Sore Throats On The South Side: Environmental Lawsuit Targets City Power Plants

Chicago Tribune Environmental reporter Michael Hawthorne reports that two South Side power generation plants,  sources of airborne mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide situated in residential neighborhoods, are now the subject of a new lawsuit brought by the Feds to crack down on coal plant emissions.

Fighting the plants has been the main target of activists in the Chicago neighborhoods most affected by the emissions – Little Village and Pilsen, both historically Latino in makeup.  The Chicago Clean Power Blog, a project of the Little Village Environmental Justice Association puts the fight in plain terms:

Have you ever driven on the Stevenson Expressway? If so, you have probably passed two of Chicago’s more antiquated relics…

They are easy to ignore if you don’t know what you are looking at—we aren’t talking about monumental architecture or the glories of ancient civilizations here. Just three anonymous smokestacks that signify a long-departed way of thinking about cities and energy.

Unfortunately, despite their antiquity, the Fisk and Crawford Generating Stations are “living history,” playing an active part in the present life and times of Chicago, and dangerously behind the times.

Living in the area where these plants operate, breathing their pollution is no picnic, I can report first-hand.  As so often happens in neighborhoods not blessed with higher rates of education, what wouldn’t be tolerated by a different constituency is accepted with a cough and a sneeze.

Could it be that the “gentrification” of Pilsen is a factor here?  Can it be that the steady influx of SUVs, top-tier baby strollers and condo developments neat Halsted and 18th helped tip the scales against complacency in the face of runaway free-market side-effects?

It wouldn’t be the first time.

Gapers Block : Mechanics : Chicago Politics – Environmental Lawsuit Targets City Power Plants.