I was greatly surprised to read this article by Gina Kolata on today’s (18 April 2012) front page of the New York Times about the supposed lack of documented links between urban food deserts and incidence of obesity. A couple of studies are cited here that suggest not only is the notion of a urban food desert potentially fictitious, but that it has yet to be linked with the level of obesity in a given population. The implicit argument of the article is that the concerns that have arisen about urban food deserts, in particular, may be overblown.
I find it hard to agree. Curiously absent from the article’s discussion is the several years’ worth of empirical research on Chicago’s food deserts by the Mari Gallagher Group, which uses a block-by-block analysis of the city’s population and a systematic on-the-ground assessment of the location of every food outlet in Chicago (from supermarkets to smaller groceries to convenience stories to liquor stores that sell “food” products). This research, updated annually since 2006, has clearly documented both the continued presence of large food deserts on the West and South Sides and the close correspondence of these areas to a variety of health risk factors, including higher body-mass indexes.
The good news is that the number of Chicagoans living within food deserts — places in which fresh food sources are not readily available to community residents — has decreased dramatically in recent years from about 633,000 in 2006 to 384,000 in 2011. But there’s still a ways to go to address this critical food justice, socioeconomic, and health issue. See the reports below for more details from Gallagher’s research.
For its first field trip experience this spring, my SUST 350 Service & Sustainability class on urban agriculture, social justice, and community development ventured up Lake Michigan’s western shoreline to the great city of Milwaukee. Our destination was the flagship urban farm operation of Growing Power, the non-profit urban ag enterprise established in 1995 by pro basketball player-turned-urban farmer Will Allen.
Growing Power's flagship farm location in Milwaukee
Since the mid-2000s, Growing Power has expanded its operations to several sites in Chicago, including the Chicago Lights Urban Farm (CLUF) in Cabrini-Green, which is the service learning partner organization / work site for our SUST 350 class this semester.
Our objective in visiting Growing Power’s Milwaukee location was to get a hands-on introduction to one of the most celebrated sustainable urban farm operations in the US. We began our day with a picnic lunch at our urban farm site in Chicago, where we broke bread with CLUF/Growing Power staff and Youth Corps high school student interns. Then, we piled into a rented school bus and headed up to Growing Power’s site on Milwaukee’s Northwest Side, where we got a superb and information-packed 90-minute tour of the entire two-acre facility by Amy, a tour facilitator and full-time employee of the farm.
Growing Power is an example of a hybrid urban farm that is focused on developing sustainable urban farming practices in the production of vegetables (especially baby greens salad mixes), fish (primarily tilapia), animal products (goat milk and meat, eggs and poultry), and compost.
Growing trays in greenhouse #1
Their food is sold to area restaurants, at the Growing Power on-site farm stand, and at various “Market Basket” locations in Milwaukee where fresh food is hard to find. All of their growing soil is produced on-site by a sophisticated and large-scale composting system, which includes an impressive vermiculture operation that uses worms to process plant “waste” into nutrient-rich soil. Growing Power is a pioneer is using closed-loop cultivation systems in which wastewater from the aquaponic fish-growing tank flows through hydroponic plant beds, where various vegetables and flowers take up the excess nutrients from the water; the cleansed water is then returned to the aquaponics tanks, to start the cycle again.
Here, perfect soil is created by worms. Dirt is the great equalizer, the foundation of agriculture -- no matter one's race, color, or creed.Aquaponic tank, replenished by water filtered by the hydroponically-grown plants in the upper level
The farm also harvests renewable energy from several solar panel arrays, and uses the heat bio-generated from interior composting bins to warm its several large greenhouses and significantly reduce heating costs during the cold Wisconsin winters.
For a more detailed account of our group’s tour, check out the field trip notes taken by Maria Cancilla of our SUST 350 class at the pdf link below and the photos I took of our tour. Also see Growing Power’s website for a wealth of information about the farm as well as virtual tours of its facility.
