Henry Henderson's Blog: Curbing Pollution

Hope for an Effective “Great Lakes Action Plan”

2010-02-22T21:36:40Z

The very able and impressive Lisa Jackson, Administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency, chose this Sunday morning to issue a 5 year “Action Plan” to restore and protect the Great Lakes. The EPA announcement assured us that the “Action Plan” is not “intended to be another grand statement about the Great Lakes.” Rather, it “is intended to ‘operationalize’ those [grand] statements.” (USEPA website releasing the Action Plan http://greatlakesrestoration.us/?p=445)

Specifically, the Action Plan intends to build upon the $475 million provided for a Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) in the FY’10 federal budget, and envisions this as part of a $2.2 billion amount to be spent for Great Lakes restoration and protection to implement the Action Plan. The monies will be directed at several clear areas of need:

reducing and remediating toxic pollution in the Lakes,
restoring the health of near-shore environments (read: make it safe to use the beaches—see NRDC Testing the Waters reports),
protecting wildlife and critical habitat,
establishing “zero tolerance” for invasive species, and
erecting a structure for accountability, monitoring, outreach and strategic partnerships.

There are several initial reactions to the Action Plan.

First, GLRI funding itself is obviously necessary for the task before us, but funding in and of itself is not sufficient.

Second, two elements of the release of the Action Plan suggest that the need for reform of “Governance” is understood and will be addressed.

Third, we have reason to be concerned about the adequacy of their “zero tolerance” for invasive species (and Asian Carp, in particular).

Here are the details for each:

1.) Funding

As we have previously commented about GLRI funding, our primary deficit in the Great Lakes is a "deficit of effective governance"---and reform of governance is essential if we are to effectively use the monies appropriated (and already being spent) and really restore, protect and improve the Great Lakes ecosystem and economic community. A plethora of governmental bodies, agencies, interest groups, policies, programs and priorities are involved in multiple areas of Great Lakes environment and economy---constituting a complicated “governance” structure for the Great Lakes. There are areas and activities where the governance is effective. However, the multiplicity of efforts and institutions is frequently redundant, fragmentary and even contradictory; characterized by overlaps, conflict and significant gaps that are harmful to the Great Lakes and the communities that depend upon the health of the Lakes. For instance, lack of coordination and understanding of the relationship between environmental and economic activities in the Great Lakes Basin persists, presenting a major challenge of Great Lakes governance that must hold the ecological and economic nature of the Great Lakes in balance. The need to resolve governmental fragmentation has long been recognized, and the Action Plan presents an opportunity to establish better governance of the Great Lakes.[1]

2.) Governance

The Action Plan itself sets forth as a key objective the establishment of a structure for “Accountability, Education, Monitoring, Evaluation, Communication and Partnerships,” with a number of clear deliverables tied to specific timing and outcomes identified as key to the Plan. This is welcome and helpful---particularly the “accountability” and “partnership” elements, which are central elements of improved governance.

It is worth noting in this context, that the Great Lakes Action Plan is the latest in efforts by the Obama Administration to bring greater clarity to the federal government’s essential role in participating in the governance structure of our Nation’s great waters. In June, the President set out to create a national policy for our oceans and Great Lakes (think Clean Air Act for our Air) that will create a unifying national policy to guide management for these resources. Right now, they are currently governed by, basically, chaos – with more than 20 agencies enforcing 140 laws, each with different goals and often conflicting mandates. This policy gives us a better system for coordinating agency work to tackle the challenges in the Great Lakes – from invasive species to sewer pollution. And as part of this policy, after numerous public discussion and stakeholder meetings, we’re hoping the President will make the policy official in the near future by issuing an Executive Order.

It is of the highest importance that the critical role of the numerous federal agencies, programs and laws are properly integrated into and coordinated with the numerous state, local and civic policies, programs, authorities and culture that make up the “governance structure” determining the fate of our great waters. (See, Oran Young, (ed), Global Governance, Cambridge, MIT Press, 1997.) The Great Lakes Action Plan, and the National Ocean and Great Lakes policy in the works, reflect this understanding and present important efforts to move forward in this area.

Perhaps less tangible for some, but extremely important for our view, is the prominent involvement of Administrator Jackson in the Action Plan. It is profoundly important to have the energetic intelligence and institutional sophistication of EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson directly and actively engaged in Great Lakes policy and governance---we need her capacity for engagement and leadership if the Action Plan is to actually help move the disparate and often fragmented elements of federal, state and local governments into a more effective shape and coordinated web of activity.

We also have reason to believe that Administrator Jackson will bring the appropriate appreciation for, and understanding of the essential role of citizen engagement and advocacy that is a central part of getting things right in the Great Lakes. As Administrator, Ms. Jackson has demonstrated a firm understanding and commitment to the role of citizen engagement in environmental policy in matters of Clean Air and Clean Water issues, where citizen participation in the development and enforcement of environmental rules, regulations, principles and standards.

In the Great Lakes context, Administrator Jackson directed USEPA to respond the citizen group challenge to EPA’s inadequate ballast water regulation, as set forth in lawsuits filed by NRDC, NWF and others. However, this direction has not yet resulted in firm action to redress the failures of the current EPA ballast water permit regime. While we remain hopeful that our ongoing discussions with EPA will bear fruit, but even now – over one year after Jackson’s confirmation – EPA has yet to make any definite public announcements about setting stricter standards on ballast water, and the Great Lakes and other waters of the United States remain under attack from the continued release of invasive species and other pollutants from ballast water and other sources. Which brings us to the next point about the Action Plan: invasive species.

3.) Asian Carp!

The Action Plan repeatedly commits to a “Zero Tolerance” standard on invasive species in the Great Lakes. This is indeed a welcome commitment. However, the details of what this commitment means, especially with regard to the current assault on the Great Lakes from Asian Carp through the Chicago Waterway System is not only unclear, but is simply unhappy-making. The governmental response to the Asian Carp assault has been an iconic demonstration of the “deficit in good governance” in the Great Lakes, characterized by a muddling, bungling, unresponsive, secretive, lackadaisical, fragmented approach and fundamental lack of imagination. While the Action Plan refers to the Asian Carp threat, it adds nothing at all new or hopeful to the status quo, providing a little “inset” summarizing the unfocused efforts undertaken to date, and promising more of the same. This is certainly nothing in the way of “operationalizing” a “Zero Tolerance” approach to a very serious invasive species, whose eDNA has already been found in the Great Lakes.

This raises a broader concern about the Action Plan’s commitment on invasive species more generally. While the Plan announces a “zero tolerance” approach, noting the ongoing, persistent threat invasive present to the ecosystem, it in fact only commits to a modest interim goal: reduction of new introductions by 40% by 2014.

The Plan does not explain how either the modest interim goal of 40% reduction was set, or how that interim goal or the ultimate “zero tolerance” goal will be achieved, except through vague references to development of new technology. There’s no clear explanation of how EPA and the federal agencies propose to get there, let alone a discussion of the Clean Water Act requirements will be actualized regarding ballast water discharge, or how to address the serious imminent threats channels such as the Chicago Waterway System.

Moreover, the interim goal of 40% reduction by 2014 of new introductions of invasive species is far too weak. According to an analysis by the Coast Guard that accompanied its recently proposed rule, full implementation of IMO ballast water treatment would reduce new introductions by over 60%. So EPA’s proposed interim goal doesn’t even include full implementation of the Coast Guard’s proposal. And, the IMO standards called for by the Coast Guard rule are themselves too weak, in that they would still allow for a significant risk of new invasions.

