Audience members offered a range of ideas at a city hearing last night
about what to do with the site currently occupied by the 108 year-old
Fisk coal-fired power plant in the Pilsen neighborhood, which closes
this September. Some of the ideas included a park, funeral home, public market, trade school,
and even a high school sports complex.
But all these visions will
be stymied if the Midwest Generation company cannot find a buyer
willing to not just build something new but also clean up, or remediate,
the site.
“There is a huge marketing job ahead of us,” acknowledged
Jean Pogge, CEO of the Delta Institute, the Chicago non-profit in charge
of a task force Mayor Rahm Emanuel created to determine the site’s future. Read more »
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office will hold two community hearings
this week regarding the Fisk and Crawford coal-fired power plant sites
on Chicago’s South Side. Midwest Generation is scheduled
to close the plants in September. Community excitement that the aging
plants are shutting down has partly given way to fears that the city and
Midwest Generation will never clean up or “remediate” the sites.
Findings of a new report warn that by the end of the century, as many as 150,000 U.S. deaths could be attributed to extreme heat caused by climate change if steps are not taken to limit current carbon pollution levels.
The 
With ties to Occupy Chicago about a dozen protesters covered
themselves in fake oil and performed a symbolic death in front of the
Canadian Consulate in downtown Chicago Thursday evening. 
The closing date for the Fisk and Crawford coal-fired power plants was pushed forward to this September, which provides a sense of urgency for Chicago’s Little Village neighborhood. The Crawford plant in Little Village was initially slated to close in December 2014, as set by a February 