Last fall, Springfield officials unveiled a plan developed by consultants and largely paid for with federal taxpayer money. It would reimagine 1,000 acres of land owned by City Utilities at Lake Springfield as a nature-themed tourism district. After 10 years of development, the plan says Lake Springfield attractions could bring in some 800,000 visitors per year. They would spend hundreds of millions of dollars and create roughly 1,000 jobs.
But before Springfield City Council voted 9-to-zero to approve the plan on Monday night, they heard criticism from two members of the city’s own environmental advisory board — both of whom said they were speaking as individuals, not in official capacity.
Here’s Carol Hutcheson. She said the Lake Springfield Plan documents, which run more than 720 pages, hadn’t been publicized with enough time for people to read them.
She said, “If you want to know what we think, and if you want to vote on our behalf, we need to have an opportunity to review that and look at it. And you know what? We may love it!”
Here’s Alyssa Lindsay. She had concerns about water quality at Lake Springfield, which the Environmental Protection Agency added to a list of “impaired waters” back in 2020 due to excessive algae blooms.
She said, “The entire plan is based around an ecosystem: Lake Springfield. Any economic plan, or any economic development, needs a healthy system around that.”
Officials said Council’s vote adopting the Lake Springfield plan does not obligate the city to spend any taxpayer money at this time — while it does signify that the city’s highest elected leadership has acted administratively to accept the consultants’ plan.
