Little Village, Chicago-At 11:00am today, six activists with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), Rising Tide North America, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Backbone Campaign were arrested after climbing the fence to Midwest Generation’s controversial Crawford coal plant in Little Village. The activists unfurled a 7′ x 30′ banner atop a 20 foot [...more]
CHICAGO | Residents of the city’s Southeast Side neighborhoods who oppose construction of a proposed coal gasification plant got to hear Wednesday from residents of another Chicago neighborhood where local residents are fighting against projects with potential for pollution.
Kim Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, told the more than 150 people who attended a forum organized by the newly created Environmental Justice Alliance of Greater Southeast Chicago she believes businesses are too willing to put potential polluters near ethnic enclaves.
“We are fighting for a better environment in our community,” Wasserman said, telling the largely Mexican-ethnic crowd that gathered at The Zone community center, 11731 Avenue O. “Your community is not alone.
“Other communities across the city of Chicago will stand up with you and fight to the end,” she said, telling the crowd of how her group has fought efforts to develop coal-fired power plants in the Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods on Chicago’s Southwest Side.
Organizers of the forum also were urging people to sign petitions that will be sent to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency that ask the state to install better-quality air monitors in the 10th Ward, and also to provide quarterly explanations to the alliance of what those monitors are finding on the Southeast Side.
Victoria Persky, of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said it was “a wonderful, wonderful petition because it would provide more information by which local people could address potential health risks from having decades of pollutants from the factories that existed throughout the area.
“Washington High School (one of the air monitor sites for the East Side neighborhood) does better than most, but it still has its drawbacks,” Persky said.
The Rev. Zaki L. Zaki, who helped to coordinate the forum, said, “We want the data so we know what is going on in our community.”
Also included in the forum was an interactive game developed by the Juan Diego Community Center in the South Chicago neighborhood, which allows its players to study data and learn where the potential environmental problems are in the Southeast Side neighborhoods
Chicago – Environmental groups on Tuesday presented a petition with more than 6,000 signatures urging Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel to support a proposed ordinance that would control the emissions from two coal-fired power plants that spew tons of contaminants into the air in Latino neighborhoods.
Some 50 members of the Chicago Clean Power Coalition formed a human billboard in front of City Hall with a message telling Emanuel, “it’s time” to stop using coal to generate electricity.
The environmentalists are demanding an ordinance directed at the Fisk and Crawford plants, located near the Latino neighborhoods of Little Village and Pilsen, respectively.
Both plants are owned by Midwest Generation.
“Our neighbors are getting sick with the pollution produced by the generation of energy that is sold in other states, and the economic benefits of which are going to end up in the pocket of the main firm in California,” said Maria Torres, an organizer of Pilsen Alliance.
The coalition, which includes the Sierra Club and other entities, notes that Fisk, built in 1903, and Crawford, which dates from 1924, “are subject to more lenient federal pollution limits because of their age.”
The environmentalists cite a 2001 Harvard University study which found that pollution from Fisk and Crawford could be responsible for 42 premature deaths, 66 heart attacks and at least 2,800 asthma crises annually.
Chicago’s proposed Clean Power Ordinance has not been resolved despite months of discussions within the 50-member City Council. The measure recently was returned to the Council’s agenda on the initiative of Aldermen Daniel Solis and Joe Moore, but no date has been set for a vote on it.
The environmentalists noted Tuesday in a press conference that Emanuel supported the goals of the ordinance.
Kim Wasserman-Nieto, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, demanded the mayor’s intervention to “put this problem behind us once and for all.”
Rose Gomez, a Sierra Club member who described herself as “born and raised in Little Village,” said that for as long as she can remember “the specter of the polluting plants has threatened the lives of the residents.”
“I’m tired of the excuses of the politicians and of more than a decade of fighting Midwest Generation,” she said.
The ordinance under study would obligate the plants to stop burning coal to generate electricity and to switch over to natural gas or stop operating.
It establishes that if an installation has a quarterly emissions average that exceeds the federal and state limits, it will be fined up to $10,000 and will have to suspend its operations until pollution controls are installed to ensure it complies with the standards.
