Mr. Michael Howard, CEO and co-founder of Eden Place Farms and Nature Center in Chicago IL, will address the Roosevelt and Resilience Studies Consortium (RSC) communities on Tuesday, 26 Oct 2021, at 11am CST on the topic of “Sustaining Environmental Justice in a Pandemic.” Please join the faculty and students of SUST 350 Service & Sustainability at Roosevelt University and ENVS 397 Environmental Justice at Western Colorado University as they host Mr. Howard’s virtual presentation and a Q&A session. This presentation is made possible by the generous funding of the RSC — thank you!
Michael Howard’s life passion is to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the Fuller Park community on Chicago’s South Side, both financially and environmentally. As Founder and CEO of the Fuller Park Community Development (FPCD) organization in the 1990s, he has worked to address housing, education, and environmental issues that have kept this generally African American and low-income community in poverty and disrepair.
In the late 1990s, Michael and his wife Amelia Howard led the effort to clean up a three-acre vacant lot near their Fuller Park residence that was piled two stories high with illegally dumped waste. With help from many in the community, the site was cleared of debris and restored into a thriving green space called Eden Place — still the only nature center on the entire South Side of Chicago. In the early 2010s, Eden Place opened its farm operation about a half-mile south of the nature center. They host community events, market their produce to local restaurants and farmers markets, and provide ecology, urban farming, and nutrition workshops to citizens of Fuller Park and beyond.
Since 2014, students in Roosevelt University’s SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class have volunteered one morning a week in a multi-year service project at Eden Place, helping with farm chores, repairing and painting structures, building trails, planting and harvesting crops, and organizing events to support the organization’s mission. In return, Eden Place has taught them much about the process and importance of community organizing, the rigors of urban environmental conservation and farming, and the challenges of fostering sustainability and community resilience in this era of social and economic stress.
Zoom Login Info:
Topic: Michael Howard on Environmental Justice for RSC
Time: Oct 26, 2021 11:00 AM Central Time (US and Canada)
Contact Mike Bryson (mbryson@roosevelt.edu), Professor & Director of Sustainability Studies, Roosevelt University
The Resilience Studies Consortium, of which Roosevelt is a charter member, is a network of small liberal arts Institutions dedicated to sustainability and community resilience, place-based educational experiences, and shared academic and co-curricular offerings in ways that empower students with the skills and knowledge needed to succeed in a rapidly evolving world.
You’re Invited to a Celebration of Black History Month!
The Chicago area is known as a crossroads of diverse cultural groups and ideas. Less commonly known, is the biological diversity of our region. Varied ecosystems are home to native plant and animal species thriving within the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
With nearly 70,000 sprawling acres of wild and wonderful wilderness, the Forest Preserves is a regional asset which improves our quality of life, but not everyone is aware of or has the opportunity to enjoy the benefits that come from spending time outside. The Forest Preserves and its partners recognize the challenge of ensuring that everyone has access to nature and are working to better engage communities of color and grow public stewardship of nature.
Please join us to hear about both the historical and contemporary connections between environmentalism and the African American experience and how we can work together to protect nature and ensure that it is welcoming and accessible to all.
A panel discussion will follow thought-provoking presentations by Brian McCammack, professor at Lake Forest College and author of the new book Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago, Veronica Kyle, Chicago Outreach Director with Faith in Place, and Arnold Randall, General Superintendent of the Forest Preserves of Cook County. Kimberly N. Ruffin, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English at Roosevelt University, will act as moderator.
Light refreshments will be served. Hardback copies of Professor McCammack’s book Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago will be available for sale for $40 each (cash or check).
The event is free but space is limited, and registration is required. For directions and transportation information please visit www.roosevelt.edu/campuses/maps-directions
This event is co-sponsored by Roosevelt University and the Forest Preserves of Cook County.
Speaker Bios and Abstracts:
Veronica Kyle directs all of Faith in Place’s Chicago outreach programs, with a particular passion for those related to Sustainable Food and Land Use. She is responsible for the creation of the Migration & Me Program which came about as the result of the realized concern that there were not enough people of color, mainly brown and black people, who were visibly engaged in available extracurricular outdoor activities, stewardship, and Earth care.
