Friends and neighbors, if you care about Belleville’s historic landmarks and our local environment, please sign the petition to Save Mount Hope Cemetery.

The city of Belleville bought Mount Hope for $1 and plans to let an out-of-state developer clear-cut the cemetery’s woods for a solar farm. The project will materially interfere with the sanctity of Mount Hope, the quality of our local environment, and the future of Belleville. Until the damage is done, there is still hope.

Why now? We have a new mayor in office. Belleville’s voters delivered a mandate for change in the direction our city is headed. Sign the petition to urge our new mayor, Jenny Gain Meyer to do what’s right and stop the Mount Hope Cemetery Solar Project. 

Mount Hope is one of Belleville’s great hidden gems. What the city has planned for it is just plain wrong. It’s bad enough that any woods are being opportunistically cleared for solar, but this project is at a public cemetery. The project will impact the aesthetics of the backside of the cemetery and create a constant electrical buzz of undetermined loudness. At public meetings, it was disclosed that the cemetery’s own roads would be used for construction. Using the cemetery’s roads for business ventures would violate their sacred dedication to exclusive cemetery purposes. Our city purchased Mount Hope as a cemetery, and it's our city’s job to take care of the cemetery without allowing it to be exploited for profit. 

Not long ago, our city had a different vision for Mount Hope’s woods. The city’s most recent future land use plan from 2014 shows Mount Hope designated as a future park/open space. Other cities in Illinois have dedicated unused cemetery land as nature preserves. There’s even a state law that urges all public officials to dedicate such lands as nature preserves with specific provisions for cemeteries. Yet, someone looked at Belleville on a map without regard for the sanctity of Mount Hope or the ecological value of our publicly owned green spaces and decided that making money was more important than Mount Hope’s rightful future. 

Most of the people I’ve met at public meetings with family buried at Mount Hope are deeply upset about this plan. The public record shows that the majority of citizens who attended early public meetings came out against the project. This solar project is funded in part by a “community-driven” solar grant. There is a well-documented problem with these grants. These grants are supposed to help communities, but cities and solar companies have been using them for financial benefit while communities get the short end of the stick. 

The Mount Hope Solar Project is a bad deal for Belleville. It is a short-term gain for long-term pain. You can put a monetary value on the solar project, but what is the cost of putting another nail in the west end’s coffin? Over the years, due to inflation, the lease money won’t cover the costs of the cemetery’s maintenance. There’s an energy discount, but are we really to believe that we’ll all get a discount for 25 years because of a relatively tiny solar farm? Remember the last time our city promised energy savings, many people’s rates went up.

The cemetery will get new roads and some money. Taxpayers already cover this cemetery's upkeep – the cost is a drop in the bucket for the city's budget, and it's money well spent. Does this massive rustic cemetery really need new roads, or is this part of the deal because the solar construction will cause so much damage?

The ecological benefits of large tracts of undeveloped woods cannot be overstated. The Illinois Department of Natural Resources lists pressures on urban forestry as one of the Top Seven Threats to Forest Lands and Resources. Mount Hope’s woods are on the shores of the Schoenberger Creek (Schoenberger means “beautiful mountain”). Creekside woods support a large diversity of plants and animals due to their rich, moist soil. They also play a key role in flood control. At meetings, those of us who studied these issues in college were routinely dismissed.

Mount Hope’s woods were once cleared before, and it’s taken 40-50 years for nature to reclaim this tract of land. But even when its woods were cleared, the aesthetics of the cemetery were natural. The proposed solar farm location even used to have a large pond. Teenagers would swim in it on hot summer days, even if they weren’t supposed to. An old newspaper article shows the cemetery’s superintendent once warned residents that the pond’s ice was not thick enough for ice skating. Even today, adventurous residents have hiked through the primitive trails of Mount Hope’s woods. Mount Hope’s woods are not some random tract of land that can be disconnected from the cemetery - they are part of the cemetery and its history. 

Until the chainsaws start, there is still hope for this cemetery’s future. Please add your name to this petition and try to save Mount Hope.