Midwest has responded that the ordinance is not necessary because new rules regulating air quality in Illinois and the implementation of reductions in the plants’ emissions are already in effect.
Year after year, the two remaining coal-fired power plants in Chicago emit 260,000 pounds of soot, more than 17,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and 200 pounds of mercury, according to data by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Today, a coalition of Chicagoans delivered a message to Mayor Rahm Emanuel asking him to end the life-threatening pollution once and for all.
Year after year, the two remaining coal-fired power plants in Chicago emit 260,000 pounds of soot, more than 17,000 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide, and 200 pounds of mercury, according to data by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
Residents of the Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods, where the two plants are located, have long spoken out against them. The Chicago Clean Power Coalition, comprised of local organizations and activists, realize they possess a unique opportunity with the new mayor.
Sporting green organizational shirts and face masks the coalition made a human billboard reading “Mayor Emanuel: Move Chicago Off Coal” and “El Carbon Nos Mata a Todos.”
After the demonstration, supporters made their way up to the fifth floor of City Hall and presented 6,141 signatures from Chicago residents petitioning the mayor to take action. A portrait portraying Mayor Emanuel as a superhero accompanied the stack of petitions with a note on the back reading “May Emanuel, Be Our Superhero retire the Fisk and Crawford power plants.” A staffer in the mayor’s office happily took possession of the items and said they would be put on his desk.
Here’s video of the exchange:
Green energy and environmental organizations find themselves with growing support to achieve just that goal. During the run-off elections last spring, Alderman Danny Solis (25th) changed his long-held position of opposing the Chicago Clean Power ordinance in face of a tough opponent who hammered him on the issue. Solis now sides with Alderman Joe Moore (49th) and the 34 other aldermen who have signed on as co-sponsors.
At the reintroduction of the ordinance, Emanuel said: “We are paying a health care cost as a city because of the plants. I want them as a company to be a responsible citizen to the people of the city of Chicago.”
The ordinance would more than likely be challenged in court by the owners of the two power plants, Midwest Generation, a subsidiary of Edison International. A move that would further delay the closing of the plants, which sells the energy produced out of state. Even still, there is a Home Rule provision in Chicago that should allow the city to enforce the ordinance on the company. Midwest Generation was sued by the Department of Justice and the state for violating the Clean Air Act at six power plants, including Fisk and Crawford, back in 2009.
“For over a decade, people in Chicago have been standing up to Midwest Generation and fighting for clean air and healthy communities,” said Rose Gomez, a Sierra Club Lead volunteer. “ Our mayor now has the opportunity to support Chicagoans and our families and hold them accountable for the toll that these plants have taken on the health of our children.”
Recent research from the Clean Air Task Force found that the combined pollution from the coal power plants causes 42 premature deaths, 66 heart attacks, and 720 asthma attacks each year. Furthermore, a staggering one in four Chicagoans live within a three-mile radius of the plants, according to the coalition.
“We live in the shadow of these plants every day. As a mother of three, two with asthma, we pay the price on a daily basis in medication, lost school days, lost work days and we are sick and tired of pollution being put over the health of our families,” said Kim Wasserman-Nieto, executive director of Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.
In May, Greenpeace activists staged a protest by climbing up the smokestacks of the Fisk power plant. During their 26-hour stint, they painted ‘Quit Coal’ on the stacks. Both power plants are more than 50 years old and are currently undergoing renovations to meet Illinois environmental regulations by 2012 and 2013 for nitrogen oxide and sulfur dioxide.
Images & Video: Aaron Krager
http://progressillinois.com/posts/content/2011/09/20/thousands-chicagoans-ask-emanuel-end-coal-plant-pollution
Apr 302011
Little Village, Chicago – At 11:00am today, six activists with the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO), Rising Tide North America, Rainforest Action Network (RAN) and the Backbone Campaign were arrested after climbing the fence to Midwest Generation’s controversial Crawford coal plant in Little Village. The activists unfurled a 7′ x 30′ banner atop a 20 foot tall sprawling coal pile that feeds the power plant, which reads: “Close Chicago’s Toxic Coal Plants.”
