WBEZ | pollution

Cleaning up Chicago’s wide, romantic beaches

Sat, 13 Apr 2013 08:30:00 -0500

Volunteers for an Adopt-A-Beach program are headed to Chicago-area beaches to clean up trash and debris starting this weekend.

And those beaches are bigger than usual this year due to record-low water levels over the winter. After hitting an all-time low in January, Lake Michigan is creeping back up, but U.S. Army Corps of Engineers projections show the lake could still dip below its 1965 low water records without a lot of rain.

That said, it’s been raining a decent amount this week, which has a different potential consequence for beach sweepers: combined sewer overflow and runoff can mean more trash along the shoreline.

Louise Kulaga, an eighth-grade science teacher at Gurrie Middle School in LaGrange, is taking a group of middle-schoolers to clean up 12th Street Beach and North Avenue Beach this spring. Cleanups involve picking up trash, recycling, conducting basic sampling and testing for bacteria in the water. Shallow waters along the shore could lead to higher bacteria counts this summer.

Kulaga says the low water means a wider beach, but not necessarily more trash. That depends on weather conditions, and how recently there’s been a beach party. In past years, she and her students have already seen a lot.

“There’s always some little bit of drug paraphernalia here and there,” she said. “And diapers. The back seats of a car. A totem pole, a piece of a totem pole.”

But that’s not even the best of it. A couple years ago they found a green wine bottle with a message in it. Kulaga convinced the principal, who was out with the group, to be the one to read the message to the kids. She was a little worried about what it might say. But it turned out to be rated PG, PG-13 at worst.

“It was a little dramatic, it was about someone breaking up with a boyfriend or a girlfriend, we couldn’t quite tell,” she said. “And they were purging their feelings into Lake Michigan.”

Teams of volunteers will start combing Chicago’s wide, romantic beaches this weekend; anyone interested can join in public cleanups through the Great Lakes Alliance.

Lewis Wallace is a Pritzker Journalism Fellow at WBEZ. Follow him @lewispants.

Six months after Fisk and Crawford, Chicago area coal still struggling

Wed, 10 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0500

The last barge carrying coal to Pilsen’s Fisk Power Plant lumbered up the Chicago canal in late August, dumping a final 1,500 tons of coal to burn in a community whose members were more than happy to see their industrial neighbor go.

Before they shut down, the Fisk and Crawford coal plants were among the state’s largest emitters of toxic chemicals. In 2010, the latest year of data available in the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory, the power plants were among the leading sources of barium compounds, hydrochloric acid, hydrogen fluoride, mercury compounds and sulfuric acid. A 2002 Harvard School of Public Health study linked the plants to 41 premature deaths and 2,800 asthma attacks annually.

It has been a little more than six months since the plants closed, and recent tests by the EPA showed particulate matter concentrations and radiation levels typical for Chicago in the area around Fisk. The readings came from four stationary sensors and a mobile unit mounted to a baby carriage to make sure no odd winds swept pollution between the reach of the monitors.

“Overall it’s not unreasonable to expect some air quality improvement since the plants closed,” said the state EPA’s Andrew Mason.

There is considerable lag time in analyzing air quality data, and on a regional basis it is difficult to single out individual sources, Mason said, so a definitive breakdown of just what impact the plant closures had on Chicago’s air quality doesn’t exist.

But anecdotal evidence abounds. Sulfur oxides can smell like rotting eggs — an aroma residents are happy to report no longer lingers over their neighborhood. Those compounds, along with nitrogen oxides, also contribute to smog and haze.

The recent tests seemed to confirm the shuttered coal plants were no longer an air quality concern for neighborhood, but coal is not the only source of particulate matter pollution.

A new study in the European Respiratory Journal found 14 percent of chronic asthma in kids is caused by car exhaust — in the same range as the 4 to 18 percent bracket of childhood asthma cases resulting from exposure to second-hand smoke, per World Health Organization estimates. It was the first time they estimated the percentage of cases that might not have occurred if Europeans had not been exposed to road traffic pollution.