Last August, NRDC filed comments authored by my colleague Thomas Cmar, on a draft outline of the “Action Plan.” In part, our comment provided:

Further detail and transparency are needed, however, with regard to the Agency’s plans to prevent the further introduction and spread of invasive species through vessels’ discharge of ballast water. . . . U.S. EPA’s current regulation of ballast water discharges under the Vessel General Permit does not live up to the requirements of the Clean Water Act. . . . In addition, U.S. EPA has not adequately explained how it intends to coordinate with the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Maritime Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service, all of which have important roles to play in the federal government’s response to the invasive species problem. Although the draft Great Lakes Multi-Year Restoration Action Plan Outline proposes a number of ambitious actions with regard to invasive species, and the President’s budget envisions the expenditure of large sums of money on different programs at different agencies, the draft outline does not explain how these various programs fit into a coherent whole. Nor does the draft outline fully account for the important roles of state and regional entities. Finally, the draft outline does not explain what U.S. EPA believes to be the ultimate goal for ballast water regulation in the Great Lakes or lay out specific interim steps to meet that goal.

While there are elements of the Action Plan outline that respond to our critique of the draft, it is fundamentally inadequate on the major issue of invasive species, which in its own terms it recognizes as a major, immediate threat to the health safety and well being of the Great Lakes. This is an issue of great significance to the Great Lakes region and that EPA must act to address it. An “Action Plan” that sets a rhetorical goal of eliminating invasive species introductions, but fails to explain adequately how that goal will be accomplished, is not an adequate response. And it is not “good governance” on this critical issue.

4. Conclusion.

We are heartened that Administrator Jackson herself announced a new Action Plan for coordinating federal activity in the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, and thereby giving greater coherence to the governance structure needed to restore the Great Lakes. Administrator Jackson has shown a strong interest, willingness and ability to get into the details of policy and programs, and make the promise of government actually contribute to practical realization of goals. We look forward to working with her to make the promise of restoration real.

However, real gaps and problems in moving forward remain, and are reflected in the very heart of the Action Plan itself, especially regarding invasive species.

Given that the Action Plan was released on a Sunday morning, perhaps I can be forgiven for reflecting on the Epistle to the Hebrews, which comments that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the assurance of things not seen." (Chapter 11, verse 1). In this spirit, we fervently hope that the promise inherent in Administrator Jackson’s release of the Great Lakes Action Plan comes to fruition with her direct engagement in its further development and practical implementation.

Windiest in the "Windy City"? MWRD

2010-01-29T02:28:29Z

You’ve probably heard that “The Windy City” nickname was coined for Chicago’s “big talk,” rather than any meteorological phenomena. But this week the regional water regulators may have taken this to a wacky new level.

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District is an independent, elected regional government that oversees the water infrastructure for an 800+ square mile area around Chicago. This week, a pair of stories showed the District to be the windiest folks in the Windy City by highlighting the District’s penchant for over the top gloom and doom rhetoric. (Some would say this is particularly brutal criticism coming from an environmentalist!)

Cleaner River = Global Warming?

Last week, that was the Chicago Tribune's front page headline for an article outlining the MWRD’s newest outlandish reason for fighting tooth and nail to keep Chicago as the only major city in America that does not disinfect its sewage. I’ve said it before and will say it again, they dump human waste into the Chicago River -- and do not disinfect the intestinal miasma. And they have spent millions of dollars to fight for the right to keep doing it over the objections of the City of Chicago, Illinois EPA, USEPA, and groups like NRDC, Friends of the Chicago River, Open Lands, ELPC and Alliance for the Great Lakes.

Their normal excuse for the dumping is the high cost associated with the technology (in reality the costs translate to less than $2/household/month). In an amazingly provacative attempt to change the topic the District has decided that its resistance to disinfection is rooted in concern for the environment. We are fighting global warming… As their thinking goes, disinfecting the water will require additional electricity and that will increase their carbon footprint.

We haven’t been able to get a look at the data that they are basing this on to see what assumptions underlay their numbers. We’ve been told that, contrary to media reports, a formal report has not been drafted. I am sure you don’t need anyone to point out that this is just a wildly disingenuous charade---but it is an open question as to whether this was done for amusement alone or because they think anyone will believe it.

If MWRD really wants to do right by its ratepayers, they should embrace energy efficiency so that they can both reduce their carbon footprint AND save ratepayers cash.

Stopping Asian Carp = Destroying the American Economy?

The District is also a defendant in the Supreme Court case over Asian carp, as they oversee the waterway that currently serves as the highway to the Great Lakes for the invasive fish. Their brief to the Court is a fascinating read. In it, they question the science being used to track the carp’s movement (which has been endorsed as “actionable” intelligence by federal scientists), belittle the problem’s severity since a few of the fish have been found elsewhere in the Lakes, and threaten that Chicago would be swamped with a multi-billion dollar flood (despite that fact that Michigan expressly asked that measures be taken to prevent this) should they be forced to action.

You might have caught this great piece on PBS NewsHour with more doom and gloom talk from MWRD, along the same lines:

But, hey, these guys have been busy. Last week, I testified at the Illinois Senate’s Environment Committee hearing on this subject. So did the District. Not only did they trot out the same doomsday and denial points, but they also noted that the American economy is reliant on the goods that flow through the Chicago Diversion and down the Illinois River. Yikes! Who knew that the world revolved around MWRD?

The problem here is that the folks at the District seem to be in love with their own water system. A century ago when we reversed the flow of the Chicago River and set up the infrastructure that is still in use today, it was cutting edge stuff. But not today.

We like to talk about Chicago as a world class city and a hub of innovation. But the status quo being championed by MWRD is far from it. What we are seeking isn’t innovation, but problem solving. Significant upgrades are required, but preventing more harmful pathogens from hitting Chicago’s waterways and Asian carp from the hitting the Great Lakes are part of giving this region the modern water system it deserves.

But don’t try telling that to Metropolitan Water Reclamation District. A cold wind blows…

Small Plans: Why Illinois' Asian carp response has Daniel Burnham spinning in his grave

2010-01-06T23:37:04Z

Chicago has a secular patron saint. His name is Daniel Burnham. Around here, we quote him ad nauseum.

“Make no small plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood.”

These are words that have guided Chicago for over 100 years. They helped make the city one of the fastest growing cities in the world, and informed the 1907 Plan of Chicago that directed that growth toward innovative and integrated open space, transportation and sustainable resource commitments. The words reflect the Chicago “I Will” spirit that rebuilt a torched metropolis after the Great Chicago Fire. And it is the mindset that led Chicago to reverse the flow of a river to protect the Great Lakes from pollution released in the metropolis.

And that is why Daniel Burnham is probably spinning in his grave today.

The State of Illinois and federal government are confronting one of the region’s biggest problems and potential opportunities and choosing only the small plans: half-measures like a failed electric fence that they should already know will not be effective.

“The status quo is OK by us and good enough for everyone else”--that is the signal coming from new filings by the state and the federal governments before the Supreme Court over the Asian carp crisis. The basic position is: “Yes, yes, everyone involved is concerned about the potential devastation of Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes. But to take immediate action would be radical and dangerous.” In response to the request of Michigan, joined by other Great Lakes states, that the problem of Asian Carp invasion be addressed with the urgency it deserves, Illinois and the federal government assert that it is completely inappropriate and should be rejected out of hand.

Over the weekend, the New York Times’ excellent local reporter Monica Davey filed a story focused on how the Asian carp crisis, and Michigan’s suit to force the closure of locks on the waterway system that spawned Chicago’s reversed river, threatens the unity that governments in the region had recently forged to protect the Great Lakes. I think she missed the big point. There is unity. Ohio, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Indiana, New York, and the Canadian province of Ontario all support or have joined Michigan’s suit. And, along with the State of Illinois, all signed the recent Great Lakes Compact which specifically notes that any threats from the Chicago Diversion (the waterways in question) to the health of the Great Lakes should be dealt with in the exact fashion that we are seeing today.

The frustration for Great Lakes advocates, the other States, and even some of us wide-eyed Chicagoans, has been the response. It is the epitome of “small plans.” The State’s response to a legitimate prodding from its neighbors is to deny the urgency of the problem, demand that the problem be further studied rather than taking any immediate action, and adamantly state that the request shouldn’t be filed with the Supreme Court anyway. It is spineless politicking, legal obstruction, and a concerted effort to delay a real solution. It is all that is wrong with Illinois politics in a nutshell.

