Little Village Environmental Justice Organization

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.

Now the plants are relics, smaller and dirtier than modern coal plants. And Chicago gets its power from a grid that also draws electricity from other, larger coal-burning plants, nuclear plants, and wind farms in the region.

Under the 1977 Clean Air Act, the coal-fired plants were exempted from meeting the same requirements as new facilities because it was assumed they would soon close down anyway. But that day has yet to come, and a national report released by the nonprofit Clean Air Task Force in September says air pollution from the three is likely responsible for 66 premature deaths, 104 heart attacks, more than a thousand asthma attacks, and dozens of cases of chronic bronchitis in the Chicago area each year.

In 1999 ComEd sold Fisk and Crawford to the parent company of current owner Midwest Generation, and in 2002 Virginia-based Dominion Resources bought State Line. Since then, says Henry Henderson, midwest program director for the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)and former Chicago environment commissioner, unexpected regulatory and market developments mean they’ve gone from lucrative investments that could have generated enough revenue for modernization to outdated, marginally profitable “zombie facilities.”

“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.”

For the past decade Pilsen and Little Village residents and grassroots environmental-justice groups have been fighting to force Fisk and Crawford to either drastically reduce harmful emissions or simply shut down. They’ve tried protests, ballot initiatives, and even street theater to no avail. In 2002, alderman Ed Burke introduced an ordinance (PDF) that would have forced them to slash emissions or shut down; it died in committee. Continue reading What would it take for the Fisk, Crawford, and State Line coal-fired power plants to close up shop? And what would happen if they did?