No to Coal

The Chicago City Council unveils legislation to clean up South Side power plants

Mindful Metropolis

There are killers loose on Chicago’s South Side. Two coal-fired power plants—located in the heavily Latino neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village, and owned by the energy company midwest Generation—spew soot and other pollutants into the air that cause approximately 41 premature deaths, 550 emergency room visits and 2,800 asthma attacks every year, according to a 2001 Harvard study. The Chicago Clean Power Coalition estimates that the Fisk plant in Pilsen and the Crawford plant in Little village have released 45,000 tons of pollution in the past three years alone.

Frustrated by the slow pace of action on the federal and state levels, Alderman Joe Moore of the 49th Ward teamed up with four co-sponsors in mid-April to introduce a Chicago Clean Power ordinance in the City Council. Moore led a spirited press conference on the second floor of City Hall on April 13, where he shared the microphone with Sandi Jackson (7th Ward), Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), Eugene Schulter (47th Ward), Environmental Law & Policy Center (ELPC) senior attorney Faith Bugel and Brian Urbazewski from the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. Nearly 200 environmental activists gathered with signs in support of the legislation.

“This ordinance will require Chicago’s two coal-fired power plants to clean up their act, to reduce the amount of particulate matter and carbon dioxide they spew into the air,” said Alderman Moore. “When this legislation passes, Chicago will do what no other large city in America has had the guts to do — clean up a dirty power plant within its jurisdiction, and thus protect the health and welfare of its residents.”

The lawmakers going to bat on behalf of Pilsen and Little Village residents represent a broad geographical area of the city, because pollution doesn’t stop at ward borders.

“The soot and the particulars go across this entire city, they go across the Midwest, they go across the entire world,” said Alderman Waguespack. “And that’s what we’re trying to stop here. We need to hold these people accountable now.”

One alderwoman viewed the effort to clean up the south side polluters not just as her legal responsibility, but as her parental duty.

“This is very personal to me because my two children have asthma,” shared Alderwoman Jackson. “So every time I drive, and I put them in the car with me, they’re struggling to grasp for breath. If we’re not fighting every day to ensure that the breath our children breathe is clean, then shame on us, shame on us.”

Predictably, Midwest Generation answered the proposed legislation with a press statement saying that current regulation standards were adequate and that more regulation would only cost jobs: “Given the existing state and federal regulations protecting health and the environment, an additional layer of regulation in Chicago is unnecessary and overreaching. … It’s only real impact will be to risk the shutdown of these plants, and as a result, reliability of the electric grid and the loss of hundreds of good union jobs.”

But the company has all but ignored a federal Clean Air Act provision requiring coal plants to upgrade their pollution controls, and a lawsuit filed last year by the Environmental Protection Agency could take years to resolve. Midwest Generation has agreed to install pollution control “scrubbers”, but not until 2015 in Pilsen and 2018 in Little Village.

“We are here to act more quickly, to fill in those gaps," said Faith Bugel of ELPC.

At the City Hall press conference, Alderman Moore lashed out at Midwest Generation for using scare tactics.

“Before they’ve even read one word of this legislation, the power company executives are already threatening us. They say, rather than clean them up, they’ll shut them down. They say workers will lose those good union jobs. … I’m sick and tired of corporate executives scaring people about job loss just to try and save the bottom line. I’ll be damned if I’m going to let some power company executive … divide the workers and their families from those of us who care about their health.”

Jacob Wheeler is a freelance journalist, editor and publisher who hails from the cobblestone streets of Copenhagen and the forests of northwest-lower Michigan, where he publishes the Glen Arbor Sun (GlenArborSun.com).