Brian McCammack is the author of Landscapes of Hope: Nature and the Great Migration in Chicago (Harvard University Press, 2017) and Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies at Lake Forest College, where he teaches courses on environmental history and politics. Landscapes of Hope recently won the 2018 George Perkins Marsh Prize for best book in environmental history from the American Society for Environmental History. In Landscapes of Hope, he examines the deep connections to nature that black Chicagoans forged in the first half of the twentieth century. The Forest Preserves of Cook County were particularly notable in this regard because African Americans not only sought out leisure there despite racial segregation and intimidation, but the labor of young black men in the Civilian Conservation Corps also helped improve and even build areas like the Skokie Lagoons.
Arnold Randall is the General Superintendent of the Forest Preserves of Cook County. The Forest Preserves of Cook County, established over a century ago, is one of the oldest and largest urban conservation districts in the United States, managing nearly 70,000 acres of diverse habitat across Cook County and offering recreation and education programs for audiences of all ages and from all walks of life. But preserving nature today in the nation’s second largest county comes with its own particular challenges – a lack of funding, climate change, and an urban population often out of touch with nature. The Forest Preserves is actively working with partners to provide a variety of programs that link diverse and urban populations with nature, including a Conservation Corps job training program and robust camping program at five new campgrounds.
Kim Ruffin is an Associate Professor of English at Roosevelt University, author of Black on Earth: African-American Ecoliterary Traditions (U. of Georgia Press, 2010), and nature-loving Certified Forest Therapy Guide.
This is an open letter I wrote recently to the leadership of Joliet Junior College in my hometown of Joliet, Illinois. The issue at hand is a future road extension, proposed by a mall developer, that would bisect the protected natural areas of the JJC Campus and compromise a rare type of Illinois wetland. The proposed roadway has galvanized support for the JJC Fen and associated natural areas on campus and in the Joliet community, as the College’s Board of Trustees debates how to proceed.
13 June 2017
Dear President Judy Mitchell and Board Chairman Bob Wunderlich –
I write to you today as a citizen of Joliet, a longtime environmental educator, and the son and grandson of JJC graduates. My overall message to you and your colleagues on the JJC Board of Trustees is simple: I strongly support the view of the JJC Natural Areas Committee and numerous faculty, students, alumni, and community members that the JJC Fen and associated open/natural areas must be protected from the proposed road extension by Cullinan Properties.
Since its settlement began in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Illinois has lost over 90% of its natural wetlands to agricultural and urban development. In the meantime, it has built what must be millions of miles of roads, many of which are deteriorated and no longer in use. In short: we have enough roads. We cannot afford to lose yet more high quality wetlands.
Map of proposed development and roads. The County Road extension (vertical blue line at left) is the road that would traverse the JJC protected natural areas.
As the above map illustrates, the proposed County Road Extension is neither the shortest nor the most convenient traffic route from the adjacent I-55 and I-80 interstates to Cullinan’s proposed “mixed-use lifestyle center” — yet even if it were, it would not be the best route. As the great writer, ecologist, and conservationist Aldo Leopold famously wrote in his 1949 book A Sand County Almanac, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise” (pp. 224-5).
The importance of JJC’s high quality open spaces, biodiversity, water quality, landscape aesthetics, and overall campus sustainability far outweigh the supposed advantages of this road extension, which serves no other purpose than to direct traffic to a shopping center that could otherwise take several other perfectly viable alternative routes that are faster and more direct.
Detailed map of the JJC campus buildings, open spaces, water bodies, and wetlands
As the College mulls over the tempting overtures of Cullinan Properties and decides whether to protect this ecologically and educationally valuable ecosystem, or to allow its fragmentation and ultimate degradation, I urge you and your colleagues to take a long view of the matter. A perspective informed by environmental sustainability inspires us to ask careful questions about the road, the character of the campus, and the institutional mission — questions that relate not just to the issues of the day, but those decades into the future.