Growing Power’s Milwaukee and Chicago facilities are prime examples, but by no means the only ones, of the burgeoning urban farming movement in cities and suburbs across North America. Students in this inaugural section of SUST 350 in Roosevelt’s Sustainability Studies program are working on a community-based research project about the Cabrini-Green neighborhood’s history, present assets, and future prospects. Two-thirds of our class meetings take place at the Chicago Lights Urban Farm in Cabrini-Green, a half-acre urban farm that began as a small community garden built atop a derelict basketball court in 2002. Here we are working side-by-side with Youth Corps teenage interns from the neighborhood to work compost, weed planting beds, harvest seeds from last year’s crops, build a new hoop house, and do whatever else needs to be done in the farm’s early spring work season.
This farm is an inspiring example of how sustainable agriculture in inner-city neighborhoods can contribute to positively to the physical environment, economic activity, educational opportunities, and social fabric of its community. Its example can be a spark for imagining other urban farming projects that could be implemented in underserved communities throughout the greater Chicago region — such as my hometown of Joliet, IL, located 40 miles southwest of Chicago’s Loop.
Vermiculture compost bins inside a greenhouse at Growing PowerThe production of compost at Growing Power's 2-acre site is incredible; we called this pile "Mount Compost"Our group from Roosevelt University and the Chicago Lights Urban Farm
I’ve met Doris Hamm only once, but she’s already one of my heroes. She’s started something here in Joliet that’s going to change the world, one school and one kid at a time.
Hamm is a teacher’s assistant at Joliet’s Hufford Junior High School in Darren Raichart’s “Life Skills” class for cognitively-challenged students. She is the architect of a truly extraordinary project: a vegetable garden in Hufford’s courtyard run by her Life Skills students, who have fun getting dirty and learning hands-on gardening techniques, food preparation and cooking skills, and practical lessons in science, math, and economics.
Life Skills students in their courtyard garden at Hufford Jr. High School, Joliet IL (photo: IL District 86)
Hamm likens this sustainable experiential learning process to fishing. “It’s like the old Bible story goes,” she told me. “If you give someone a fish, you feed them for a day. If you teach them to fish, you feed them for a lifetime.”
Her students are eating it up. During my visit in the fall of 2009 to Hufford’s Life Skills classroom, the kids eagerly showed me pictures of their garden and told me about their experiences. Some struggled merely to say their names; but their enthusiasm for and knowledge about their garden was nothing short of phenomenal.
In the spring of 2009, the garden’s inaugural year, Hamm and her charges sowed $28 worth of vegetable seedlings. Their diverse array of crops included green beans, peas, tomatoes, broccoli, collard greens, cucumbers, peppers, onions, cabbage, and zucchini.
The kids tended their garden through the summer growing season by watering, pulling weeds, and harvesting food. Later, they used their vegetables in recipes and froze their excess bounty. When Thanksgiving, they cooked a feast made from the organic produce they grew, processed, and preserved themselves.
Hufford Life Skills students at their Fall 2009 farmers market in the school hallways (photo: IL District 86)
Most amazingly, the Life Skills students ran three farmer’s markets in the hallways of Hufford in the fall of 2009. Strategically timed for payday, the markets proved a huge hit among faculty and staff, and made over $300 collectively — a stunning 980% return on their initial investment. Green venture capitalists, take note!
This success has stoked great plans for coming years. Hamm and her student-gardeners hope to significantly expand their courtyard plot, dedicate part of their harvest to local charities, expand their farmer’s market operation, consider ways to supply the school cafeteria with fresh in-season vegetables, and include many more students in this incredible hands-on learning experience.
Based on what I’ve seen so far, I know they’ll make it happen. After all, they’re not just learning to plant seeds or pull weeds. They’re gardening for life.
This essay was originally published as an op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 5 November 2009. The Hufford courtyard garden has expanded as of March 2012, and the children there are busy planning their 2012 planting and growing season.
The garden project now involves several groups of kids from this urban middle school of almost 1,100 students, including those in Hufford’s Independent Education magnet program as well as those with chronic behavior problems who are learning to work side-by-side with their peers in a peaceful and respectful manner and, in the process, forging friendships with their developmentally-disabled peers.
