ATVs, dirt bikes causing problems in Will

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

By Steve Schmadeke
Staff writer

Someone had dug out a dirt track, complete with jumps as high as 4 feet tall, on his property and some land belonging to the Will County Forest Preserve District.

Siwinski said the oval, once used by kids with radio controlled cars, now draws dirt bikers. Out of concern that someone could be injured, he alerted Mokena and forest preserve district police this summer.

"I don't want people to get hurt," he said. "They shouldn't be riding their motorcycles back there."

Dirt bikes and four-wheeled all-terrain vehicles are a growing problem in outlying areas of suburbia, particularly in towns such as Lockport, Frankfort, New Lenox and Mokena where new development abuts farm fields.

Law enforcement and government officials say they're starting to take a harder line against the recreational vehicles because of the damage they cause.

Homer Township leaders were angered this summer when ATV riders tore up grass on new soccer fields and caused an estimated $50,000 in damage to the township's prairie restoration area on 151st Street between Gougar and Cedar roads.

Gary Ward, the groundskeeper at the prairie site, said oval tracks and trails have been cut into the property and dirt mounds built that riders can jump from. He discovered the tracks after spraying to kill invasive plants. Once the plants died, Ward saw the tracks had been hidden by tall weeds.

"It costs taxpayers a lot of money to have kids do this," township Trustee Nancy Strack said. "We want to put people on notice that it's not cool. We will be calling police — this is not going to fly anymore."

When damage is done to farm fields, experts assess the damage in a new program started this year by the Will County Farm Bureau, said bureau manager Mark Schneidewind. If the loss is more than $500, the state's attorney office will upgrade a trespassing charge to a felony and confiscate the ATV or dirt bikes, Schneidewind said.

Police routinely take ATV nuisance calls, and the farm bureau has logged 48 complaints so far this year.

"They're a scourge," Bruce Hodgdon, spokesman for the Will County Forest Preserve District, said of the off-road vehicles. "We don't like them. They for years have been giving us all kinds of problems."

Hodgdon said he was unaware of the small track on district land near the Siwinski home but said "what you're describing is not rare."

He said a man rode his ATV over a prairie restoration project at the Raccoon Grove Nature Preserve south of Monee, destroying plants that took years to get established. And forest preserve district police recently arrested two teens who were riding on ATVs past the district's headquarters in the Sugar Creek Forest Preserve, Hodgdon said.

Contributing: Christina Biggerstaff

Steve Schmadeke may be reached at sschmadeke@dailysouthtown.com or (708) 633-5966.