We now live in a world of rapid urbanization, climate change, and accelerating species extinction. A century from now, I highly doubt that the leaders, faculty, students, and alumni of JJC will look favorably upon a decision in 2017 to disturb and degrade its coveted and protected natural areas with a road built exclusively to service a single shopping center. In fact, given the economic vagaries that occur over a mere 20-30 years, let alone a century, it’s questionable said development will even be operating that far into the future. (The example of the Jefferson Square Mall, built in 1975 with great fanfare and now vaporized from the landscape a mere 40 years later, comes to mind, though there are many others one could cite.)
However, I do think that the future stewards of America’s first and oldest community college (founded 1901) would be rightly proud in the year 2117 that its leaders in the present day chose to maintain the ecological and aesthetic integrity of the campus ecosystem by conserving its tranquil and species-rich open space, protecting the water quality of its beautiful lake and stream, and ensuring the opportunities of generations of students to study field-based biology and ecology in the extraordinary “living classroom” provided by one of Illinois’ most rare and endangered wetlands, a fen.
JJC biology prof Andy Neill leads students on an exploration of the campus natural areas, spring 2017 (photo: Eric Ginnard, Joliet Herald-News)
As a graduate of the local public schools (JT West class of 1985), a current resident of Joliet, and now a professor of sustainability studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago, I have developed a close relationship over the past 12 years with many students and faculty at JJC. I can attest from my vantage point in the regional higher ed community that JJC’s commitment to environmental sustainability – embodied in its native woodland, prairie, and wetland ecosystems; its 1998 Natural Areas Resolution; its LEED-Platinum greenhouse facility and widely-praised arboretum; its progressive academic programming; and its campus sustainability leadership – is the envy of many colleges and universities in the Chicagoland region.
Consequently, harming the fundamental character of the campus’ rare and biodiverse ecosystems would not just diminish the quality of the College’s outdoor learning laboratories; it would also directly contradict JJC’s professed commitment to sustainability and potentially erode its hard-won reputation among its institutional peers.
As a local citizen who cares deeply about and greatly appreciates JJC’s remarkable history and unique educational mission, I ask that you heed the recommendations of the Natural Areas Committee and protect said Natural Areas, including the fen, from any present or future road development.
Yours sincerely,
Mike Bryson
Resident of Joliet, IL
Professor & Director of Sustainability Studies, Roosevelt University
Here in my hometown of Joliet IL, we have several architectural gems in the old downtown along the east bank of the Des Plaines River. Prominent among these is the acclaimed Rialto Theatre, which I’ve written about previously in my stint as a citizen journalist for the Joliet Herald-News.
The Rialto Theatre, Joliet IL, c. the late 1920s (Photo: Legends of America)
Often referred to as the “Jewel of Joliet,” the Rialto is one of the most ornate and fantastically splendid theaters in the US that dates from the golden age of movie and vaudeville house construction in the 1920s. It is an inseparable part of Joliet’s civic identity — not to mention one of the things that kept the struggling downtown district from withering away in the post-industrial era.
Given this history, it’s shocking but probably not surprising that when the Rialto was only about 50+ years old, it was nearly demolished to put in a one-square-block parking lot in the late 1970s (a dark time indeed in Joliet’s history when unemployment in the city reached 25%). Fortunately, this travesty of architectural desecration did not happen. This excellent story by Bob Okon of the Herald-News explains why.
Dorothy Mavrich, Credited with Saving Rialto, Dies
By Bob Okon Published: Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2015 6:59 p.m. CST in the Joliet Herald-News
Dorothy Mavrich at the Rialto in 2008 (Shaw Media)
JOLIET – Dorothy Mavrich, who led a grassroots effort to save the Rialto Square Theatre from demolition, died Tuesday afternoon.
Mavrich, 94, decided at a point in the 1970s when the Rialto, now called the “Jewel of Joliet,” appeared headed for demolition that the theater should be saved.
She stood on street corners with a can to collect money and raise awareness, led fundraisers, and persisted in pursuing the Rialto owners to the point that one labeled her a “crackpot.”
Some over the years have disputed whether she got more credit for saving the Rialto than deserved, pointing to former state Rep. LeRoy Van Duyne’s influence in bringing in state money to ultimately close the deal.
