This message has been cross posted to the following eGroups: EcoJustice and Coal .
——————————————-
Hi folks,
I have been reading through the L&P reports of work from the last year, and I wanted to share one of the reports with you. It is from the work done by Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and others on negotiating the coal plant closures of Fisk and Crawford. I realize this is not a breaking development, but hopefully there will be many more such closures to come and there is much to be learned from the work done in Chicago.

Subsequent to the closure announcement, the mayor convened a task force to establish recommendations for re-use of the Fisk and Crawford sites. The link to the report the task force authored is here:http://www.delta-institute.org/FiskandCrawford. We are fortunate to have LVEJO’s assessment of the task force process and associated, unresolved, issues related to the closure. I am going to paste the overview from their L&P report below. You can find their entire report by visiting the commons. (Go to commons.reamp.org, hover of “Learn” and select “view or add projects.” If it doesn’t load with the first click, click it again. The report is called “Chicago Coal Plants Negotiation.”)

I realize many of you may have already seen these reports or otherwise discussed the work being done, but because these reports point to some of the issues that will likely come up for future closures, as well as particular strategies to deal with the plants’ legacies, it seemed worthwhile to post.

LVEJO’s comments are below:

With the amazing win on the closure of the Fisk and Crawford Coal Power Plants in early 2012, our communities were caught off guard. We had spent the past 12+ years focusing on closure that we never thought about what happens when they close. So we soon after began working on next steps for the sites. A few days after the advanced closure the City of Chicago announced the creation of the Fisk and Crawford Re-Use Taskforce, in which three grassroots community based organizations made up ½ of the total body. Within the task force we were able to tackle many of the redevelopment concerns we saw in the horizon and created guiding principles for the future of the sites.http://www.delta-institute.org/FiskandCrawford

However, we were not able to reach consensus of any kind around the issue or remediation. At the heart of the debate was which comes first: redevelopment or remediation. As an environmental justice community and organization we wanted to ensure that we and the site did not become a legacy in our community. While we made great strides in developing principles for the redevelopment the heart of our work lays in the closure conditions of the site and understanding what kind and how much remediation is needed is any, how it will be handled, by who and who will cover the cost. This grant allowed us the opportunity to make this conversation happen and force the hand of the coal plant to be as transparent as possible in all aspects of the site.
Within the Task Force we voiced the need for Phase-1 and Phase-2 assessments from both sites and were meet with countless excuses and arguments as to why these could not be shared or and that they new ones did not exists for the sites . We were able to negotiate a Task Force release of a summary of the Phase I after many months of negotiation. However, because we were not able to reach consensus as a task force our final document for the first phase simply included one sentence on remediation that states: “no conclusion was reached on the issue of remediation”.

The community was not happy with this result. So in a partnership, with Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization, we began working with Prof. Hector Reyez, from the City Colleges of Chicago to do a soil sampling project in both communities. Prof. Reyes believed that because coal carries its own distinct features, soil sampling would be able to prove if dust and other pollution was carrying into the community’s soil if the breakdowns matched. LVEJO was able to partner with Little Village Lawndale Social Justice High School and Northwestern to have local students help in the planning, sampling and analysis of results using the facilities and partnering with students at Northwestern. We are anticipating receiving the result in February 2013.

With no clear answer insight for both community organizations and residents, we reached out to Region 5 of the EPA as well. Although by this time the coal plants had been offline, there were still some concerns regarding on-site activity. For example, the Crawford site stored its coal outside in a massive mound located closest to community member’s homes. For years our community has dealt with fugitive coal dust from the mound spreading into our yards, clothes when hanging outside and into our homes when our windows are open. Over the years we highlighted this issue as part of our Community Assets and Toxic Tour (CATTs). In 2002 we meet with Midwest Generation (MWGen) management on this issue. They understood the communities concerns and agreed to begin spraying down the coal mound on a regular basis to limit fugitive dust and adding a net to the property fence to also limit the fugitive dust. With hundreds of tours over the years and thousands of attendees walking by the site, Midwest Generation also decided to beautify that area by adding trees, shrubs and actual hills, to no avail, to hide the mound from street view.

When the plants closed, Midwest Generation decided to move all the coal from Crawford to their other plants. It took over 300 trucks to move the coal over the course of three nights. All of this was done with no oversight from the Illinois or Region 5 Environmental Protection Agency. This removal lead to community concerns around soil contamination at the base of the coal mound and fugitive dust impacting the community. Through a current LVEJO board member we also learned that Midwest Generations coal supplier also mined for Uranium and that there was a possibility that some of the coal over the years may have leached uranium into the soil. This combined with leaching from dirtier coal used before the passing of state’s SOx, NOx and Particulate Matter standards that required lower sulfur coal and the coal mound having been exposed to heat from the summer, rain, snow and other air pollution from surrounding industrial sites left us with serious concerns of what the soil conditions might be.

These concerns lead to a meeting with Region 5 of the USEPA. There we requested the EPA take action based on community concern. We soon began working with Region 5’s Air and Radiation Department. Based on our concerns the EPA decided to use their authority to request any and all Phase I and Phase II and related documentation. LVEJO and PERRO exercised there Freedom of Information Act rights soon after to ensure that the public was able to access those records as well. As expected, MWGen labeled there information as Confidential and the Region determined that it did not qualify and we have been able to access all the information. We are currently awaiting the release of stated documents to review and share with the community.
Due to conflicting information on behalf of Midwest Generation and their underground storage tanks at the Crawford site, the EPA was able to conduct a surprise inspection and gain access to the property. The underground storage tankers had in fact been removed and there was no leakage on site. The EPA then worked with the State and City to update their records accordingly. At the same time that these inspections were being conducted MWGen was also hit with a violation for coal ash. Even though there facilities were now closed there was evidence of coal ash leaching into the neighboring sanitary canal south of the Crawford Coal Plant. Although they tried to argue the validity of this claim they soon entered into agreement with the IEPA to mediate the situation.

At the same time that these conversations were happening MWGen also decided to cut down one of their two smoke stacks at the Crawford Plant. Although they did get all the proper permitting for this job our communities concern was amplified with this de- construction. The EPA was clear about only doing the air monitoring while the site was “active”, unfortunately, two months passed from when the chimney at the Crawford Plant had been trimmed down to when the air and radiation monitoring was done, in early December.

LVEJO and PERRO worked with Region 5 to share the testing procedure with as many community members as possible and share real time results from the sites. Community members were encouraged to go to the sites and see the testing first hand. We also worked with Region 5 to develop a web portal for the Little Village and Pilsen communities to be able to see all the sites being worked on in the community as well. As part of the outreach on the air monitoring and radiation LVEJO hosted a community meeting to share local monitoring procedures and updates. A commitment from the local high school soil sampling youth was made to share their results along with the EPA results for community members in early 2013.
This partnership allowed us to show the importance of community partnership.. Not only do we need outside entities like the EPA to help us but we also need them to work with local residents, especially high school students. The exposure to math and science allows young people to see that these are careers that are needed in our community and others like it.

——————————————-
Gail Francis
L&P Analyst
RE-AMP
(715) 945-2164
Ojibwa
ampanalyst@gmail.com
——————————————-