In anticipation of Earth Day, Roosevelt University will host a screening on Friday, April 20th, of the acclaimed environmental documentary feature film, Living Downstream, which features the life and work of writer, ecologist, and environmental activist Sandra Steingraber. This event is free and open to the public. As explained on the film’s website:
This poetic film follows Sandra during one pivotal year as she travels across North America, working to break the silence about cancer and its environmental links. After a routine cancer screening, Sandra receives some worrying results and is thrust into a period of medical uncertainty. Thus, we begin two journeys with Sandra: her private struggles with cancer and her public quest to bring attention to the urgent human rights issue of cancer prevention.
But Sandra is not the only one who is on a journey—the chemicals against which she is fighting are also on the move. We follow these invisible toxins as they migrate to some of the most beautiful places in North America. We see how these chemicals enter our bodies and how, once inside, scientists believe they may be working to cause cancer.
Several experts in the fields of toxicology and cancer research make important cameo appearances in the film, highlighting their own findings on two pervasive chemicals: atrazine, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and the industrial compounds, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). Their work further illuminates the significant connection between a healthy environment and human health.
At once Sandra’s personal journey and her scientific exploration, Living Downstream is a powerful reminder of the intimate connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our air, land, and water.
Date: Friday, April 20th, 2012
Time: 6:00-8:30pm
Place: Roosevelt University, Chicago Campus, Auditorium Building (430 S. Michigan Ave)
Room: Congress Lounge (2nd floor)
This event is free and open to the public. A discussion with RU faculty will follow the screening, and refreshments will be available. Sponsored by the Sustainability Studies Program in the College of Professional Studies at Roosevelt University.
RSVP to Professor Mike Bryson at mbryson@roosevelt.edu / 312-281-3148.
Environmental news is rarely good. More often it’s disconcerting . . . depressing . . . or highly disturbing. This week, it’s a breath of fresh air (literally) to get some phenomenal news about the near-future prospects for air and water resources here in Chicago.
As Michael Hawthorne, environmental reporter for the Chicago Tribune, writes this week, the notorious and heavily-polluting Fisk and Crawford coal-powered generating stations will be shut down earlier than projected by their owner, Midwest Generation. While the economic infeasibility of upgrading the plant’s pollution controls is the direct reason, there is no doubt that continued pressure from local environmental activists in the Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods as well as from key Chicago politicians (including Joe Moore of the 49th ward and Mayor Emanuel) were key drivers in this decision.
As if that weren’t cause enough for joy, we also learn today that the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District has significantly reduced the projected expense of implementing final-stage disinfection processes for wastewater effluent that is released into the Chicago Area Waterway System. Installing these technologies will be done in budget rather than with a Cook County tax hike.
Read Hawthorne’s excellent report on what has become a hot water topic in Chicago, and find out why a change of leadership is sometimes all it takes to get things moving in a dramatically different, and positive, direction.
Thank goodness for the intransigence and political buffoonery of our Illinois public officials. Without their ceaseless bickering, the ill-fated and monumentally stupid Great Imaginary Airport project envisioned near Peotone might actually get off the ground.
As it is, the GIA — known variously as the South Suburban Airport (its IDOT-sanctioned title) and the Abraham Lincoln National Airport (Jesse Jackson, Jr.’s grandiose appellation) — exists only in the misguided minds of transportation technocrats and Pollyannaish politicians.
Farmland near Peotone, IL -- the proposed site of the Great Imaginary Airport (photo: Chicago Tribune)
This bizarre state of affairs stems, in part, from our elected leaders having serious control issues. Ever since I began writing about the GIA fiasco in 2007, debate has raged about who gets to sit on the airport’s board, what to call the facility (see above), and which paint colors should adorn the terminal’s bathroom walls.
What gets overlooked in this petty drama are two things far more important and disturbing: (1) the grand fiscal folly of a bankrupt state spending untold millions to construct an airport 40 miles from Chicago’s Loop that no commercial airline wants; and (2) the grotesque social injustice of government land grabs perpetrated against law-abiding, tax-paying rural landowners within the phantom airport’s ghostly footprint.