But Mavrich is widely seen as the leader of the cause and the person most responsible for preserving the Rialto.
“There’s no doubt that she started the groundswell, the grassroots effort to save the place,” said James Smith, chairman of the Will County Metropolitan Exposition and Auditorium Authority that oversees the Rialto.
“She was a little lady with big ideas,” said Lynne Lichtenauer, a longtime friend who joined the cause early and later became executive director at the Rialto. “If it were not for Dorothy, the Rialto Square Theatre would not be on Chicago Street.”
Lichtenauer was with Mavrich when she died at the Joliet Area Community Hospice home. Mavrich had a stroke last week, Lichtenauer said.
She noted that Mavrich not only worked to save the Rialto, but later led the creation of the Cultural Arts Council of the Joliet Area, which provided more than $400,000 in local funding for the arts.
Mavrich was a piano teacher for 50 years. She taught at the old Joliet Conservatory of Music, located across the street from the Rialto. She told The Herald-News that she was at a concert listening to the Rialto pipe organ when she was inspired to save the theater.
“I thought, ‘My God, I can’t believe they’re going to tear this down for a parking garage,'” she told The Herald-News in 2013 as she was about to receive an award from the Joliet Area Historical Museum.
Mavrich’s persistence was evident in a story about her insistence on seeing Robert Rubens of the Rubens family, which owned the Rialto and whose name is on the sign today. Lichtenauer said Mavrich finally walked into Rubens office when there was no secretary to keep her out.
“She said, ‘I’m Dorothy Mavrich.’ He said, ‘You’re the crackpot everybody keeps telling me about,'” Lichtenauer said.
Eventually Rubens gave his blessing to Mavrich’s preservation effort, Lichtenauer said. And she later helped get the Rubens name back on the Rialto sign.
Mavrich loved telling the story, said Smith, who heard it many times himself.
“She was such a diminutive little lady,” Smith said, “but she was a powerful person.”
The Rialto Square Theatre Foundation, the organization that raises money to support the theater today, issued a statement saying, “Our community has lost a guiding light – Dorothy Mavrich, the lady who saved the Rialto.”
Kyle Lennan and Geoff Norris (photo: J. Liebregts, durhamregion.com)
This past Sunday, Toronto-based independent filmmakers Geoff Norris and Kyle Lennan came by my house in Joliet to interview me about the long-simmering Peotone Airport controversy in agricultural lands south of Chicago in Will County, IL. Norris and Lennan have been making a film about the proposed Pickering Airport project in the rural areas near Toronto, which has resulted in the government seizure of property and demolition of homes over the past several decades despite no tangible progress on the airport’s construction.
The story bears an eerie resemblance to that playing out in eastern Will County within the vast stretches of prime Illinois farmland near the rural villages of Peotone, Monee, and Beecher. Geoff and Kyle came across my op-ed series about the Peotone airport written for the Joliet Herald-News up through 2012, and were kind enough to include me as a local voice from the community on their road trip to the Chicago area, where they also filmed local activists/opponents to the project.
Last Thursday the Illinois EPA held a contentious public meeting on Chicago’s SE Side to hear residents’ concerns and complaints about the massive piles of petcoke — a waste by-product of tar sands oil refining done in nearby Whiting, IN — being accumulated along the industrialized banks of the Calumet River, in close proximity to the East Side and Deering neighborhoods of Chicago.
A Chicago community meeting the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) hosted to discuss a proposed construction permit for KCBX Terminals Company quickly escalated into angry shouting from Southeast Side residents fed up with the firm storing large piles of petroleum coke, or petcoke, near their homes.
KCBX, which is controlled by the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, stockpiles the petcoke, a byproduct of oil refining, along the Calumet River on Chicago’s far Southeast side. The thick, powdery petcoke is sent to KCBX from a BP refinery in Whiting, Indiana. East Side and South Deering residents have been sounding the alarm for some time now that petcoke dust is blowing into their neighborhoods and getting into their homes.
“No one asked us if we wanted to have these piles dumped in the first place. They just did it,” Southeast Side resident Sue Garza told the IEPA officials at the packed two-hour meeting, held at the East Side United Methodist Church. “We have been the toxic dumping ground here for over 100 years. We don’t want it anymore.”