Around the region, coal plants are struggling to compete with low natural gas prices and tightening EPA restrictions. Dominion Energy, which recently sold off some Chicago area holdings, just settled to the tune of more than $13 million to resolve Clean Air Act violations. The settlement required Dominion to spend $9.75 million of that on environmental projects, including land acquisition and restoration near the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.

But two coal plants in Will County are not among the more than 100 coal plants shuttered nationwide in recent years. A Romeoville plant emitted more than six million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2012, according to the EPA’s greenhouse gas inventory, making it the biggest carbon polluter in the Chicago area. Midwest Generation, which owns three operational coal-fired power plants in the area, last week won a two-year reprieve from new sulfur dioxide emissions standards in light of its December bankruptcy filing.

While coal’s share of the U.S. electricity mix has fallen markedly in recent years, it remains a major source of electricity. Coal-fired power plants collectively produce more pollution than any other source in the country.

Chicago's recent decision to aggregate electricity purchases gave coal the boot from the city's fuel mix, in a nod not only to the decades of environmental concerns that sped the closures of Fisk and Crawford, but to the flagging economic profile of the fuel source whose command of the country's electricity portfolio is beginning to wane.

Sustainable Justice for Marginalized Communities

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 11:56:00 -0600

Sylvia Hood Washington’s pioneering book, "Packing Them In: An Archaeology of Environmental Racism in Chicago, 1865-1954," documents how generations of Chicago's poor, working class and ethnic minority residents have suffered disproportionately from the harmful effects of pollution.

Washington teaches at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health, and recently was appointed by Governor Pat Quinn to sit on Illinois’ first Environmental Justice Commission. She also is the founder of and chief environmental research scientist for Environmental Health Research Associates, LLC.

As an environmental epidemiologist, engineer and historian, Washington has spent decades researching the impact of industrial pollution on human health and ecosystems. She also consults regularly with environmental law firms and grass roots community groups to help them understand the history and impact of industrial operations, transportation systems and municipal planning on human health and environmental health disparities.

Recorded live Tuesday, February 12, 2013 at Elmhurst College.

Toxic releases by Illinois industries rise in 2010

Fri, 06 Jan 2012 15:56:00 -0600

Toxic emissions from Illinois industry increased more than 10 percent in 2010 over the year before, but pollution has still been trending downward over the last decade.

Illinois companies emitted more than 100 million pounds of poisonous gasses, heavy metals and other chemicals. That’s a jump over the prior year, but still much less than any of the seven years before.

And many of those toxins were disposed of properly – the amount that actually escaped into the air remained near a nine-year low.

Still, Environment Illinois’s Bruce Ratain says the state should be doing better.

“It’s easy to say, oh we’ve done so much in Illinois to promote clean energy, to clean up dirty coal plants,” said Ratain, a clean energy associate with Environment Illinois. “It’s less a question of, is it marginally higher than it was last year, and more, wait a minute, it’s pretty surprising that it’s still as high as it is.”

The United States Environmental Protection Agency released the new data yesterday as part of its Toxic Release Inventory. A spokesman for the Illinois EPA cautions that the numbers have some limitations, as the totals are based on self-reporting. They might also be affected by the recession.

Obama withdraws proposed regulation on smog

Fri, 02 Sep 2011 10:15:00 -0500

Saying that "reducing regulatory burdens and regulatory uncertainty, particularly as our economy continues to recover" prompted his administration to rethink, President Obama just announced that he's withdrawing proposed regulations that would have tightened government smog standards in a bid to protect the ozone.

"I want to be clear: my commitment and the commitment of my administration to protecting public health and the environment is unwavering," the president added in a statement posted on the White House website.

But in addition to the negative effect that new regulations might have on the economy, Obama said, "work is already underway to update a 2006 review of the science that will result in the reconsideration of the ozone standard in 2013. Ultimately, I did not support asking state and local governments to begin implementing a new standard that will soon be reconsidered."

The Associated Press notes that:

"The smog standard was among the Obama administration regulations that House Republicans said this week they would try to block this fall. The move is sure to raise the ire of environmentalists, a core Obama constituency."

