rich farmland and open space that defines the historically rural character of the McHenry County. In doing so, we will protect our future drinking water supply, which comes solely from underground aquifers.
The Planning Commission has turned over the plan to the Planning And Development Committee of the County Board where it will be subject to review and changes prior to one more public viewing, round of comments and then a vote by the full county board. For details on the recent changes including the reduction in population projections (which will save more farmland) please click the Green Alliance link. For text of Amendments submitted by the Alliance click here. We must continue to be vigilant and proactive. The global movement toward heightened awareness of the importance of farmland and water protection has not yet reached our county realtors, developers, builders and their attorneys.
ALAW's current project is the Conflicts Disclosure Ordinance that was submitted to the County board on Thursday, December 1, 2009. Right or wrong, the perception that public officials in this county control land use and other decisions for their own personal gain is becoming pervasive. We hope to put a stop to this with a requirement of full disclosure and recusal from discussion and voting on decisions that affect the owned interest. For more details and to view the ordinance click here or on Conflicts Disclosure.
Since submitting the Conflicts Ordinance, we have been asked "who is ALAW?" More specifically ‘who are these people?” We didn't know that our identities were secret, but will publish the Board of Directors list as requested. Current Board Members are Patricia Kennedy, Emily Berendt, Kim Willis, Joseph Daleiden, Richard Brook, Nancy Jung and John Kunzie.
As we did last year, we will be sending out a Candidates Survey in the next two weeks on environmental and related issues for County Board candidates in the February 2 primary election. We will publish the results and any endorsements we make on this site and follow up with a second survey for the general election.
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