Canal closure has locals seething

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Hennepin festivities scheduled despite impending shutdown ROCK FALLS - Today, and again 2 weeks from now, there will be celebrations around the 101-year-old Hennepin Canal. Although they weren't planned that way, they may turn out to be farewell parties. The Hennepin Canal Parkway is one of 11 state parks slated for closure Nov. 1 as part of massive state budget balancing cuts and layoffs. Gov. Rod Blagojevich last week proposed closing the parks, as well as 13 state historic sites, and laying off more than 300 state employees to address a $1.4 billion deficit. The closures include Castle Rock State Park and Lowden State Park, both in Oregon, and the 105-mile Hennepin Canal Parkway, which includes the main and feeder canals. The main canal stretches from the Illinois river in Bureau County to the Mississippi River in Henry County. The feeder canal runs south from the Rock River in Rock Falls to the main canal. On Nov. 1, the parkway is expected be closed to all activity - biking, walking, fishing, boating, snowmobiling, cross country skiing and ice fishing, said Steve Moser, parkway site superintendent. Today, the Rock Falls Chamber of Commerce and the Rock Falls Convention and Visitors Bureau will be celebrating the canal's history. On Sept. 20, there also are plans to celebrate the opening of the pedestrian bridge over the upper dam on the Rock River between Sterling and Rock Falls, which will connect to the parkway. "We want this to be a positive, not a beginning of the end," said Steve Brenner, risk manager for the Sterling Park District, which helped organize the opening ceremony for the bridge. When the pedestrian bridge was proposed, one of its selling points was that it would connect to the canal. "Now we got a bridge to nowhere," said state Rep. Jerry Mitchell, R-Sterling, who has been a vocal critic of Blagojevich's cuts. "I guess we're a little like Alaska. ... We sold that whole idea of the walkway through [the Illinois Department of Natural Resources] ... that it's the perfect link to the Hennepin Canal. Well, now we've got a perfect link to a closed park." The city of Rock Falls also is looking for grant money to help build its bike paths on the east side of town, and planned to use access to the Hennepin Canal as a selling point. The city probably will have a harder time receiving grant money if the canal is closed, said Pam Erby, chairwoman of the Rock Falls Recreational Trails Committee. There have been many volunteers who have helped clean and promote the feeder canal, giving up their time and money, Erby said. "We do these things for the state, and we're being slapped in the face to have it taken away," Erby said. "... It's a passion, when you spend money out of your own pockets." Exactly how the canal will be closed is still being determined. Erecting signs and installing gates "will probably cost half as much as they are saving. It makes no sense," Mitchell said. "If you walk on the canal when it's closed, you're trespassing. So they're going to have the conservation police patrolling that. Conservation police have been cut back so bad, there's not enough of them to even do the job." Diane Bausman, executive director of the Blackhawk Waterways Convention and Visitors Bureau, recently said tourism, which is helped by the parks in the area, accounted for about $132 million in revenue for Carroll, Whiteside, Lee and Ogle counties. Her office has been flooded with phone calls about the impending closures, Bausman said. "It's extremely serious to our area," Mitchell said. "The tourism dollars and economic impact are going to be unbelievable."