Brad Frost with IEPA’s office of community relations said KCBX is seeking a revised construction permit from the agency in order to bring new equipment, including 10 portable conveyors, a stacking conveyor and a portable hopper, to its site at 10730 S. Burley Ave. According to Frost, the company is not looking to increase its input or emissions.
“They can’t handle their [petcoke] dust now,” resident Guillermo Rodriguez fired back. “How is it not going to increase?”
Residents grew frustrated with IEPA officials, pointing out that the community is against the company’s activities and noted that issuing such a permit would allow for its site expansion.
“It is very simple,” said community member Martin Morales. “We don’t like it. We don’t want it. (Petcoke pollution is) making us sick. What else do you need?”
One person later shouted, “Move the piles! Who cares about the conveyors?” Another said, “If you’re the protection agency, protect us!”
“How many people have to get sick before you do something,” asked resident Ken Keefer. “Is there a certain number that have to come down with asthma or cancer before you do something? This has been going on for two, three years. And this is the first time you guys have shown up.”
Frost said the IEPA would take into account the comments made at the meeting, but noted that the IEPA has received very few formal, written complaints about specific issues involving the site.
One man fired back, “We can’t even open our windows because of the soot.” Later, the audience began to chant, “Move the piles!”
“Answer the question. When are you going to move the piles,” a gentleman asked the officials, which promoted another person to exclaim, “When we’re all dead!”
“Obviously there a lot of people here concerned about the facility,” Frost stressed. “We need to see [formal] complaints. That’s one thing we use to determine whether there are problems at sites.”
Frost did make a point, however, to stress that even though the agency has received few formal complaints, the IEPA is pursing enforcement against the company.
Earlier this month, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan filed a lawsuit on behalf of IEPA against KCBX over alleged air pollution violations. In a statement, Madigan said the toxic mounds at KCBX’s storage site “are growing by the day without the appropriate protections to ensure nearby residents’ health and safety.”
Chicago residents from the far South Side protest the siting of petcoke waste along the Calumet River at an IEPA public meeting on Th 14 Nov 2013 (photo: Progress Illinois)
Community members asked lawyers from the attorney general’s office, who attended the meeting, what else could be done to more quickly shut down the facilities and get rid of the petcoke mounds. The officials stressed that the current case is pending, and it has to go through a formal legal process.
Additionally, a group of Southeast Side families filed a lawsuit at the end of October against KCBX and a few other companies that store petcoke. The lawsuit came on the heels of notices of air pollution violations the IEPA recently issued to Beemsterboer Slag Co., which also stockpiles the coal-like waste product along the Calumet River.
BP is in the process of modernizing its Whiting refinery and plans to to boost the amount of petcoke it produces at the facility to 2.2 million tons of a year.
Tom Shepherd with the Southeast Environmental Task Force told the crowd that the current issues the community is experiencing is only “the tip of the iceberg.”
“There’s going to be at least three times more than is over there today,” he said. “Today we’re getting 700,000 tons a year, but once that coker goes online, it’s going to increase to 2 million tons a year. That’s 6,000 tons a day.”
“Imagine how many trucks, barges and trainloads are going to be coming through our neighborhood,” Shepherd continued. “If they’re getting a permit for 10 additional conveyors over there, that means that they’re going to increase ten-fold, but we heard three-fold. That’s scary enough.”
The audience really got peeved when they learned the IEPA has to make a decision regarding KCBX’s permit next week. IEPA officials wouldn’t say whether they would be extending the review period for the permit, approving the permit or denying it.
“You’re here a week before,” Rodriguez later asked. “Where were you when this all started, when this began? Where were you then? Who’s protecting our water source? They’re pumping water out of that lake and they’re spraying their piles. That runoff goes where? It goes into our streets. It goes into our drinking water. If you think this is a good idea, let’s put it in your backyard.”
Residents called on Ald. John Pope (10th), who attended the meeting, to speak, but then heckled and interrupted him. Pope made a point to stress that he has been working with elected officials at the local, state and federal levels to see what can else be done about the piles.
