With the serious business of electing a new president now past, it's time to again focus on the Calumet Region with a few snippets of interest.

All lanes of traffic came to an abrupt halt the other day along a busy arterial street in suburban Lake County. For once it was not pesky road repairs or an unfortunate accident but a gaggle of geese slowly crossing single file. We motorists continued to wait patiently for some strays to catch up. There was a lot of honking going on and it wasn't from the cars. Safely on the other side, all the geese were regrouping on the sidewalk as a young boy, to his delight, rode his bicycle straight through their scattering midst. This time two wheels proved more disruptive than four.

Just when we thought sky high gasoline prices would forever defy the laws of gravity, did we ever think we would see it drop to around $2? Even so, is it just my imagination that we're seeing fewer gas guzzlers like Hummers on the road?

Speaking of roads, last week I drove through a swampy wetland on Schererville's 77th Avenue, but the adventure was gone. The last time I traversed the street, known back then as the floating road, it was a bouncy ride akin to taking a slow motion roller coaster in your car. All the while, with a fair amount of trepidation, you cautiously eyed the brackish water brimming very close along both sides of the road and you wondered just how deep it was.

In the early 1990s Schererville's officials needed another east-west artery to handle its burgeoning residential developments. Except for several acres of swamp in its path, extending 77th Avenue was considered ideal. The U.S. Army Corps and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management put the clamps on draining the wetland and instead granted permission for the town to use the agencies experiment of laying giant 20-foot Styrofoam blocks to form a roadway.

The swamp was temporarily drained and the interlocking Styrofoam laid with the thought that the material was light enough to not sink into the muck. But the plan (not to make a pun) ran amuck. Jeff Huet, who in 2004 became director of Schererville's Public Works, remembers it took 60 days to initially pump the wetland dry, but years later as water levels rose and fluctuated in the swamp, the floating Styrofoam developed major cracks.

In 2005 state and federal agencies, foregoing the Styrofoam experiment, granted permission to build a bridge through the wetland to accommodate a traditional paved road. The blocks were lifted out and pilings driven down 80 feet down for the new bridge. There still remains a 60-foot section of the Styrofoam road which did not fail, but it's barely discernible to the motorists.

Now comes word that the preliminary engineering study for the proposed Illiana Expressway will be completed in time for the 2009 General Assembly session. The southern boundary of the route, linking Interstate 65 in Indiana to Illinois 394, runs near the Kankakee River marsh and wetlands. Will the Styrofoam experiment resurface?

The opinions are solely those of the writer.