When the Fisk, Crawford, and State Line coal-fired power plants were built roughly a century ago, they were gleaming symbols of progress and modernization. Fisk made history when it opened in Pilsen in 1903: its five-megawatt vertical steam-driven turbine was the largest of its kind. Crawford went online in 1924, and in 1929 State Line opened on a peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan Lake Calumet just over the Indiana border; one of its generating units was then the largest in the world. The three plants powered the striving metropolis, from its industry to its homes to the South Shore electric railroad that still runs right by the State Line plant.
“Midwest Generation paid so much for an antiquated fleet, and then the economics changed drastically,” he says. “Now they’re trying to squeeze out a modicum of return on a bad investment, and the return is being subsidized by people’s health, by asthma attacks and premature death.”
Ed Burke, sponsor of the previous ordinance, is one of the city’s most powerful alderman—the guy who pushed through the city’s smoking ban despite vociferous opposition from powerful restaurant and bar interests, not to mention the mayor. What makes Moore, whose failed causes include the foie gras ban and the big-box living wage ordinance, think he can succeed where Burke couldn’t?
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Moore’s ordinance takes a wider view, targeting the five million tons of carbon dioxide the plants emit each year. Carbon dioxide has no place-specific health or environmental effects, but it’s the primary driver of climate change. Moore’s ordinance, unlike Burke’s, also deals with what’s known as direct particulate matter, the fine particles emitted directly from the smokestacks. In June the U.S. EPA released a study finding that long-term exposure to particulate matter causes cardiovascular disease and is likely to cause cancer; even short-term exposure is likely to have cardiovascular and respiratory effects. “Now there’s more public awareness of the harmful effects of these coal-fired plants, the political climate is much more open to having this ordinance passed,” says Moore. “And people’s awareness of the hostile impact of global warming has increased tenfold since 2002.”
A Chicago ordinance wouldn’t affect the State Line plant, of course. Local and state regulators in Indiana have shown little interest in addressing its emissions, which are roughly equivalent to Fisk and Crawford’s combined. But on September 9, major environmental and health groups including the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago (RHAMC), the NRDC, and the Environmental Law and Policy Center gave notice of their intent to sue Dominion over opacity violations at State Line. (Opacity is a measure of the blackness of smoke coming out of the plant’s stacks, and reflects the amount of particulate matter, or soot, contained in it.) Dominion’s own records show that the plant has repeatedly exceeded legal opacity limits.
“After that, our state agreement—and pending new federal regulations—require additional reductions in sulfur dioxide emissions between 2013 and 2018. The dates required for equipment installations in the city are end of 2015 at Fisk and end of 2017 and ’18 on the two generating units at Crawford. These are long lead-time construction projects that require much advance design and engineering work, so ultimate decisions about whether we will do this work or retire the units isn’t immediate. . . . We will make decisions when required based on an assessment of the current market, which includes power prices, cost of retrofits, assessment of the competitive market, etc. We have set no firm deadline for ourselves in deciding on Fisk and Crawford.”
“Mayor Daley’s known as the greenest mayor in the country and yet we have these two major sources of air pollution, not only hurting and killing people right now, but also the two largest sources of carbon dioxide in the city and contributing to the ticking time bomb that is climate change,” said Brian Urbaszewski, RHAMC director of environmental programs. “He can leave a huge mark, a huge legacy for not only this generation but future generations in supporting an ordinance that leads to the cleanup of these plants.”