But for me, it is most frustrating in its short-sightedness. The solution is clear. We might be forced to wait 10 years for the Army Corps of Engineers to finish a study on permanent solutions to this mess, but it is inevitable that some sort of barrier will have to be put in place to re-establish the separation that existed between the Great Lakes and Mississippi River basin to prevent this dangerous invasive species, and the multitudes of other queued up to follow, from threatening 1/5 of the world’s fresh water. It seems to me that the threat should spur action on its own, but as I’ve noted repeatedly in this slow-motion disaster, the State and Obama administration should seize this moment as the biggest opportunity that this region has seen in a century to fix real problems and begin the real work of improving the environment, economy and commercial transportation infrastructure of the Great Lakes.

Fixing this problem will require a public investment that would create jobs at a time when we are hemorrhaging them.
It means fixing woefully inadequate infrastructure. The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, one of the defendants in Michigan’s case and the quasi-governmental body responsible for the waterways in question, is on the record with gloom and doom threats of the City of Chicago flooding should Michigan get its wishes that the locks be temporarily closed. Ummm, isn’t this an indictment of what is in place, an admission of its manifest inadequacy---all the more reason to fix it?
And it means taking advantage of resources that are actually fleetingly available. Due to that political unity amongst the Great Lakes states this administration has admirably dedicated heretofore unheard of dollars to restoring the Great Lakes and protecting them from invasive species. Those funds will not be available for long…

Today, Chicagoans still reap the benefits of Burnham’s 1909 plan for Chicago. And there are still aspects of it that we aspire to bring to life. It was audacious. It was far-seeing. It was innovative. It took all of the ugliest challenges of urban living head-on. All things that are the complete opposite of our leaders’ response to this challenge today.

Carp Crisis

2009-12-04T01:22:03Z

My fellow Chicagoan Rahm Emmanuel is famously noted as saying, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." This week, those words are especially pertinent as State and Federal agencies have begun poisoning a nearly 6-mile stretch of the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal to kill off invasive Asian carp while maintenance is performed on an electrical barrier intended to keep the fish out of Lake Michigan. The operation stands as the largest rotenone poisoning effort ever undertaken. If the poisoning sounds like an intense response, it is---but that is how dire a threat that these fish pose. Bighead and silver carp can grow to 100 pounds and out-compete native species in an ecosystem due to their prolific breeding and ability to filter feed 40% of their body weight on a daily basis. They literally out breed and out eat everything else in the ecosystem. Need proof? Look at the Illinois River where the invaders comprise more than 90% of the biomass on some stretches; meaning that they represent 9 out of 10 pounds of all living material, plant or animal, in those areas. Transplant them to Lake Michigan, an ecosystem already irreparably damaged by invasive species, and you have the recipe for a disaster that threatens $7 billion in fishing industry and the drinking water of more than 40 million.

This is indeed a crisis... And for a solution, it is clear that we need to look very carefully at Chicagoland's plumbing. No, not toilets and pipes. But how we deal with sewage and drinking water; and how Chicago's century-old arrangement affects the entire Great Lakes basin.

You see, in the late 1800's Chicagoans dealt with their own crisis: the pressing emergency of raw sewage mucking up Lake Michigan and their drinking water. Their solution was a very big, out of the box idea. The Chicago Diversion was a series of canals that reversed the flow of the Chicago River to move waste down to the Mississippi. Not only did this protect health in the region, but it also opened up new route for goods, allowing them to move from the East Coast to the Mississippi River in uninterrupted fashion for the first time. That is why the waterway being poisoned this week is called the "Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal." Pretty clever, eh?

I find it ironic that today, the Lake is once again being destroyed by pollution---in the form of living invasive creatures---and that same spirit of innovation is necessary to fix the problem. The Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal's connection to the Mississippi River basin makes the canal, and the rest of the Chicago Diversion, a conduit of that living pollution. Sadly, the response to the Asian carp's slow assault on the Great Lakes through the canal has not provoked the same big thinking of a century ago---just ad hoc fixes that are not long-term solutions.

The real solution to this problem is to dump the virtual fish fence in favor of a return to a permanent and durable separation between these ecosystems. As I've said before, its time to close the Chicago Diversion.

Underscoring the Asian carp threat, Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan called for her state's Attorney General to use all legal tools at his disposal this week. This could include the re-opening of a nearly century-old case sitting before the U.S. Supreme Court regarding the Chicago Diversion to force immediate action around the carp issue. You see, even 100 years ago, the other Great Lakes states saw trouble in the Chicago Diversion. They weren't concerned about giant, hungry fish. They were concerned about a giant, thirsty city drinking more than their fair share. And downriver states were concerned about a giant, dirty city flushing its waste into their drinking water. And so they sued to stop the Chicago Diversion. By the time the Supreme Court was ready to weigh in, it was too late. The canals were dug and river reversed. All the Supreme Court was willing to do at that point was set limits on the amount of water that could be withdrawn from Lake Michigan.

Still, that open case - or some other legal action - might be used to close the canals to rebuff the fish. In the short-term, that's great. It's a real, physical barrier that can help keep the Asian carp out of Lake Michigan.

But the canals can stay closed for only so long. By Spring the shippers will be screaming and sewage will back up.

And that's why this is a crisis. Whether they haul a million dead carp out of the canal, or just one, it doesn't matter---the looming threat is unmistakable. Clear, resolute, and decisive action is necessary in the short-term to stop the fishes' advance. But emergency poisonings and closure of the waterway will not fix the underlying problem---it will just temporarily provide breathing space while real, scientifically sound, legally binding solutions are installed and public processes are engaged to once again close the door on the invasive species' advance up the Illinois River.

And if that doesn't happen, we've wasted a serious crisis.

Shedd Aquarium image by Kate.Gardiner via Flickr

Dam the Carp! No more dithering on invasive species

2009-11-25T15:54:52Z

The news was very bad on Friday when state and Federal agencies admitted that tests show invasive Asian carp have evaded an electrical barrier intended to prevent the fish from gaining access to Lake Michigan, and eventually the entire Great Lakes ecosystem. Scientists and government regulators all agree that the fish pose a dire threat to the Lakes because of their size and voracious appetites.

It would be easy to dismiss the problem, until you see these fish. The two invasive species (bighead and silver carp) can grow over four feet long and 100 pounds and quickly take over habitat upon arrival. In the Illinois River, they now make up 90% of the life forms present in some stretches of the river. Check out the first minute of this video and imagine the prospect of these whoppers smashing into swimmers at Chicago's crowded Oak Street Beach, or colliding with water skiers along the shores of Lakes Michigan, or leaping onto boats moving through the Great Lakes...

I think I'd feel better about this situation if there was different leadership charged with finding a solution to the problem, and quick...

Alas, the Asian Carp Rapid Response Group, the folks who are helping to lead the charge on this issue, is populated with an array of agencies and companies who are part of the problem by allowing the situation to grow into an emergency with an amazing lack of urgency in dealing with this problem since it began its slow advance in 1993. You have the Coast Guard and the Army Corps of Engineers, who dreamt up the virtual fish fence that has allowed the carp to pass. And an interesting pair of serial polluters in the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Cook County (who have spent millions of dollars to fight the effort to get them to stop dumping human waste into the Chicago River) and Midwest Generation LLC (whose entire Illinois coal plant fleet is being challenged by USEPA, Department of Justice, Illinois Attorney General and a consortium of citizen activists for the Company's chronic and dangerous air pollution emissions).

It is time for all the locks to be closed until the Corps can prove that they have appropriately, scientifically and durably dealt with the problem. It is time for physical barriers to be erected on the Calumet River where the fish have been detected and no barrier exists to impede their movement. These are minimum actions to preserve the status quo, so that the environmental and economic damage can be averted while permanent solutions are put in place. Emergency closure of the water way will not fix the problem---it will just temporarily provide breathing space while real, scientifically sound, legally binding solutions are installed and public processes are engaged.