“As much as we all are passionate about the problems, there’s got to be a formal process, and it starts unfortunately with the complaints,” he added. “I know everyone’s complained in the past, but there’s got to be formal complaints lodged.”
Today’s Mike Nowak Show on WCPT features a segment about the petcoke controversy in the Calumet Region of Chicago’s far South Side. This waste by-product from the refining of oil from the tar sands of Canada has been piling up along the banks of the Calumet River by Koch Industries, on behalf of BP, which operates a refinery across the state line in Whiting, IN. As noted below, the piles give off clouds of dust in windy conditions, which then disperse among the adjacent neighborhoods — communities that have endured decades of environmental hazards and industrial degradations from steel plants, fuel refineries, landfills, and illegal waste dumps.
I’m reproducing Nowak’s written preview of his radio show here, because (just as he does for his radio show every week) it maps out many of the twists and turns of this emerging storyline, plus provides numerous links to news and environmental resources.
Pet coke piles along the Calumet River: Did they come from Detroit?
Dear Friends in the Clean Power Coalition and All Others,
Thank you to those in the coalition and others that have joined the Southeast Environmental Task Force in coming to the table to try to find a solution to the petcoke problem that has been developing on the southeast side. The petcoke is a by-product (or waste product, if you will) of the tar sands that are being pipelined and shipped in other ways to the British Petroleum refinery in Whiting, Indiana (just over the state line from Chicago) for processing.
Much has happened in the weeks since we met to discuss this urgent problem:
We have conducted two tours for legislators and staffers of public officials; met with Koch Bros. / KCBX company officials; have been out on the Calumet River twice doing inspections and video shoots; given a host of interviews; have been fielding numerous calls and complaints; prompted investigations by the USEPA and Illinois Atty. General; and are planning a community meeting on Oct. 24 to raise awareness and to educate neighbors nearest to the huge, black piles of dusty petcoke that are most affected by it.
You would think that a part of Chicago that has suffered so much environmental degradation would at some point catch a break.
You would be wrong.
With the shuttering of three coal fired power plants in the area–the State Line, along the border of Illinois and Indiana, as well as the Fisk and Crawford plants in Chicago–the need for coal and accompanying storage facilties in which to keep it has dropped dramaticaly.
Mounds of petcoke on barges (Photo: Josh Mogerman)
BP Whiting is now the second biggest producer of petcoke amongst American refineries. They will be spitting out 6,000 tons of the stuff a day ; more than 2 million tons annually.
Unfortunately, petcoke has a nasty habit of becoming wind-borne and ending up on people’s counter tops, windsills and in their eyes and lungs. And BP is now moving vast amounts of this substance across the state line to Chicago to holding areas on the banks of the Calumet River. Why? Because the environmental regulations aren’t as strict here. Which is ironic, considering that just last year BP agreed to a $400 million settlement with state and federal agencies as well as environmental and community groups over air quality standards around the Whiting facility.
At least this time, the threat to Chicago’s southeast side is being reported by some of the local media, including the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Tonight on WTTW. After being alerted by SETF, NRDC produced its own video of the rising piles of petcoke along the Calumet.
That’s where the headline at the top of this story comes from. The SETF’s Tom Shepherd says that he has asked the companies storing the petcoke in Chicago exactly where it came from and how it got there so quickly. But he has not received a straight answer. Is it possible that Chicago is now storing the petcoke that was ordered out of Detroit?
Detroit’s pet coke piles were produced by Marathon Refinery but owned by Koch Carbon, a subsidiary of Koch Industries. In Chicago they are owned by KCBX, an affiliate of Koch Carbon, which has large parcels of land along the Calumet River and, according to Midwest Energy News, expanded its presence in the area last year.
As you can see, the common denominator is Koch Industries. From an article on Daily Kos:
Because it’s a waste product of oil refining the Kochs sell it for prices cheaper than coal to poor nations willing the accept pollution as a trade off for cheap energy. Petcoke is the carbon cost ignored in the State department analysis that falsely claimed that Keystone XL tar sands oil will not significantly increase greenhouse gas pollution compared with conventional oil.