The GIA is so far from physical realization that even its most ardent supporters have no idea when it might actually be built. Due to the project’s incompetent political sponsorship thus far, final FAA approval is probably still years away and far from guaranteed. At least I hope so.
That’s not counting the money we’ve already blown. To date, IDOT has spent $34,014,383 and change (of taxpayer funds) acquiring 2,471 acres of prime Will County farmland surrounded by the small towns of Peotone, Beecher, and Monee. But since thousands of acres remain in private hands within the GIA’s footprint, and with land prices at historic lows, IDOT officials have stepped up the pressure on unwilling sellers by commencing formal condemnation proceedings.
Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt at their home outside of Beecher, IL, where they've lived for 50 years (photo: David Pierini/Chicago Tribune)
This means that folks like Vivian and Willis Bramstaedt, who had hoped to retire on their farm near Beecher as they enter their sunset years, are being taken to court and will have their land condemned. What the State wants, the State gets.
“We got the letter sometime late in the fall,” Vivian told me the other day after I gave her a call. “I’ve no doubt in my mind the state will take our land. There’s nothing we can do. It’s just a matter of time now.”
I asked Vivian how people in Beecher felt about the GIA. “Some support it, because they think it will be an economic boost,” she admitted. “But a lot oppose it. The community is split, I suppose. And the thing is, most people can’t even think about it anymore. They’ve had the airport hanging over their heads for so long, they seem to have become numb.”
I ask you this: why is Illinois spending millions of dollars it doesn’t have to take citizens like the Bramstaedts to court and condemn their property? How can such a thing be tolerated by my fellow citizens in the Land of Lincoln? And why don’t any of our elected representatives have the backbone to stand up and state the truth about the monumental waste and injustice of Peotone’s Great Imaginary Airport?
A version of this essay appears as my monthly op-ed column (“Great Imaginary Airport a Boondoggle for Illinois“) in the 23 Feb 2012 edition of the Joliet Herald-News. For information about the airport’s plan, land acquisition data, maps, documents for FAA reviews, etc., see the official IDOT website.
Like a cold sore or a nasty case of bronchitis, the Great Imaginary Airport near Peotone just won’t go away. Not even with a prescription.
After many months of keeping a low profile, the Illinois Department of Transportation made a news splash in the summer of 2010 by releasing a 194-page report about its pet project to the FAA. It contains numerous rosy projections about future passenger and freight traffic demands meant to justify the airport’s construction.
Buried within its reams of statistics and turgid technical prose, however, was this telling passage on page 10: “The current economic downtown, the most serious since the Great Depression, is a challenge to the aviation industry. . . . This forecast environment is precarious and it justifies caution in revisiting the assumptions and forecasts for an airport, particularly a new one.” No kidding!
What’s really “precarious,” though, is the state’s ethical position in using any means necessary to acquire private property for the initial build-out of an airport that may never be approved, let alone completed. And with Illinois billions of dollars in the red, it makes zero sense to throw hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars away on such a pathetically misguided boondoggle.
Yet that’s precisely what we’re doing. Ever since IDOT was given the power of eminent domain by the state in 2002, it’s been buying up land in the imaginary airport’s footprint as fast as an Illinois hog gulping his slops. As of July 2010, nearly $33 million have been spent acquiring 2,429 acres of land from (mostly) willing sellers.
Now, with the price of land bottoming out, IDOT is flexing its muscles to begin eminent domain proceedings against citizens with no interest in selling, like Willis and Vivian Bramstaedt, an elderly couple who had intended to retire on their Beecher property.
The Bramstaedts and others are in a real pickle: if they cave in to IDOT’s pressure to sell, they’re going to get far less for their property than they would’ve a few years ago. If they refuse to deal, they’ll have to wage a hopelessly expensive court fight against the state’s condemnation proceedings .
This situation is beyond grotesque. Surely the naked exercise of power in wresting land from law-abiding rural citizens against their will for a project of dubious merit is unjust. The fact that it is permissible under state law does not make it right.