There will be howls over this action.

Shipping interests will raise Cain over the impact this will have on barge traffic. Midwest Gen will complain about the impact of coal deliveries for the filthy Fisk and Crawford Generating Stations. Others may complain about the impact on movement of goods along the Chicago River. But these are short-sighted, self-interested, and myopic positions. Do the costs of temporarily re-routing the flow of goods trump the multi-billion dollar Great Lakes fishery? Do they trump the health of an ecosystem that represents 90% of this nation's fresh surface water and provides drinking water to 40 million Americans and Canadians in the Great Lakes Basin?

More importantly, what are the alternatives? This is where big thinking needs to come fast. So far, we've not heard much from the Rapid Response group. They have said that everything is on the table---but tick tock, the fish are moving and nothing has been done since the fish were detected on the other side of the electric barrier. And let's not forget these guys can swim miles closer to the Lake every day.

To be fair, the Group has made some suggestions in the past... Indeed, Midwest Gen threw out a very convenient solution: their coal plants on the Chicago River dump a lot of thermal pollution into the waterway---meaning that they are so decrepit and inefficient that they cannot deliver all of the energy they create and have to dump the excess heat into the river. With a straight face, they offered up this pollution as the salvation we have all been looking for to keep the carp out of the Chicago River, another channel into Lake Michigan. Thankfully, that suggestion was rejected outright---but really, are these the stakeholders that we should be relying for out of the box solutions to this problem?

The answer is no. The Army Corps should not assume that the Group they have assembled has all the answers. The only way to create a permanent, effective solution to this problem is to fully engage the public, in an open and transparent debate that treats this issue as it really is: an issue that affects all of us.

Fortunately, the legal framework for this public process already exists. It's called the National Environmental Policy Act. When it is followed, it is supposed to require federal agencies like the Army Corps to solicit public input on major decisions before they make them, not after, in order to ensure that all potential alternatives are considered and their consequences are explored. It takes a lot to admit that you don't have all the answers. But with the fish fence having failed and carp bearing down on Lake Michigan, the Army Corps should immediately begin asking the public to help them come up with the best possible permanent solution.

The 19th Century thinking that gave us the Chicago Diversion does not meet our needs today. In fact, it puts us in harm's way by polluting our waters and threatening further, permanent loss of our fresh water seas---the Great Lakes. We can close those waterways to prevent the arrival of more carp and still protect commerce. That's the kind of aggressive action that is needed. Here at NRDC, we are investigating what sorts of legal action we can take to spur the Corps and other responsible parties to get moving in the face of this threat. And I would hope that the state Attorneys General of the Great Lakes states are all looking for similar legal actions to protect their waters. (After all, they are all party to a case that remains before the US Supreme Court related to the operation of the Chicago area water system and its canals---see Wisconsin v. Illinois, 388 US 426 et seq.)

Sadly, the only thing aggressive about the response so far has been the multi-million dollar price tag on the failed virtual fish fence... We can, and should expect more...

...quickly...

The Value of Water

2009-11-19T23:07:57Z

We have been awash with an array of unhappy water stories in this region of late. On the surface they are unrelated ... scary fish ... E. coli contamination ... improperly regulated pesticides ... intentionally poisoned waterways .... But if you scratch below the surface there's a problematic narrative developing: the water rich communities of the Great Lakes region do not understand the nature, function and value of their most precious resource.

For starters, there was Charles Duhigg's devastating series in the New York Times about the state of water policy in the United States. His stories included the on-going poisoning of our waters with pesticides, manure from agricultural operations, and the water pollution coming from coal plants. The articles are full of shocking failures of state environmental officials to enforce the requirements of the Clean Water Act within their jurisdictions against the polluters who are destroying our waters. But what is also clear is that no one has fully quantified the burden that the public and our water resources take on as a result of this pollution.

There is also the continuing, wild tale of the slow and inadequate efforts of federal, state and local authorities to protect the Great Lakes from imminent destruction by voracious, invasive Asian Carp that have been making their way up the Mississippi and its tributaries since 1993. We know the value of the aquaculture industries that introduced this dangerous fish. And we know the ludicrous costs associated with the Army Corps of Engineers Rube Goldberg fish fence that might repel them---as well as what it will cost to intentionally poison a five-mile stretch of the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal to kill off the carp (and any other fish actually native to the water way) when they take the fence offline for maintenance next month. But we don't know the real, full value of the already damaged Great Lakes ecosystem, and so an array of agencies dither and delay in taking action that would actually end this threat and protect the ecosystem permanently.

And now this week we saw a front-page Chicago Tribune article on city officials contemplating privatization of the municipal water system. The value of water is at the center of the issue---but not the real, full value of water as a public trust asset requiring stewardship and protection. The article treats the question of privatizing water as a limited inquiry into a "dollars and cents" revenue and service issue. It is as if such a decision is actually analogous to leasing toll bridges and parking meters---which are exclusively part of the man made, civic economy, bought and owned by a municipal corporation. In focusing narrowly on the per gallon costs that might be associated with the Mayor selling our water supply, the Tribune presents no discussion of what the water is actually "worth" or the many services it provides to the web of life that depends upon it. And who can blame them? We don't look at that issue anywhere in this region. Water is treated as an abundant resource that we assume will always be there when we need it.

An aide to Chicago's Mayor Daley said that, though the Mayor has said that "all things are on the table," the issue of privatization was being "blown way out of proportion." I hope that is true and that before there is any proposal to privatize Chicago's Lake Michigan water, there will be a full review and transparent discussion of the key issues at stake. We don't have all the answers to the relevant questions; the problem is the key questions themselves have not been recognized by many of the region's stakeholders. The issues of infrastructure, cross-community water sales and pricing, and constraints on access to Great Lakes water are complicated here. But smart questions have to be raised, probed and addressed transparently, not simply raised in order to derail the conversation and protect the unacceptable "business as usual" exploitation of our resources. At the heart of the discussion must be the recognition of the nature and value of water, framed by an understanding that water is a Public Trust asset.

All of these news stories, coupled with some of the other cases that NRDC is working on in the region, spell out the wasteful way that the Great Lakes region treats its water. The stories and cases include the ongoing fight over ballast water laws to prevent the spread of invasive species which have already fundamentally changed the ecology of the Great Lakes and our ongoing fight to force an end to dumping of "un-disinfected" human sewage (that's intestinal miasma, folks!) into the Chicago River by the government body with oversight of the issue.

It is time to get re-acquainted with the fundamental value of water as an irreplaceable, essential resource, and support the services it provides: sustenance, beauty, indeed life itself.

BP Slapdown: EPA really is back on the job!

2009-10-22T16:34:05Z

This week EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson told NPR that the "EPA is back on the job.”

And here in the greater Chicago region, EPA is back on the job in a big way!

In a long-awaited move, the United States Environmental Protection Agency title="AP" target="_blank">weighed in on the controversial BP Whiting Refinery expansion plan by acting on our 2008 Petition for review of a deeply flawed permit issued to the BP refinery, and issued a formal objection to the lax pollution permit that the State of Indiana had lavished on the project.

Basically, Administrator Jackson said that the math on the permit was fuzzy, failing to even consider numerous sources of pollution and failing to adequately control emissions from the plant. So, she sent the Indiana Department of Environmental Management back to their room to finish their homework.

Seeing EPA enforcing the law is incredibly happy-making. The decision is a victory for the citizens and environmental groups who petitioned EPA to object to the permit in August 2008 on the grounds that it did not accurately account for the large increases in dangerous air pollution that would be caused by BP’s expansion of the refinery---despite the concerns being dismissed by state bureaucrats and Big Oil lawyers. NRDC, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Hoosier Environmental Council, Save the Dunes Council, Sierra Club, citizen activists Susan Eleuterio and Tom Tsourlis have all been fighting a long and ugly battle with BP and the State of Indiana over this project for years now. And while EPA’s action does not put things to rest, it does show that the concerns raised have been meaningful and relevant. And it bodes well for the pending court cases which are focused on very similar issues, by providing direction to how pollution should be viewed in future refinery projects.