In a letter to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa Jackson, the Office of Management and Budget says the proposed rule "would be problematic in view of the fact that a new assessment, and potentially new standards, will be developed in the relatively near future."

And, adds OMB regulator affairs Administrator Cass Sunstein, "the president has instructed me to give careful scrutiny to all regulations that impose significant costs on the private sector or on state, local or tribal governments."

Settlement could lead to big park for Mexican neighborhood

Fri, 12 Aug 2011 22:35:00 -0500

The city of Chicago could be near the end of a five-year legal battle for control of a former industrial site with potential to help form a 24-acre park. If an eminent-domain settlement holds up, the land could be an asset for a Mexican-American area of the Southwest Side.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Sanjay T. Tailor this week signed off on the deal, under which the city will pay more than $7.5 million for about 19 acres owned by 2600 Sacramento Corp.

“I don’t get a penny,” company owner Joanne Urso said Friday afternoon. The money will go to the Cook County Treasurer’s Office and remain there as Urso tries to settle with a bank that has filed suit to foreclose on the property, according to her attorney.

Urso’s land could combine with an adjacent five acres the city already controls. The park would total about five blocks, all just west of South Sacramento Avenue and north of West 31st Street. The perimeter would pass residential buildings, industrial properties and the Cook County Jail.

Activists in the Little Village neighborhood hailed the settlement. “We have not seen any park development in over 75 years,” said Kim Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization.

Wasserman said the deal could inspire other neighborhoods to push for public amenities and services. “Regardless of language and regardless of immigration status, as long as there is determination in these communities, we can continue to get the things that we need,” she said.

The park concept has the backing of the local alderman. “That’s what we’re pushing for,” said Juan Manzano, an aide to Ald. George Cárdenas, 12th Ward.

The property served industrial manufacturers for more than 70 years, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Their output included asphalt, coal tar and driveway sealer. Celotex Corp. made roofing products on the site from 1967 to 1982, the EPA says.

Allied Chemical and Dye Corp. purchased that operation. A series of mergers and acquisitions turned Allied into New Jersey-based Honeywell International Inc. The corporation dismantled the Celotex facilities between 1991 and 1993, according to the EPA. Urso’s company bought the property later.

After cancer-linked chemicals turned up in nearby homes and yards, the EPA designated the area a Superfund site. A Honeywell cleanup consisted largely of covering the land with gravel. The cleanup finished last year, the agency says in a statement.

Chicago filed the eminent-domain suit in 2006. The case became more complicated in August 2010, when Texas-based United Central Bank filed the foreclosure suit, a nearly $10 million claim, in federal court. The loan involves both the Celotex site and another Urso property.

The city’s payment for Urso's land will consist of $6 million from the Chicago Park District and more than $1.5 million from city general-obligation bonds, according to Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

But the timeframe for creating the park is not clear. Ownership of Urso’s property will transfer to Chicago upon payment, due September 7, but the city is not specifying a date for turning over the acreage to the Park District. “Possibly later this year,” Hoyle wrote Friday afternoon.

A possible obstacle is a Chicago Fire Department facility on the adjacent five acres.

The biggest challenge could be funding the park construction. Wasserman’s group is calling for playgrounds, a farm, sports fields, an amphitheater and a community center. Building all those amenities could cost hundreds of millions of dollars, the group says.

NASA's eyes in the sky study pollution on Earth

Wed, 03 Aug 2011 03:59:00 -0500

NASA, the agency best known for exploring space, is trying to answer some urgent questions about air pollution right here on Earth.

For much of July, the agency flew research planes between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore as part of a mission known as DISCOVER-AQ. The planes, along with weather balloons and ground stations, were gathering data on how pollutants such as ozone and particulates behave in the atmosphere.

The short-term goal is to learn more about where these pollutants form, how far they travel after forming, and how they are distributed at different elevations in the atmosphere.

The long-term goal is to make it possible to use satellites to provide hour-by-hour monitoring of pollution levels across the country. That would help the Environmental Protection Agency and other parts of government enforce air quality standards.