Let’s call it for what it is, then: highway robbery.
This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 8 July 2010. It was the fourth in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois.
As of Dec. 31, 2010, the State continued to earmark millions of dollars for the purchase of land in the Peotone area, and IDOT has submitted more documents to the FAA for that agency’s review. The latter still had not approved the airport project.
This is a tale of two airports — one real, the other imaginary — located in the peaceful Will County countryside near the small town of Peotone.
The real one used to be an obscure outpost called Sanger Field. It’s now widely known as Bult Field after being purchased in 2006 by Jim Bult, a Monee businessman who named the airport after himself, which I think is fine.
Jim Bult, left, at his airport near Monee, IL, c. 2007 (photo: Schwiess Doors, Inc)
The imaginary one doesn’t have an official name yet, because it doesn’t exist except in the minds of state planners and local politicians, who insist that the phantom airport will be the greatest economic engine the south suburbs have ever seen. It does have several candidates for names, though, including the geographically precise South Suburban Airport; the historically pretentious Abraham Lincoln National Airport; and the delightfully mysterious Great Imaginary Airport (GIA), which I made up.
Bult Field near Monee, IL (photo: FlightAware)
Jim Bult has invested a lot of his own money, $37 million, in Bult Field because, as he told the Herald News in 2009, “I just want a quality runway and hangar here.” As far as I know, Mr. Bult has not asked Illinois taxpayers to subsidize his airport project or future planned upgrades.
In contrast, George Ryan (former Illinois governor and convicted criminal) and Rod Blagojevich (recently impeached Illinois governor and currently under indictment for crimes too numerous to list here) have spent $24 million of taxpayer money to purchase 1,951 acres of land (as of April 2009) and millions more on environmental impact statements, engineering studies, and marketing efforts for an airport that doesn’t exist.
The irony of all this? The real airport, Bult Field, sits right next to where the GIA might someday be; so close, in fact, that the state will probably have to buy Mr. Bult out to avoid airspace conflicts and otherwise looking extremely silly. That’s OK, though, because our current governor, Pat Quinn, recently pledged to spend $100 million (of taxpayer money, I assume) to acquire 3,275 more acres of prime Will County farmland for the project.
Um, I’m a little confused. Isn’t our state billions of dollars in the red? Is it wise to spend $100 million acquiring land for an airport that may never be built, when one right next door, a private airport financed by one man, already exists?
With entertainment like this, who needs to go to the movies? Just head out toward Peotone, and watch the Tale of Two Airports unfold.
This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 9 April 2009. It was the third in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois. For a map of the Peotone Airport land area that shows the location of Bult Field within the GIA’s footprint, check out the link below.
The springtime dawn is especially peaceful in my neighborhood, Joliet’s quiet and historic Cathedral Area. I rise early to make coffee, feed the cat, and shuffle out to get the morning papers. A white-throated sparrow sings his melancholy song from a pine tree; rabbits mosey through the lush grass. It’s a tranquil beginning to the day.
Joliet's Cathedral Area, as seen from the air in the summer of 2006 (photo: Mike Bryson)
Recently, though, my morning was brutally shattered by a noisy demolition crew outside my front windows. Men were chain-sawing down trees along the street, a bulldozer was ripping up sidewalk and lawn turf, and some beefy guy was hammering a big wooden sign in what remained of my front yard.
Spilling some coffee on the cat in my haste, I rushed outside to confront the sign-planter.
“Hey!” I protested eloquently. “It’s only six a.m.! My wife and kid are asleep, and I’m trying to relish my morning ritual. Who are you guys, and what in the name of Art Schultz is up with this racket?”
The man stopped, lit a cigar, and looked down at me with a stony expression. “Name’s Arny, not Art. We’re private contractors workin’ for the state.” He turned and yelled, “Harry — take down that sycamore over there!”
I did a little involuntary dance meant to signify rage, but Arny seemed unmoved. He just jerked a thumb toward the sign.
Bold letters proclaimed: CATHEDRAL AREA REGIONAL AIRPORT. Open May 2008 Pending FAA Approval. Sincerely, (signed) Illinois Department of Transportation.