We need the increased attention to enforcement of the law and human health considerations at the heart of the Clean Air Act. The pollution that comes from the BP refinery and that would be increased by the permit given to BP by Indiana includes the type of pollution that causes severe respiratory disease in our community. The lower Lake Michigan airshed is in severe “non-attainment” for ozone and seriously out of compliance for particulate matter pollution---the kind of pollution that gets deeply into the lungs and can even pass into the bloodstream, with devastating consequences in the form of heart failure and asthma. We are seeing alarming rates of asthma in children in our communities. Adding further harmful pollution by ignoring new emission sources and exempting them from consideration as the State of Indiana did with the BP permit is fundamentally unacceptable. It denies our people the protection of the laws they are entitled to as citizens of a great democracy.

But on a deep level, I am also thrilled about what this development means for the EPA.

In our neck of the woods, EPA’s action on BP this week follows on a string of actions that show the agency really is getting off the bench. There was the action taken against Midwest Generation LLC and the pollution that blankets Chicago from their Fisk and Crawford coal plants (and their entire aging coal fleet in Illinois). The recent effort to address the Dow Chemical mess in Michigan. The promise to re-evaluate the carcinogenic/gender bending pesticide Atrazine that NRDC’s recent report documents to be showing up in Midwestern drinking water in alarming concentrations. Action on explosive, mountaintop mining that is devastating Appalachia. New vehicle fuel economy standards which cut into our crippling reliance on oil while helping to revitalize the entire automotive industry.

Oh, and very importantly, the quote about EPA being “back on the job”? It was related to the EPA’s Greenhouse Gas “endangerment determination” which confirms what we’ve known all along---greenhouse gas pollution is endangering people and the health of the globe, driving climate change, heat storms, hurricanes and killer pollution; that global warming pollution must be addressed, starting with limiting carbon pollution. To that end, EPA has proposed a Greenhouse Gas Tailoring Rule which would allow the agency to finally begin addressing CO2 emissions from large sources such as the Whiting Refinery or the Fisk and Crawford plants that produce the vast majority CO2 emissions.

And that would lead to my only disappointment in the EPA’s refinery correction this week. BP began a major expansion of the Whiting Refinery in 2008 in order to process dirty Canadian tar sands oil at the facility. The expansion would make the refinery the largest refiner of tar sands oil in the U.S. and cements this region as the epicenter of tar sands action. That means an incredible expansion of greenhouse gas emissions that remain unaddressed in the EPA objection letter. The BP project will likely spew the same amount of CO2 as a new 300-400 megawatt coal plant, about a forty percent increase from current refinery levels.

We just can’t roll with that kind of increase and expect to stave off disaster. But with Administrator Jackson on the job, I am feeling confident that we will get action in that area soon. After all, EPA does have a rulemaking in the works to impose CO2 “Best Available Control Technology” limits in permits that would apply to the BP facility in the future (and maybe at some point retroactively)---thereby addressing through regulation the carbon pollution threat presented by the BP facility, and others like it.

Have Fun at the Playground, Kids! image by David Schalliol via Flickr

Blue-Green Olympics: Chicago can still go for the gold standard

2009-10-02T18:38:00Z

My... What disappointing news out of Copenhagen today as the International Olympics Committee voted down Chicago's bid to host the 2016 games in the first ballot.

Yeah: "first ballot"---ouch! Stunning for a city that generally knows how to line up and deliver votes....

And I am more than a bit deflated that our fair city will not have the challenge and opportunity to invest in truly green infrastructure, polices and practices, and to show how a new way of living in a dense urban environment. Like Chicago did with the 1893 World's Fair: developing new approaches to clean water, effective waste management, clean air and open space, and provided the platform for building our Lake Front, parks and forest preserve system.

A serious amount of work went into setting the stage for a genuinely innovative "green games" in Chicago in 2016.

The work that went into the bid package, and the subsequent work like the very high level Greening the Olympics Summit just two weeks ago, needn't go to waste. While the IOC did not embrace it, the Chicago bid lays out a compelling view of how the built environment can interact with the broader natural, urban and economic environment. The concepts developed for the City can and should continue to move forward.

Instead of monuments, the bid focused on things that are far more valuable in modern civic life: cleaner water, stronger building codes that emphasize efficiency and green technologies, and from the Olympic Village a new, dense, vibrant and smartly designed neighborhood that opens the way for further conscientious development along the shore of Lake Michigan. The bid package envisioned a "Blue/Green" games that would deepen the city's embrace of Lake Michigan (the blue) with a focus on clean water, open space and ecological improvement minimal impact (green). It's an embrace of green infrastructure and developing technologies to minimize the footprint of hundreds of thousands of people at the games.

Truth be told, I served on the green advisory committee that helped evaluate aspects of the bid package. One of my colleagues was part of a working group that evaluated impacts on the city's beloved parks system. And NRDC took part in the greening sports summit with a presentation outlining some of the great work we are doing with Major League Baseball, the US Open, the NFL and others. While the games won't be coming, we hope that NRDC will be able to help move some of the noble goals of the failed bid into the day-to-day management of Chicago in the future. We continue to reap the fruits of decisions and developments left over from the Columbian Exposition (World's Fair of 1893) and the redevelopment after the great Chicago fire. I hope that the effort to attract the Olympics will stimulate the continuous planning and commitments to improve the City of Chicago and its health, safety and future vibrancy.

To be frank, as Mayor Daley likes to say, we NEED to implement the "Blue/Green" vision.

We need to improve our infrastructure of open space, clean energy, innovative housing, improved parks and clean water. A good place to start would be by cleaning the Chicago River, and cease dumping live human waste into the water that flows by homes, businesses, kayaks and communities. Follow that with much needed upgrades to the Chicago Transit Authority and a continued focus on making the lake available to all of the city's citizens and we needn't be limited by creating Blue/Green games for the world---we can become the world's Blue/Green city instead!

Olympics Banner on the Chicago River image by jmogs via Flickr

Water, Democracy and Citizen Engagement: New York Times reinforces why citizen participation is essential for the public health, safety and wellbeing

2009-09-17T21:36:03Z

Not long ago, I spoke with an attorney in Ohio who was surprised by my concern that state authorities had issued a water pollution permit for a facility containing provisions that had not been properly published for citizen review and comment. He simply could not understand how the public in his state would be harmed if these pollution permits were left solely in the hands of regulators. Why on Earth does the public really need to be informed about and allowed to review and comment on the terms, conditions and content of pollution permits anyway? Why does public participation in environmental decision-making serve the public interest? Why not leave the public interest to "experts" in government and industry, who really know what is going on? It was as if the attorney thought an informed and engaged public could only cause mischief and gum up the works.

For some reason, this conversation has just stuck in my head; and I find myself thinking about it as an example of how diminished is the appreciation of the central importance of an informed an engaged citizenry is to the American enterprise of ordered liberty, where eternal vigilance is necessary for the protection of the Republic---as in Res Publica...i.e., the "Public Thing."

But it came rushing to my mind in a new, intense light as I read the New York Times last weekend. Charles Duhigg's excellent expose "Toxic Waters: Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Suffering"underscores exactly why citizen participation in these seemingly arcane regulatory processes is central, vital and essential to guaranteeing our own health and safety and the wellbeing of the environment. Mr. Duhigg's story reveals, in graphic detail, the risk of "leaving it to experts" and the costs of government not doing its duty to the public--- costs in the form of children's decaying teeth, scarred skin, exotic cancers, and destroyed property.

The article outlines deplorable examples of impacts being felt from polluted water including a family whose children have broken out in painful rashes after bathing in tap water and literally had their teeth burned away by a bevy of toxics dripping from their taps. It is a story of government failure to protect the public from depredations of industry. It is ugly, despicable, and wholly unacceptable.

