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Spring
2002
Geoffrey
Petzel:
Inspired by The Fox
An
18-year-old from Carpentersville, Geoffrey Petzel already
has plenty of stories to tell the grandkids.
For
instance, there was the time in the spring of 1999 that
he discovered a nearby developer had improperly installed
silt fences and was pumping stormwater pond sediment into
a creek. "I noticed that the creek went from clear
to a muddy reddish brown," explains Geoff, a stocky
young man with glasses and a kind face half-hidden by a
baseball cap. "I like to research before I take action.
I found the source, took pictures, took water samples. When
the water settled in a liter bottle, there was about an
inch of sediment on the bottom."
Geoff
called the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the
Army Corps of Engineers, but in the end it was the Village
of Carpentersville that took action. They filed an injunction
that closed the site for three days, and the developer cleaned
up his act.
In
2000, Geoff had a similar experience when he noticed another
developer had filled in a seasonal creek that ran through
the site. Further exploration led him to discover seven
more violations. This time, Geoff called the village board
first, and attended a meeting of the village president,
the developer, and lawyers. When it became clear that the
developer wasn’t going to cooperate despite the photographic
evidence he provided, Geoff called the EPA, the Army Corps,
and finally the Kane-DuPage Soil and Water Conservation
District, who sent staff to the site and reported 12 violations.
The village filed an injunction that shut down work for
10 days. When the development reopened and Geoff returned
for a visit, he remembers with soft-spoken amusement, he
was escorted off the site.
In
2001, Geoff served as president of Citizens’ Advocate
Team (CAT), a local environmental group. "To have a
real impact you have to work locally," Geoff says.
"Community-based action is the most important thing
in terms of mobilizing people and in terms of really changing
things."
One
campaign took five years. As a boy of 13, Geoff volunteered
at Raceway Woods restoration workdays and heard a lot of
talk about conservation. He decided to convince the Dundee
Township Board to purchase a parcel of land near his home.
He attended his first board meeting in May 1997. During
the next four years, Geoff missed only one of 53 consecutive
board meetings. "I spoke at every single meeting,"
he says. "It got to the point where, during public
comment period, the president of the board would say, ‘Geoff,
do you have anything tonight?’" On January 9,
2002, the plan to purchase Geoff’s original pet parcel
was finalized.
Now
a freshman at Indiana University, Geoff plans to become
an environmental lawyer. He is a great admirer of the late
James F. Phillips, known for so long only as "The Fox"
(see our tribute). Geoff aspires
to follow in his footsteps, but "in a legal, socially
acceptable way."
—
Shanna M. McGarry
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