“You can’t do this!” I shouted over the noise of the dozer. “Just because the City Council is thinking about allowing a bed and breakfast over on Western Avenue doesn’t mean you can build an airport here. This is a 100-year-old residential neighborhood with quaint and charming character. We homeowners have rights!”
Arny sympathetically puffed his stogie in my direction. “Quit cryin’, pal. All’s I know is, your street’s gonna be a jet runway. State needs land, they take it. Ever hear of eminent domain? Besides, you’re lucky. Guy across the street, his house is history. Control tower’s going up there.”
I’ve always been one to look at the bright side of any situation, no matter how inherently crappy. Maybe Arny’s right, I thought, sipping the remains of my coffee. At least my house wasn’t being demolished. My commute to Chicago would be a snap, because I’d be able to walk to the departure terminal in five minutes. And the constant stream of plane exhaust would likely keep the bugs down during the summer.
Yes, the morning’s a little noisier here, and I can’t hear the sparrow’s song anymore. But it’s truly inspirational to see IDOT embark on another bold civic endeavor — and I’ve got a great view of the action.
This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 14 May 2007. It was the second in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois. While I do in fact reside in Joliet’s Cathedral Area and like to get up early, the rest of this essay is merely a nightmarish fantasy. Any resemblance to an actual Will County airport project is purely coincidental.
The ongoing follies in the Peotone Airport Saga have critics cheering and supporters groaning.
IDOT and Governor Blagojevich submitted two plans for Peotone to the FAA for review, hoping that one would be approved. This cover-all-the-bases approach incorporated the competing visions of the airport’s Congressional cheerleaders, Jerry Weller (remember him?) and Jesse Jackson, Jr., who disagree on everything from the facility’s name to the bathroom colors.
The people at the FAA sighed, shook their heads, and sent back the proposals stamped “Make Up Your Minds,” thus creating a potential delay of months, if not years, for the necessary federal go-ahead.
But this comical news has overshadowed a downright sober issue: government-sponsored intimidation of law-abiding citizens in eastern Will County who own land in the path of the bulldozers. So far, the state has spent over 23 million taxpayer dollars purchasing about 1,900 acres of land northeast of Peotone.
After getting scolded for making aggressive phone calls to owners of the remaining 2,200 acres needed for the initial build-out, IDOT has been sending letters to landowners making it clear — in a friendly, nice-guy, Midwestern kind of way — that if they can’t reach settlement on terms of sale, the government will proceed with condemnation.
That seems reasonable, doesn’t it? After all, a wasteful, sprawling, ugly, polluting, and congestion-causing airport over 40 miles from downtown Chicago that no major airline wants is a lot more important than prime Illinois farmland, a quiet rural landscape, clean air, open space, county fairs, and the rights of individual landowners. That’s Progress in action!
Still, something just sticks in my craw about that 23 million bucks IDOT diligently has spent acquiring land. Haven’t they gotten a little ahead of themselves?
Is it just me, or have others noticed that the people in charge still haven’t decided on an official plan for the airport; still haven’t received FAA approval for that plan; still haven’t stopped arguing over who’s going to control the airport; still haven’t finished the required environmental impact studies; still haven’t gotten the backing of a single major airline; and . . . well, I hardly need go on.
Since when is it OK to take first and ask permission later? I guess things just work differently in the hallowed halls of Springfield. All I know is, that approach doesn’t jibe with my old-school Joliet upbringing. If as a teenager I had taken out my dad’s cherished ’65 Chevy for a night on the town without asking him first, well . . . you probably can imagine the unpleasant consequences. So where do our elected leaders and transportation bureaucrats get off?
Jerry, Jesse, Rod, and all your IDOT cronies — you, and this whole shameful Peotone airport fiasco, should be grounded.
This essay appeared as my regular monthly op-ed column in the Joliet Herald-News on 19 February 2007. It was the first in an ongoing series of columns on the controversy surrounding the proposed “South Suburban Airport” near the small town of Peotone in Will County, Illinois.