Petcoke protestors in Chicago (photo: J. Mogerman)
Which leads some people to refer to the substance as “petkoch.” The other connections, as noted above, are issues like the transportation of tar sands oil, the Keystone XL Pipeline, and recent tar sands oil spills like the one near Kalamazoo, Michigan, in 2010. Three years later, tar balls can still be found along the banks of that river, and dozens of families have been permanently displace.
set up a blockade of Enbridge Inc.’s expansion of tar sands pipeline 6b. This pipe- the same that ruptured in 2010 causing the largest and costliest inland oil spill in history- is currently under construction to increase the flow of tar sands from 240,000 barrels per day to 500,000 barrels per day.
It never ends, does it.
To address this very serious environmental issue, I’m pleased to have Tom Shepherd from SETF in studio. Joining us via phone are Chris Wahmhoff of Michigan Coalition Against Tar Sands (MI CATS) and Stephen Boyle from DCATS. By the way, Boyle points out that the Calumet River is currently the subject of remediation efforts by the U.S. EPA:
The 1.8-mile stretch of the river from Indianapolis Boulevard to Hohman Avenue is currently undergoing projects designed to remove contaminants and restore habitat. 350,000 cubic yards of sediment are slated to be removed and a cap will be placed over the dredged sediment. Wetlands and nearshore habitats will be restored with native plants following the completion of the dredging, expected in 2016.
Gosh, I can’t imagine that tons and tons of petcoke could possible affect that planned restoration.
Question: What do the northeastern Illinois communities of Arlington Heights, Batavia, Chicago, Downers Grove, Evanston, Hoffman Estates, Naperville, Northbrook, Oak Park, Plainfield, and St. Charles have in common with Cincinnati, OH; Nashville, TN; Pittsburgh, PA; Sioux City, IA; and Topeka, KS?
Answer: All of them allow city residents to keep backyard chickens for egg production.
Here in Joliet, there’s a grassroots movement aflutter to legalize residential chicken-keeping, a plucky proposal I enthusiastically support.
The virtues of city and suburban backyard hens are many and various. As noted by the local advocacy organization J-Hens (Joliet Healthy Eggs in Neighborhoods), urban chickens:
provide fresh and nutritious eggs that are far superior to most purchased in supermarkets (I know; I’ve tasted ’em);
recycle food waste by consuming kitchen scraps and producing valuable compost for gardens;
are fun family pets that provide our technology-distracted children with animal companionship, healthy outdoor activity, and instructive caretaking chores.
To be sure, uninformed naysayers wrongly assume that backyard chickens are dirty, noisy, and detrimental to local property values. I do know many so-called humans who fit such a description, and I bet you do, too. But not our dirt-scratching, bug-eating feathered friends. (Yes, folks — chickens love to eat bugs. What’s not to like about that?)
Let’s start with the property value myth. First of all, the irresponsible wrongdoings of many American financial institutions have wreaked exponentially more havoc upon the local housing economy the last five years than anything a few little hens down the alley could ever do.
Secondly, just look again at the list of cities above: does anyone really believe that the affluent communities of Arlington Heights, Evanston, Naperville, and the regulation-obsessed Oak Park — all cities with far higher average home values than Joliet — would’ve approved their backyard hen ordinances if property values were truly at risk? I rest my case.
What about the chicken poop? you ask. Won’t it be stinky? Of course it will — IF YOU DON’T CLEAN IT UP. Again, let’s get real. Our present-day urban landscape is constantly bombarded with doggy doo-doo from the tens of thousands of dogs slobbering along in our midst and treating our lawns and parkways as their personal bathrooms. These putrescent pooch piles are large, stinky, and messy — I know because I’ve cleaned a lot of them up in my 45 years. But do we outlaw the keeping of dogs as household/backyard pets because of their daily defecations? No — we simply expect their owners to deal with the waste properly.
Don’t you wish?
And as for alleged noise problems: we’re not talking roosters here. Hens are quiet and unaggressive compared to those preening and caterwauling males of the species, not to mention yappy canines and loudmouth people. (You know who you are.)
