Today
Omeshia Perez keeps her windows closed on the hottest of Chicago summer days. Her children stay inside as much as possible, and she has given up barbecuing. Carefree evenings in her backyard have been replaced by sleepless nights and cough-filled days. "Mom, am I going to die?" her three year-old asks.
Life has been hard on the Perez's ever since the coal piles near 100th St. and Commercial appeared across her alley several years back. Rolling hills of coal loom over the Calumet river while coal dust coats her windows, tinting the light inside. Seeping through the cracks, the dust covers everything from the kitchen to the bathroom, she says.
"What am I supposed to do?" Perez asks a panel composed of Illinois Environmental Protection Agency and Leucadia representatives at a hearing organized to evaluate the community's response to the company's plan to build a coal gasification plant on 18000 S. Avenue O. "Run?"
Leucadia is slated to operate on the site of the old LTV steel factory on the East Side, two blocks from the neighborhood’s only high school. Company officials assure their “green” operations will not harm students nor the community at large.
“It's newer technology but it's not necessarily green,” says Peggy Salazar, director of the Southeast Environmental Task Force, an organization dedicated to environmental issues in the 10th Ward..
Since the fall of 2011, eight Chicago organizations and the Sierra Club have joined the Task Force’s struggle against Leucadia to create the Environmental Justice Alliance of Greater Southeast Chicago.
Defining Clean
Chicago Clean Energy, LLC, a subsidiary of Leucadia National Corp, claims to stand by its name. Hoyt Hudson, project director for the coal plant, says that its use of steam for coal combustion instead of traditional methods and its carbon capture component makes clean energy from coal possible.
The fact that combustion also occurs underground, explains Hudson, allows the company to filter the gases and energy produced in the process and sequester CO2 emissions.
The plant is obligated by law to use at least 35 percent Illinois coal, un-burnable in most states due to its high sulfur emissions, supplemented by petroleum coke: a bottom-of-the-barrel by-product of oil refining, and other industrial waste to produce energy.
Yet local environmentalists like the Task Force and People for Community Recovery, based in Altgeld Gardens on the far South Side, along with national organizations like the Sierra Club are concerned about the cumulative effects of pollution.
“I will not say that [the coal plant] would be the dirtiest of sources,” said Becki Clayborn of the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club, “but I will say that any extra pollution will negatively affect the air quality and the respiratory health of the southeast side.”
Community members are also raising the question why coal gasification plants are being funded instead of innovative energy plants, like wind farms and solar panel sites.
Leucadia's use of pet-coke instead of renewable energy technologies, says Salazar, contradicts the project's name. “It isn’t clean energy.”
Brian Urbanzenki of the Respiratory Health Alliance of Metropolitan Chicago, and active in halting the construction of a gasification plant in Joliet several years ago, also has concerns about Leucadia.
“They want to make a plant that we don't need,” says Urbanzenki. “And they are going to make a lot of air pollution in an area where a lot of people have asthma in the process.”
Elements of Life
Many 'lifers' of the southeast side retell stories of oranged skies, soot-dusted cars, and cancer as common as the cold. The extreme pollution has earned the 10th Ward various nicknames: Slag Valley, Cancer Row, and Irondale.
An air monitor at Washington High School reminds residents of the effects of industrialization. In 2009, the monitor tied with the Pilsen/Little Village area for lead and arsenic levels, ranking second place in the state for these toxins.
The monitor also recorded the state's highest levels of cadmium, chromium, sulfates, and manganese.
Except for lead and mercury, none of these metals have a federal limit but recent research has demonstrated their negative health effects.
Cadmium is a recognized carcinogen and has been linked to osteoporosis. Manganese is a neurotoxin and causes psychological disorders. High concentrations of chromium lead to lung cancer.
The EPA currently tracks six air pollutants: ozone, particulate matter, carbon monoxide, nitrogen oxides, sulfur oxides and lead. Despite these regulations, Cook County has never complied with federal law limits for ozone and CO2.
Clayborn states that the gasification plant could create up to 6 million tons in CO2 emissions, the equivalent of adding a million new cars to the roadways.
Leucadia promises 1,000 temporary, mostly construction, jobs over three years, ending with the permanent employment of 200 individuals.
Residents of the southeast side say the area will need many more jobs to offset the economic and ecological depression brought by the boom and bust of industry.
Over 6,000 people are currently unemployed in the 10th Ward. “A couple hundred jobs in construction are a poor exchange for the damage [Leucadia] will create in 30 years,” says Urbanzenki.
Water Damage
Gas emissions are only part of the concern. The plant, because of its use of gasification, is estimated to pull about ten million gallons of water a day from the Calumet River, returning only about two million.
The economics of the project are also under scrutiny. The plant was originally vetoed by Gov. Pat Quinn in March, 2011, because of the extra cost for consumers and environmental concerns.
Natural gas prices have gone down due to new methods of extraction less expensive than gasification, says Urbanzenki, placing the economic burden on taxpayers. “Shareholders will get rich,” he says.
In order to meet the State's requirements, Leucadia plans to build an underground pipeline to transport the sequestered CO2 to be used in states as far away as Texas for enhanced oil recovery. This pipeline would further compromise watersheds throughout the U.S.
In July, 2011, with additional consumer protection laws and a promise to capture 85 percent of CO2 emissions, Gov. Quinn approved Leucadia.
Back to the Future
Leucadia is not the only heavy industry making its way to the Southeast side. The recent construction of an asphalt plant has its neighboring residents cursing the smell and plans to construct a mass compost site, exempt from CO2 regulations because it is 'green,' have local residents worried.
“Add to that all the emissions of all the vehicles need to hull in and hull out the materials and you see the trend of the new industry coming in,” says Salazar.
Much of the interest in the South East side, says Clayborn, is due to the area's industrial past. The eroding infrastructures of former coal, steel and coke plants present an economic opportunity for developers to “re-industrialize” the area without beginning from scratch.
Hudson says the site was chosen due to the “legacy of infrastructure” totaling over a million dollars left by LTV including train tracks, power lines, pipe lines and a 2000 ft. dock along the river.
Three major refineries, British Petroleum, Exxon-Mobile and Citco, can be found within 25 miles of the site, adding to the area's industrial appeal, and to the cumulative effects of contamination in the area.
“What I've been hearing,” says Clayborn, “is that the community was hoping that the area would be becoming less industrialized.”
Many life-long residents of the southeast side, like Richard Martinez Jr., view the incoming industry as unjust.
“The continued approval...of hazardous toxic polluting industry in our past, in our present, and scheduled for our future,” says Martinez noting the majority minority demographics of the area, “speaks to serious acts of environmental injustice, and smacks of environmental racism.”
As the city of Chicago modernizes former industrial corridors throughout the north and west sides, Omeshia Perez daydreams of clean air. “And no asthma!” her child chimes in.
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