The groups are demanding the closure of the plant just one day before the much-anticipated Clean Power Ordinance hearing, which could force the plant to undergo major modifications to upgrade their pollution controls.
Photo gallery:
http://rainforestactionnetwork.smugmug.com/GlobalFinanceCampaign/
Chicago-Crawford-Coal-Plant/16520083_4UzpH
LVEJO, Rising Tide and RAN Chicago are calling for the closure of Chicago’s two toxic coal-fired power plants, the Crawford plant in Little Village and the Fisk plant in Pilsen, both owned by Midwest Generation. These two plants are Chicago’s largest sources of particulate air pollution. In the last three years alone, these plants combined have spewed over 45,000 tons of pollution into the air, compromising the health of all Chicagoans.
“As a physical education teacher I am alarmed at the high number of students with asthma due to these toxic coal plants. Every class I teach has four to seven students who suffer from horrifying respiratory illness. I can no longer sit back and watch my students and my community being sacrificed for dirty coal,” said Gloria Fallon, a Chicago public school teacher and life long south side resident who participated in today’s protest.
Pollution from these two coal-fired power plants costs neighboring communities $127 million per year in hidden health damages, according to a report released in October, 2010 by the Environmental Law and Policy Center. Particulate matter from the Fisk and Crawford coal-fired power plants impairs visibility and contributes to lung cancer, heart attacks, premature deaths, acute and chronic bronchitis, emergency room visits, asthma and other respiratory illnesses.
Those who live closest to these plants bear the heaviest brunt of these diseases. According to a September 2010 study conducted by the Clean Air Task Force, air pollution from Fisk and Crawford causes more than 40 deaths, 720 asthma attacks and 66 heart attacks annually.
Photo gallery:
http://rainforestactionnetwork.smugmug.com/GlobalFinanceCampaign/
Chicago-Crawford-Coal-Plant/16520083_4UzpH
Rising Tide North America & LVEJO Photo Coverage
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Photo gallery:
http://rainforestactionnetwork.smugmug.com/GlobalFinanceCampaign/
Chicago-Crawford-Coal-Plant/16520083_4UzpH
“The struggle over these ancient coal plants, Fisk and Crawford, has gone on for too long. Politicians have stalled and delayed any attempt to clean up these dangerous and outdated plants while people are getting sick and dying,” said Ian Viteri, the clean power organizer with Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and a life long resident of Little
Village. “It’s time to stop playing nice with the politicians in city hall and start taking action in the street.”
The Midwest Generation plants have avoided anti-pollution regulations for years. Fisk started generating electricity in 1903 and was rebuilt in 1959; Crawford’s latest turbines were installed in 1958 and 1961. Tomorrow’s hearing on the Clean Power Ordinance is a significant step in determining the fate of these two relic plants. The ordinance, if passed, would force Midwest Generation to undergo major modifications to upgrade their pollution controls. Local groups, however, are calling for the plants to be shutdown immediately, finding the bill to be too little too late for plants that have already caused too much illness and death.
Fisk and Crawford are two of Chicago’s largest contributors to climate change. In 2007, they emitted nearly five million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) combined into the atmosphere. This is equivalent to the emission from 872,042 cars together. Nationally, coal-fired power plants are the leading cause of global warming pollution in the United States.
Apr 302011
LVEJO, Rising Tide and RAN Chicago are calling for the closure of Chicago’s two toxic coal-fired power plants, the Crawford plant in Little Village and the Fisk plant in Pilsen, both owned by Midwest Generation. These two plants
are Chicago’s largest sources of particulate air pollution. In the last three years alone, these plants combined have spewed over 45,000 tons of pollution into the air, compromising the health of all Chicagoans..…Read Entire Article
LVEJO, Rising Tide and RAN Chicago are calling for the closure of Chicago’s two toxic coal-fired power plants, the Crawford plant in Little Village and the Fisk plant in Pilsen, both owned by Midwest Generation. These two plants
are Chicago’s largest sources of particulate air pollution. In the last three years alone, these plants combined have spewed over 45,000 tons of pollution into the air, compromising the health of all Chicagoans.…Read Entire Article