One reason NASA picked the Baltimore-Washington traffic corridor to fly over is that it's a particularly bad place to inhale.

"It's a rather polluted region," says Ken Pickering, a scientist from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center who is part of the DISCOVER-AQ mission. Maryland frequently violates the national ambient air quality standard for both ozone and for particulate matter, he says.

Ozone can damage your lungs. Airborne particles have been linked to cancer and heart attacks. And even though air pollution in the U.S. isn't as bad as it used to be, more than 125 million Americans still live in places that often fail to meet EPA air quality standards.

Preparing For Flight

For several weeks, Pickering and other scientists were flying out of a NASA facility in Wallops Island, Va., about 100 miles south of Washington, D.C.

On one morning before a flight, Pickering was on the phone in a makeshift office next to a cavernous hangar. He was about to deliver some bad news about one of the instruments on the P-3, the mission's main research plane.

"The pump for the ozone instrument failed this morning," he says, and the flight can't leave until it's fixed. After the call, Pickering explains that the timing of the pump failure is unfortunate. "Today is going to be a very hot day in the Baltimore-Washington area," he says. "Only some scattered clouds. And this will allow plenty of sunlight to cook up a lot of ozone."

Ozone is a tricky pollutant to study because it isn't expelled from tailpipes or factory smokestacks. Instead, it forms when other pollutants, usually hydrocarbons and nitrogen oxides, react in the presence of sunlight. The NASA mission is hoping to learn more about how far from the sources of pollution ozone forms and at what altitude.

After a two-hour delay, the mission's principal investigator, Jim Crawford, of NASA Langley Research Center, strides through the door to announce that the faulty pump has been replaced. "We have an ozone instrument," he says. "So if you want to proceed out to the plane, I'm hoping we're out of here maybe half-hour, 45 minutes at the worst."

Scientists and other personnel head for the P-3, a four-engine turboprop that was used in the 1960s to track enemy submarines. On this mission, NASA is using a highly modified version to sniff out dangerous chemicals and particles in the air.

From a distance, "it looks like any other aircraft," Crawford says as he walks past the plane's massive nose gear. But up close, he says, "You begin to notice tubes and probes poking out the side."

Those tubes and probes outside allow the instruments inside to take air samples as the plane flies. And this plane is crammed with instruments, Crawford says as he climbs a set of rolling stairs and steps through the door into what used to be the plane's cabin.

"You're looking at a plane with a fuselage that's basically been emptied to start," He says. "And so we build these instrument racks, which are basically, I would say, maybe 4.5 feet tall and 3 feet wide that we anchor to the floor and then begin to fill with scientific instruments."

Any room left over is for the scientists, who sit in seats squeezed between instrument racks.

Measuring Columns Of Atmosphere

Soon the plane is airborne and heading north. Gradually, the fields below give way to urban sprawl and the concrete stripes of major highways.

The plane's interior is so noisy that scientists and the crew communicate primarily through headsets.

As the plane approaches Beltsville, Md., a town just north of Washington, D.C., the interior is a hive of activity. The scientists hover over instruments measuring the size and density of particles in the air, and the concentrations of many different gases, including ozone.

As forecast, it's a bad day for air quality, which makes it a good day to collect data.

"They say that there's a red condition in a lot of the surface stations, which means that ozone levels are exceeding the EPA-recommended exposure levels," says Bruce Anderson from NASA Langley.

The plane follows Interstate 95 at an altitude so low you can make out the color of each car and truck below.

Then, at a designated point, it begins a steep, spiraling ascent to more than 10,000 feet. That allows the scientists to see how pollution levels are changing with elevation.

Usually the air gets much cleaner at higher altitudes," Anderson says. "Today the pollution is extending up to about 8,500 feet. So you have to get above that level before you really see a clear blue sky."

The P-3 is just one of three planes taking part of this NASA mission. There is also a boat on Chesapeake Bay, people and pollutions sensors on the ground, and even weather balloons measuring pollution levels as they rise through the atmosphere.