It is consistent with our experience with government agencies in the Midwest where we seek to enforce environmental laws under the federal Clean Water and Clean Air Acts.

Looking at the maps and data that accompany the story online, it is impossible not to notice that the some of the states that NRDC's Midwest program are most active in, are some of the worst offenders. In Illinois, Indiana, Michigan and Ohio over 60% of the regulated entities are in violation of the Clean Water Act. That is right, 3 out of every five are failing to live up to the law. But it is the regulatory response that is far more galling. Michigan's 12% enforcement rate for these cases---the percentage of cases when the state actually responds to the reported violations---should be an embarrassment. But that weak response looks downright iron-fisted in comparison to their neighbors... Illinois is at 7%. Indiana at 3%. And Ohio is at a negligible 1% enforcement rate---almost a "non-detect" level of activity.

Which leads me back to that conversation in Ohio...

Why is the public harmed when they are prevented from taking part in these public processes? Because sometimes regulators have other agendas. Because sometimes things fall through the cracks. Because relying on unreliable bureaucracies for protection puts us in harm's way. And frankly, from what I've seen, folks in the Buckeye State are clearly in harm's way...

The Obama administration has set a new tone, saying that these conditions are unacceptable. I expect this to deliver quick results---some of which we are already seeing from the US EPA in the form of last week's mountaintop removal mining reforms and last month's intervention against chronic coal air polluters in Illinois. But there is yet an extremely long way to go. And much of that work is going to have to happen at the state level, where often narrow interests have outweighed the public good. Louis Brandeis talked about the states as "laboratories of democracy," but as the shocking abdication of enforcement responsibilities clearly show, many of these states have morphed into Petri dishes of dysfunction.

As you can probably gather, I am disturbed by this story. Water is indicative of the broader reality of air, coal, land and natural resource destruction, and the melt down of public institutions that are supposed to protect us illustrates a shameful tumble away from the values most dear to our democracy. Sadly, much of what was described in the Times is no surprise. I will be blogging on some of the barriers that we have been bumping into-particularly in Ohio and Indiana, two states actively pushing back on efforts to address these issues.

do you remember tap waterby malla mi via Flickr

You’re Not the King of Me: Midwest Gen Runs Afoul of the Clean Air Act

2009-08-29T01:11:49Z

I am really proud to work for the organization that largely wrote the Clean Air Act. It stands as a fantastically important, valuable, and genius bit of legislation more than 30 years later.

And this week, we saw how some of that genius played out in Illinois.

The act is recognition that the American system is better with broad public engagement---it's better if you and I are involved rather than sitting on the sidelines as spectators on important issues. Let's be honest, government does not always have the best interests of the public in mind---occasionally other factors come into play. The Clean Air Act (CAA) recognizes that and creates a fundamentally brilliant mechanism that allows for ordinary citizens to file suit when they are threatened by pollution. One of the interesting aspects of these "Citizen Suits" is that they often come with the requirement that a 60-day notice of intent to sue be filed with the polluting entity as well as regulatory agencies. That time period gives the state and federal agencies just enough time to re-examine the situation and evaluate if they want to take up the fight.

And it happens that way in real life sometimes.

Last month, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Citizens Against Ruining the Environment, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago and Sierra Club, initiated the legal process towards a Clean Air Act citizen suit against Midwest Generation LLC (a subsidiary of the energy giant, Edison International), who are the folks responsible for the filth spewing, coal burning relic that is the Fisk Generating Station in Pilsen and its ugly counterpart in the Little Village neighborhood, the Crawford Generating Station. The suit could not have been a surprise to Midwest Gen. Nor to U.S. EPA, as they have filed numerous notices of violation in 2007 against the company's Midwest Gen's entire Illinois coal fleet for kicking soot out at illegal levels across the state.

And yesterday, less than a month after our suit was filed (helped, no doubt by the attention of the Washington Post, Chicago Public Radio, and Chicago Tribune) the other shoe dropped.

The U.S. EPA, Department of Justice, and Illinois Attorney General Madigan announced that they would file suit against the company for illegally emitting large amounts of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide and particulate matter. These are largely the same claims that we have raised in our 60-day notice and other forums, and we are thrilled to see the aggressive action. You can bet we will stay involved in the fight to ensure that these dinosaurs clean up or close down. And you can also be sure we will continue to sing the praises of the Clean Air Act, it remains a wondrous tool when used correctly.

In Chicago, we have a phrase that pops up a lot when self-appointed know-it-alls presume to make all the decisions or cut us out of making our own minds up about things that affect our interests:

"You're not the King of me!"

The Clean Air Act (and its close cousin the Clean Water Act) are wholly American in their assurance of citizen participation in our shared future. These laws embody this retort to governments, businesses and special interest that would make narrow decisions about public property like air and water, and cut citizens out of decisions on the public trust: we are citizens, not subjects and no one is the king of us.

Got a problem with that?

Coal Clunkers: The Post Looks at Chicago's Aging Coal Plants

2009-08-19T22:08:41Z

Coal clunkers.

That's how the Washington Post and clean air advocates described the two antiquated coal plants operating in the midst of Chicago. The Post's article focused on the Fisk and Crawford generating stations and a fight to clean or close them because the plants are emblematic of a problem that is not unique to Chicago.

There are hundreds of coal plants around the country where utilities are using everything short of duct tape, baling wire and chewing gum to keep them running. Why? For the operators, it's cheap for the plants to be dirty. Ancient plants like these were "grandfathered" under the Clean Air Act---basically exempted from modern environmental requirements, with the expectation that they would close in the near future anyway because of their age. As long as the plants aren't modified, the plant owners are not required to add modern pollution controls to protect the health of the surrounding communities. Unfortunately, many antiquated plants, like Fisk and Crawford, have not closed as anticipated, but have continued to operate "cheaply" while polluting.

And that is how you get a facility like the over 100-year-old Fisk plant sitting in the midst of Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood without the standard equipment to prevent particulate matter and other dangerous pollutants from raining down on the surrounding community. Neighbors complain of the fine dust coating their cars and floors inside their houses...tragically, its also coating the inside of their lungs.

So the operation of these facilities is not really "cheap" for the community, which subsidizes operations with their lungs, health and safety. This state of affairs is possible only because of a wholly perverse economics that rewards pollution and allows the dirty to unfairly compete with clean energy.

On top of this, the plants aren't even operating within the pollution limits actually applicable to old, "grandfathered" facilities. The data generated by the plants themselves demonstrates a long record of pollution violations under even the weaker standards applicable to the plants.

That's why the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), Citizens Against Ruining the Environment, the Environmental Law and Policy Center, the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago and Sierra Club, have initiated the legal process towards a Clean Air Act citizen suit against the owners and operators of the Chicago plants, Midwest Generation LLC, subsidiary of the energy giant, Edison International. It shouldn't have been a surprise, as the US EPA filed numerous notices of violations against the company's Illinois coal fleet.

In the press, the company has tried to sidestep the pollution issues we have raised with a series of remarkably un-compelling arguments.

First, they claim that at one time they released more pollutants (such as mercury and other contaminants) than they do today, and their spokesman is quoted in the Washington Post asserting that the company has thereby "demonstrated environmental responsibility at those plants."

Second, in the same article:

We don't hide the fact that there are emissions from our plants, but there are lots of other sources, too, other industries and cars and trucks going through there with emissions much closer to the ground.

Further, in the same article, the company spokesperson complains that the company "is being targeted unfairly because of 'heightened sensitivities' around the Chicago plants."

So the company's response is essentially that they:

used to run even dirtier,
that "others" also pollute,
and finally that somehow attention to the pollution is unfair.

Perhaps the "heightened attention" has to do with the fact that the company's own data shows violation of the law, or that there is an asthma epidemic within Chicago that is exacerbated by the particulate pollution associated with the emissions from the plants. The arguments that the plants used to be dirtier and that "others" also pollute, don't excuse, rationalize, or really even explain the pollution.