If Joliet really wants to deal with urban noise issues, I suggest the Council turn its attention to the bass-thumping car stereos that rattle my teeth and jiggle my liver as I sit in my vehicle waiting for the stoplight to change. How about an ordinance against those aural abominations?
More backyard chickens. Less liver-jiggling noise pollution. Now that would be progress!
I encourage all forms of urban gardening and farming, especially in my hometown, and recommend the J-Hens website to readers near and far. I also love doggies and my fellow man, contrary to what this article might imply. A version of this essay appears in the 5 June 2013 edition of the Joliet Herald-News as the creatively-titled “Backyard Chickens in Joliet.”
You’d think that Jessie Jackson Jr.’s stunning fall from political grace last week would have opponents of the Great Imaginary Airport in Peotone doing cartwheels of joy out in the cold autumnal winds of eastern Will County.
Jesse Jackson Jr., former US Rep (IL-2nd)
After all, the last significant public appearance by Jackson was way back on April 21st, when as a progressive-minded environmentalist he promoted Earth Day by sanctimoniously spading up soil in a Peotone-area cornfield while surrounded by media and bussed-in supporters from his 2nd Congressional District. His purported “people’s groundbreaking” was for what Jackson insisted on calling the Abraham Lincoln National Airport.
That grandiose name is telling, for it expresses Jr.’s once-vaulting political ambition even as it inappropriately cloaks a misguided boondoggle of an airport project in the image of one of America’s most revered presidents. It also signifies the longstanding logjam between Jackson’s Cook County-based Abraham Lincoln National Airport Commission (ALNAC) and the various governmental bodies of Will County, which understandably want to retain control over the airport’s construction and administration.
That’s why the folks of S.T.A.N.D. (Shut This Airport Nightmare Down) and other grassroots opponents of the Great Imaginary Airport should mourn rather than celebrate Jackson’s departure and ALNAC’s inevitable dissolution. Without the gridlock-producing squabbles over the airport’s construction funding, name, or design that Jackson’s commission helped create, airport proponents now have before them a slightly less congested path toward the project’s FAA approval — which hinges upon, among many other things, a unified governing authority for the airport.
STAND members hold up a sign at Rob Ogalla’s farm near Peotone, April 2012 (M. Bryson)
Note that I said “slightly.” That’s because building a functional political alliance in Illinois these days is about as likely as finding a Republican candidate with a chance to win Jackson’s empty seat in the forthcoming special election his resignation necessitates. Consequently, the fate of the Great Imaginary Airport will continue to be determined by a long war of retrenchment among various factions, some high profile and others little known.
On one side are Governor Pat Quinn and his army of IDOT technocrats, who have spent $29.8 million of taxpayer money thus far buying up 2,317 acres of land in the as-yet-unapproved airport’s footprint, and are now expanding their holdings through eminent domain proceedings against unwilling sellers.
Aligned with Quinn are various Will County leaders eager for a big fat construction project to provide local jobs, no matter how temporary those might be or whether the long-term prospects of the airport are viable.
On the other side are Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who strenuously opposes the project as antithetical to an expanded O’Hare; and United CEO Jeff Smisek, who is on record opposing a third airport for the Chicago region (a view shared by other major airline execs, as well).
Bult Field near Monee, IL (photo: FlightAware)
Joining their ranks are the politically weak but morally righteous grassroots opponents in eastern Will County, who correctly view the airport as a naked land grab by the state; and a guy named Jim Bult, who in a supreme example of irony already owns and runs a small private airport within the footprint of the GIA (Bult Field) and who to my knowledge has no desire to shut down his operation or take his neighbors’ land.
Sure, we’ll miss you, Junior, and all the free theater you provided us over the years. But as for the Great Imaginary Airport controversy in Peotone, the war grinds on.
Michael Howard’s life passion is to improve the quality of life for the citizens of the Fuller Park community on Chicago’s South Side, both financially and environmentally. As Founder and CEO of the Fuller Park Community Development (FPCD) organization in the 1990s, he has worked to address housing, education, and environmental issues that have kept this generally African American and low-income community in poverty and disrepair.
