Stop NorthPoint lawsuit – too soon or too late?

The thrust of Judge Ted Jarz’s decision on the Stop NorthPoint case is that you can’t call the future Compass Global Logistics Hub a nuisance until it actually becomes a nuisance – if it does become one.

NorthPoint Development has been trying to make the case all along that its industrial park would be the opposite of a nuisance and actually ease the truck troubles of the Joliet area by creating a better way to move trucks between intermodal yards and warehouses.

Opponents of NorthPoint’s planned Compass Global Logistics Hub scoff at the idea, pointing to the sheer number of trucks expected to operate when the park is built out – 10,700 a day.

That’s not enough to label the project a nuisance, Jarz said in his July 9 ruling to dismiss the Stop NorthPoint lawsuit, which was trying to stop NorthPoint from moving ahead.

“It’s going to be a constant procession of trucks,” Richard Linden, attorney for Stop NorthPoint, said at a June 10 hearing where the two sides argued the case.

Many say there is already a constant procession of trucks coming out of the Union Pacific and BNSF intermodal yards in Joliet and Elwood, and that may be the problem in trying to stop NorthPoint in court.

Jarz noted that the prospective nuisances raised by Stop NorthPoint include noise, pollution, traffic hazards and increased burdens on roads.

“However, the dangers, burdens, interferences and nuisances associated with increasing truck and vehicle traffic and continued industrial warehousing developments in Will County Illinois is now well-established over the last 20 years where many villages and municipalities have actually solicited the economic development associated with these projects,” Jarz wrote.

Stopping NorthPoint on the basis that it would be more of the same would be a legal basis for stopping operations at warehouses and intermodal yards that already exist, Jarz said.

Linden on June 10 argued that Stop NorthPoint should have an opportunity at a trial to make its case. That could be a basis for an appeal if one is made.

Jarz in his ruling sided with NorthPoint lawyers who argued that there is little legal precedent for stopping projects before they are built based based on allegations that they are prospective nuisances.

Two examples cited where it happened were Whipple v. Village of North Utica, a 2017 case involving a proposed silica sand mine where operations would include blasting, drilling and rock crushing, and Village of Wilsonville v. SCA Services, Inc., a 1981 case involving a proposed chemical waste dump.

Jarz pointed out that the specific warehouse and industrial uses inside the NorthPoint project are not yet known.

If his ruling stands, it would mean people who don’t want to see more trucks and warehouses will have to keep trying to convince public officials that it’s time to stop them. They are unlikely to get a court to do it.