Midwest Gen's plants are not living up to the standards set by the Clean Air Act. To imply it is OK to imperil the public health because there are other bad actors and dangerous pollution sources is not just a failure in rhetoric, but of corporate responsibility.

We've learned a lot about the dangers of coal plant emissions over the years, including that relying on two dirty coal plants in the midst of dense urban neighborhoods that cannot meet modern clean air standards is fundamentally wrong. And with utilities like this flaunting the law, modern energy technologies cannot compete fairly. This is a national issue that will continue to make it impossible to straighten out our energy sector, let alone deal with the dangers of climate change.

The company's own records show that these plants are breaking the law. They have been allowed to skate by for a half century...that is far too long...its time to clean up or close down. We need to do this across the country, but I hope the process starts with Chicago's coal clunkers.

Dangerous, Dirty, and Done for: Suits Should Help the Sun Set on Dirty Coal Plants in Chicago

2009-07-28T17:21:38Z

Have you ever driven on the Stevenson Expressway in Chicago? If so, you’ve probably passed two of the city'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. We’ve learned a lot about the dangers of coal plant emissions over the years, and continuing to rely on two dirty coal plants in the midst of dense urban neighborhoods that cannot meet modern clean air standards is fundamentally wrong.

While you don’t need to be Indiana Jones to find these things, you might need a kind of engineering archaeologist to recognize the pulverized coal technology employed by Midwest Generation, LLC at the Fisk and Crawford (as well as their other Illinois plants in Waukegan, Peoria, and Joliet). Fisk was built over 100 years ago in what is now the Pilsen neighborhood, and operated by Sam Insull as a corner stone to his fledgling electric utility. New generating equipment was put in place in the 50’s. But the pollution control equipment required for all new plants by the Clean Air Act has not been installed to assure safer performance of the plant consistent with technology required in modern facilities. So, for many decades, the plant has been dumping contaminants into the air without updated, modern pollution controls. What seemed innovative at the beginning of the last century is seriously out of compliance with contemporary standards for health and safety. And the residents in the Pilsen and Little Village, the host communities for the Fisk and Crawford plants, have been telling anyone who will listen about the old plants’ impact: on their lungs and well being. This comes as no surprise as the USEPA has cited Midwest Generation’s plants for numerous ongoing pollution issues.

Further, it has long been recognized that reliance on the plants for the delivery of electricity within Chicago presents a reliability problem for the city’s energy system. In fact, back in 1991 the Fisk and Crawford Generating Stations were noted as a problematic choke points for the movement of energy into Chicago, and the city and Commonwealth Edison utility that then owned the plants negotiated a deal to build out new transmission lines to relive the city from this reliance on the unreliable--but it never happened. The plants changed ownership and the new transmission lines were not built.

And the plants are inefficient. They don’t even distribute a significant amount of the energy they produce---much of it is literally dumped into the Chicago River and the Sanitary and Ship Canal in the form of excess heat.

For years, the goal of retiring these plants and replacing them with the modern energy infrastructure available and needed in this city has been proposed, but not achieved. Instead, we get a stream of pollution that is affecting our neighborhoods and our planet, from antiquated, unreliable plants. The time has come to admit the problem and fix it.

And so today, a coalition of Illinois health and environmental groups have notified Midwest Generation, LLC of their intent go to court to force the plants to clean up or shut down. No more excuses. Citizens Against Ruining the Environment, The Environmental Law and Policy Center, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), The Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago and Sierra Club, filed a 60-day notice of intent to sue today, the first step in a Clean Air Act citizen suit. This action brings a new legal aspect to the ongoing conflict between the coal plants and the working class, minority communities in which they are located.

These dirty coal plants are a barrier to Chicago's green aspirations, a threat to the public health and safety of this city, and a liability to our clean energy future. There just isn’t a place for dirty, unreliable plants that don’t meet modern health and safety standards within a great city and nation. We can do better. It is in our interest to build a new energy economy that will protect the public, create jobs and deliver clean energy to our communities. So, let’s get with the times and do what’s right for the citizens of Chicago: clean up Fisk and Crawford, or dump them into the scrapheap of history.

Fisk Generating Station from the Chicago Riverphoto by David Schalliol via Flickr

Chicago River: From open sewer to crown jewel?

2009-07-03T00:05:55Z

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Daniel Burnham’s iconic Plan of Chicago. The Plan re-imagined the American industrial city, identifying and prioritizing open space, cultivation of natural areas, and public access to water resources as keystones for the City’s health and quality of life. We are all the richer for this vision of how to integrate the natural and built environments into a rich urban ecosystem. From the Plan comes the parks, tree lined boulevards, and, most notably, Chicago’s glorious Lake Michigan shoreline.

And while the “open, free and clear” Chicago Lake front is a central part of our inheritance from the Burnham Plan, the vision for the City’s second shoreline---that of the Chicago River---has yet to be fully realized. The Chicago River is an essential part of Chicago’s identity, and but for the River, it is unlikely that the City would have risen to be a major metropolis. (See, e.g., William Cronon, Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, p. 23).

The front page of Sunday’s Chicago Tribune featured a look at the waterway, in which architecture critic Blair Kamin notes:

Chicago was born by the river and named for the wild onion plants that once thrived on its banks. But in the boom years of the 19th Century, businessmen turned the river into an artery of commerce and a sewer for dumping industrial waste. The river became a forbidding trench, an "On the Waterfront" landscape of piers, bulkheads and bollards for tying up ships. Buildings turned their backs to it.

Today, our view of the river has changed, and the opportunity to recover it as an environmental amenity, incorporating nature, culture and commerce in accord with the vision of the Burnham Plan is within our reach. But several things need to be done.

Kamin’s excellent feature looked at the $22 million dollar riverwalk extension project which is the culmination of a long-term, multigenerational commitment to turn the river into another beautiful amenity for Chicagoans. Just as the lakefront provides gorgeous open parkland along the eastern edge of the City, the river has always offered visionaries from Burnham’s generation a way to extend that greenery into the heart of the City and its neighborhoods.

You need only look at the stretch of river where NRDC’s new Chicago office sits to see how this evolution of thinking has played out. Two buildings built in 1929 face each other, but deal with the river in completely opposite ways. On the east side of the river stands the Civic Opera House, which was built with its back to the river (as much of the river front building had resolutely done up to that time). NRDC’s office is on the west bank of the river in the old Chicago Daily News Building (now called 2 N. Riverside Plaza), a building that took a different view of the river---the modern view of the river as an amenity, and stepping back to create a broad, open plaza, facing directly onto the river and embracing its shores with a public space and built-in water taxi stands.

Over the years, the embrace of the river has gained support. Development along the river in both the central business district and in the neighborhoods has increased dramatically, and in recent decades use of the river itself for something other than an open sewer for industrial and other waste has seen dramatic increases. From my window on the river, there never seems to be a point where the waters are not being plied by a water taxi, pleasure boat, or even the occasional rowing team. Canoes and kayaks are a common sight on the north and south branches of the river---and even the central branch which runs through the heart of the Loop is a boating destination.

But while the City and residents have embraced the river, the governmental agency responsible for the waterway continues to turn its back to the river and consider it an open sewer. I am talking about the interestingly named Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD). It is an independent government authority, with taxing authority, an elected board, and the responsibility of overseeing waste water issues in Cook County, Illinois. It is clearly the biggest roadblock to fulfilling the vision of the City of Chicago to transform this once blighted river into a highly valued part of the urban environment, contributing to the quality of life of the City and its region.

You see, the MWRD is polluting the river with human waste. And putting all those on its waters in harms way.

The MWRD owns and operate sewage treatment facilities along the Chicago River that dump undisinfected sewage into the river waters. Both the City of Chicago and State of Illinois have urgently called upon the District to stop dumping of this polluted sewage into the river and the state has proposed regulations prohibiting it. Civic advocates, including NRDC, have pressed hard for adoption of the regulations by the Illinois Pollution Control Board. Yet the MWRD continues to release harmful viruses and bacteria associated with un-disinfected sewage into the river that flows past homes, parks, businesses, boats and swimmers. Instead of complying with the regulations proposed by the Illinois EPA, MWRD is pouring millions of taxpayer dollars into fighting them.