And the P-3 is flying in crowded skies, on a circuit that takes it close to Baltimore Washington International Airport. At times, there are four people in the cockpit making sure the P-3 stays clear of other flights.

Improving Satellite Measurements

The DISCOVER-AQ mission isn't just about understanding pollution in this one area. NASA will be flying over other cities in the coming years.

The goal is to figure out how to use satellites to monitor pollution across the country, Crawford says. Right now, he says, satellites can't do that very well.

"They paint great visual pictures of pollution," he says. "But they don't allow us to make clear judgments on exactly how much pollution exists and at what altitude in the atmosphere it resides."

Reliable, detailed pollution measurements from a satellite would be a major improvement on today's patchwork of ground measurements, which have lots of gaps, Crawford says.

"What a satellite can begin to do is fill those gaps," he says, revealing what's happening to air quality downwind of the urban areas often responsible for air pollution.

Today's flight will be a long, hot, hectic and noisy six hours in the air. But the scientists on board say it's worth it because of what's at stake.

"I look at the atmosphere like an astronaut might look at a spacesuit," says David Knapp from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. The Earth's atmosphere is what keeps us alive as our planet hurtles through space, Knapp says. He says this NASA mission should serve as a reminder of that.

Kalamazoo River: One year after the spill (VIDEO)

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 04:16:00 -0500

The cleanup continues in and around the town of Marshall, MI one year after more than 800,000 gallons of heavy crude spilled from a pipeline. Read the full story about Canadian oil here.

Runaway algae returns to Lake Erie

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 15:53:00 -0500

READ: Toxic Water, Part 1, Anniversary of Cuyahoga fires igniting environmental movement

Runaway algae blooms that killed fish and fouled beaches in the 1970's have been making a comeback on Lake Erie – and they're showing up now in other Great Lakes. Until recently, they didn't get much attention, but the problems have been getting worse. After years of research, scientists think they've finally pinpointed the source of the blooms. But they worry it won't be as easy to fix this time around.

There's no sign yet of algae in the muddy water here at the mouth of the Maumee River in Toledo on western Lake Erie. But it's late spring and Tom Bridgeman knows it's coming, “It's getting worse, the last couple years have been really bad.”

Bridgeman is a researcher at the University of Toledo's Lake Erie Center. He's been watching the algae come back every year since he first saw the satellite image of a massive algae bloom in 2003. “It started near the mouth of the Maumee River, so several hundred square kilometers was covered by this bloom,” says Bridgeman, “It looked like a scum of bright green paint on the surface of the water. And as boats went through it...you could see them cutting trails through this sort of green scum on the surface.”

The scum is Microcystis, a toxic form of blue-green algae that can give you cramps and diarrhea if you swallow it and can also cause a nasty skin rash. The toxins accumulate in the livers of fish, but Bridgeman says so far fish don't seem to be affected, nor are people who eat them. But the algae does have an impact on Toledo's drinking water, which comes from Lake Erie. “I've heard that the city of Toledo spends an extra 3 or 4-thousand dollars per day in extra filtration costs during an algal bloom,” says Bridgeman.

Bridgeman says it's wreaking havoc with sport fishing and tourism on the lake. And more people are staying away. Bridgeman says the algae smells even worse than it looks, “Especially when it washes up on shore and starts to dry out and decompose, it really has sort of a fishy, you know, garbage-y sort of odor.”

Bridgeman's research is crucial to helping predict the blooms and their severity. Many forms of algae are a natural and necessary nutrient for fish, but they can get out of control when their food source is ramped up by human activity.

In the last few years toxic algae has also been showing up along beaches in Lake Ontario. And in Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, thick blankets of non-toxic, nuisance algae often coat the shoreline. Scientist and educator Jeff Reutter is head of Ohio Sea Grant. He's spent his entire career working on Lake Erie issues. Standing near Cleveland's Lake Erie harbor, Reutter remembers when algae as thick as pea soup bloomed in the lake in the 1970's., “The breakwall here, a little bit east of where we're standing, someone had painted on the breakwall, 'Help me, I'm dying' and signed it 'Lake Erie.'”

