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 »
The recent legislative fight in Washington to keep the interest rate
on federally-subsidized Stafford loans from doubling also provided an
unexpected victory for those concerned with keeping invasive species out
of the Great Lakes.
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.
Recent testing of waters near Lake Michigan has netted genetic
evidence of the presence of Asian carp for a third consecutive year.
The state’s recent legislative session brought about environmental
successes from Cook County’s landfill-expansion ban to dry cleaning
chemical restrictions, but environmental advocates in the General
Assembly and members of the 
The Illinois spring legislative session ended last night, meaning state lawmakers will meet just once again the rest of the year, for a brief fall veto session, though Gov. Pat Quinn is expected to convene lawmakers this summer to pass pension legislation.
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.