Certainly, disinfecting billions of gallons of effluent will come with costs. But they are significantly less than one would expect---dwarfed, in fact, by the continued real estate investment and recreation time being spent along the waterway.

The Trib puts the investment into proper perspective, returning to that vision of the River as an extension of Chicago’s lakefront:

One might have reacted with cynicism in 1909 when, in the Plan of Chicago, Daniel Burnham urged Chicago's leaders to turn their chopped-up assortment of lakefront parks into a sparkling and continuous public space. Yet for the last 100 years, completing that vision has been Chicago's grand civic project. For the next 100 years, in the downtown and beyond, the city has its work cut out for it: turning the riverfront into an equally great public space.

Absolutely correct, Mr. Kamin!

The city’s embrace of Lake Michigan is world-renown. And the Chicago River could extend that grand vision INTO the city itself. But MWRD’s dumping will prevent this vision from coming to fruition (even as the City and State push them to act otherwise). Until the District modernizes its management of the River, and adopts disinfection practices standard in civilized communities, the people and environment of Chicago will suffer, and their taxes used to defend a wholly out-of-date approach to public health and resist modernization.

Perhaps the saddest result of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District’s small-thinking is not that the citizens of Chicago will be prevented from fully enjoying the fruits of investments already made on the riverfront---but that a broader City-changing vision of the riverfront could be prevented from ever coming into existence.

Under the Michigan Avenue Bridge 2 image by jmogs via Flickr

EPA Report Brings Pollution Dangers Home…Literally

2009-06-30T14:18:22Z

In the demanding push to pass legislation that will deal with CO2 and climate change, it is easy to lose sight of more traditional air pollution problem we have in the Midwest.

I got a very personal reminder of the issue last week in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch's coverage of the US EPA's newest pollution report:

Granite City residents are among the most likely in the nation to contract cancer as a result of breathing toxic air pollution, according to an assessment released Wednesday by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

You see, I grew up in Granite City, IL, which is a steel town across the Mississippi River from St. Louis. According to the EPA, neighborhoods in my old home town and Madison County stomping grounds have air so polluted that they have an elevated cancer rate just for breathing it---in fact, only LA's air is worse.

This should not come as a huge surprise for a county so heavily industrialized that three of the five biggest employers are a steel mill, a brass foundry, and an expanding tar sands oil refinery. But the rates are alarming---cancer at an 1100 in 1 million rate (100:1 million is an exceedingly high rate to begin with) according to EPA data.

I have friends and family in St. Louis, so this KWMU Radio clip summarizes my concerns as they relate to him:

The pollution doesn't stop at the Madison county line," says [Kathleen Logan-Smith of the Missouri Coalition for the Environment]. "So if Madison County is 1100 cancers out of 1 million when it should be 36, what is St. Louis? What is Clayton? What is South City? What is Arnold?

And if that is not enough, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch brings it all home...literally:

In Missouri, 404 of 1,320 areas - or 30 percent - exceeded the national average for cancer risk rates to due to toxic air pollution. Of those areas, 280 were in St. Louis and St. Louis County. More than 1,700 areas - 60 percent - in Illinois had risk rates higher than the national average, with more than 75 percent of those falling inside Cook County.

I now live in Cook County with my wife and children, so this is a reminder of exactly why we need to keep up the fight against polluters in the area. Self-interest shouldn't be the driver for these fights---in fact, it is probably a big contributor to the problem---but it can certainly help remind you what's at stake.

What Do We Owe the Chicago River? Disinfection

2009-06-25T04:10:08Z

I was struck by the beautiful and poetic ode to the Chicago River that Deborah Shore posted on Huffington Post this week. The history of the waterway is truly amazing and central to the growth of the great city of Chicago. And as a debt of gratitude, her essay asks, “What do we owe the river?”

I think it is a simple answer. We owe the Chicago River $1.94.

With that lowly sum, we can give the river and the communities on its bank their due. With that money, we can fulfill a long held request from both the City of Chicago and the State of Illinois.

That small sum buys us, finally, disinfection of the human waste being dumped into the Chicago River and its connecting streams and waters.

The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) is an independent government authority with elected body overseeing water issues in Cook County, Illinois. Ms. Shore is a Commissioner elected to that board. The board members oversee sewage treatment facilities along the Chicago River, and are aggressively resisting a regulatory proposal from Illinois EPA to disinfect water it releases from those facilities into the waterway of harmful viruses and bacteria associated with sewage. Instead of fully protecting people in and along the river from dangerous pollution, the facilities governed by the board are actively dumping bacterial pollution into the river every day, and occasionally releasing it into the Great Lakes.

More than a century ago, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. contemplated the content in the Chicago River and wrote:

It is a question of the first magnitude whether the destiny of the great rivers is to be the sewers of the cities along their banks… [Missouri v. Illinois, 200 U.S. 496 (1906)]

At that time, the answer seemed to be: “Apparently, yes.” To protect the people of Chicago from fouling their own drinking water with deadly microbes, it took an engineering wonder that reversed the Chicago River away from the Great Lakes and downstream to the Mississippi River watershed.

Today, it is much simpler and elegant solution: disinfect the waste water before releasing it to the open river that runs through our community, past homes, businesses, parks and playgrounds. Golly! We can use equipment employed in almost every other city in America and the civilized world to make Chicago’s river cleaner and safer. Disinfection is common practice almost everywhere else in the country. It is just shocking to see this simple, standard and common practice absent from one of our nation’s greatest cities. In fact, resisted by the government in charge of protecting the people it taxes from pollution---despite pleas from the City of Chicago and State of Illinois to fix the problem. It is a mindset that is woefully out of date, seemingly unchanged from the Romans who viewed rivers as a way to move commerce and sewage.

Simply put, while the river is getting much cleaner, MWRD continues to put water with bacteria associated with a bevy of waterborne illnesses back into the water. And as more and more people come into contact with the river through boating, fishing, new housing developments, and general recreation, more and more people are likely to get sick.

True, MWRD is “investigating the problem” with long, expensive and involved epidemiology studies. But we already know the answers here; it is one of the earliest lessons that urban society’s figured out as it relates to public health. Dr. Peter Orris, Professor and Chief of Occupational Medicine at University of Illinois at Chicago and respected epidemiologist, summarized it well in recent Illinois Pollution Board hearings on the subject:

…You have one of the oldest known associations between environment and diseases and that is the ingestion of pathogens from water. We have known since antiquity that the injection of pathogens from water causes disease. We have known for many years that one of the most important public health initiatives, one of the most important public health preventive measures taken in the last 100, 200 years is the disinfection of water when in comes into contact with human beings in a variety of ways.

Having said that, then we also have a standard adopted throughout the country and much of the world that says that these waterways ought to be disinfected and that recreational waterways of this sort ought to be disinfected. And, finally, we have what looked to me to be a very balanced recommendation from the IEPA on it also.

As an environmental lawyer I have often been faced with complex issues of complicated chemicals, hard to identify emissions and pathways of exposure, and difficult technical questions about pollution control. This one seems pretty simple: it is a fundamentally bad idea to dump microbes from human fecal matter into open water that runs through a dense and great city, and the authorities in charge of the system should disinfect the waste. Who needs intestinal miasma running in the river, and sometimes into the Great Lakes?

A group of interested nonprofit organizations and NGOs have been working to identify the real cost to deal with this issue. Their research and a USEPA engineering study found the answer to be that surprisingly low sum of $1.94---the cost per household per month to stamp out the public health risk from germs such as hepatitis, Shigella, E. coli, and Cryptosporidium that are present in non-disinfected waterways.

For all we owe the Chicago River, that just doesn’t seem like a lot to ask in return!

Chicago River - Jackson Boulevard Bridge photo by Wallyg via Flickr