Reutter says in fresh water, phosphorus is the nutrient that algae needs to grow. Too much causes rampant blooms. Reutter says cutbacks of phosphorus from laundry detergents and sewage treatment plants nearly a generation ago seemed to solve the problem. Reutter believes the return of algae blooms is a sign that Lake Erie is once again sick, “The big concern I have is that I feel like I started with Lake Erie really bad. Huge improvements brought about by the mid-1980's. And unfortunately, since 1995, it's been going downhill ever since.”

Reutter says the mid-90's was when dead zones - much like those in the Gulf Mexico - started showing up again in Lake Erie. Dead zones form when decaying algae blooms use up oxygen in the water, forcing fish and other wildife to migrate – or die. So scientists like Pete Richards, a researcher at the National Water Quality Research Center at Ohio's Heidelberg University, have been working to solve the phosphorus mystery. Richards thinks he's found the answer. “When 80-percent of the land use in a watershed is agriculture, it's almost inevitable that a major source of the phosphorus loading is going to be from the agricultural fields,” says Richards.

Richards worked on the investigating team with the Lake Erie Phosphorus Task Force, which last year released new recommendations about how and when farmers should fertilize their fields “In some senses, the fixes are obvious. You don't do it in the fall, you get it underground, rather than on the surface. But for every obvious fix, there's a good reason why it doesn't get done,” says Richards. He says he task force recommends fertilizing in the spring, when plants will use it up.

At a farm about 50-miles south of Lake Erie, dairy farmer Ted Sonnenberg says it isn't always possible to follow the recommendations – like this spring when he saw record-breaking rainfall, “There aren't enough good days in the spring. We have not been able to touch the fields behind the dairy, because they're too wet.”

A recent study by Ohio State University found 30-percent of Ohio's farmland has too much phosphorus. With federal money from the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, Sonnenberg is reducing the phosphorus output of his dairy by building new ponds to store the manure.

Sonnenberg is trying to be more sustainable, but many farmers aren't. And some researchers admit they're not sure that voluntary compliance from farmers will be enough to reduce the phosphorus that's feeding Lake Erie algae. There are other things that may help. Last year, 16-states, including Ohio and six other Great Lakes states, passed bans on phosphorus in dishwasher detergents. And several manufacturers, like Scotts, have removed phosphorus from their lawncare products.

For now, algae blooms will likely continue to plague Lake Erie and its shoreline. And that worries Toledo resident Alli Weber whenever she swims here at Maumee Bay State Park, a few miles east of Toledo. Weber and her 3-year old daughter Lillian enjoy cooling off in Lake Erie, but not when smelly mats of algae wash ashore.

“I don't like it,” says Webber, “ I don't know if it's safe. Especially when I bring her, because she, like, touches it and I don't like that.”

This summer, Ohio health officials unveiled a new website that tells swimmers and boaters where algae blooms are located and how to avoid getting sick from them. Scientists say if they can figure out solutions, the lakes will recover quickly. But if the blooms get worse, the impacts on human health and the environment could grow.

EPA hears testimony on coal power pollution

Wed, 25 May 2011 22:12:00 -0500

Coal power plants in Illinois might have to reduce emissions to meet new federal standards proposed by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Midwesterners who testified at a public hearing in Chicago Tuesday afternoon were overwhelmingly in favor of the proposed EPA plan. Chicago area resident Margaret Nelson voiced her approval through singing a song.

"What in ignorance we have damaged, we will work now to repair," she sang. "To the coming generations, leave an earth that's green and fair."

The proposed rule would require reduced emissions of heavy metals including mercury, arsenic and acidic gases, among others.

Studies by the Harvard School of Public Health have linked pollution from Chicago's Fisk and Crawford coal plants to 40 deaths and 2,800 asthma attacks annually. The plants are located on Chicago's Southwest Side and still use generating units built between 1958-1961.

More EPA hearings are taking place this week in Philadelphia and Atlanta.