There’s good news and bad news stemming from the announcement that Waukegan’s coal-fired power plant will shut down next year.
The good news: The lakefront generating station will no longer be spewing pollutants into Lake County skies. The bad news: The city will be stuck for who knows how long with deep ponds of toxic coal ash waste on the plant’s property near Greenwood Avenue and Pershing Road.
Add another notch to Waukegan’s Rust Belt legacy of industrial pollution along the city’s Lake Michigan shoreline. Is it past time to forget about the once-touted “Riviera of the Midwest” grand scheme of mixed residential and business development, and accept a waterfront wasteland?
As we move from soot to solar or wind generation, there needs to be cleanup protections in place for communities left with the polluted impact of shuttered coal-fired electric generating stations. Let’s hope Illinois officials have something planned as the state also will force the decommissioning of the remaining four coal-fired plants to close by 2035 and natural-gas powered plants by 2045.
Houston-based NRG, which owns the aging facility, wasn’t going to wait for that timeline and surprised everyone by saying it would close not only the Waukegan station, but also its plant in Romeoville in Will County. Environmentalists have argued for years the Waukegan site emitted harmful air irritants and carbon-causing pollutants, despite the addition of antipollution devices.
Those coal smokestacks have been on the city’s lakefront since 1923, during the days of industrialist Samuel Insull who created the Public Service Co., which eventually became ComEd. The utility unloaded the generating station to Midwest Generation in 1999, which in turn sold the asset to NRG in 2014.
At one time, the plant was Waukegan’s third-largest taxpayer, generating about $900,000 a year in property taxes, city officials have said in the past. It currently employs some 65 skilled laborers, electricians and engineers. How will the city and other Waukegan taxing districts replace the lost revenue?
It also has those troublesome coal-ash waste ponds mere yards from the water supply for much of Lake County. Just across Greenwood Avenue from the plant is the deserted barrens of the old John-Manville factory, its Superfund legacy of asbestos pollution capped by tons of dirt accompanied by those scary “Keep Out — Danger” warning signs.
The old coke plant off Seahorse Drive, along with the properties of the former Outboard Marine Corp., remain undeveloped, while other abandoned factory sites south of Waukegan Harbor and its busy marina also are fallow due to leftover pollution. The city also is the site of several old landfills where the land still is unusable.
In a risk assessment, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at one time estimated that living near wet coal-ash ponds similar to the ones in Waukegan are more dangerous than smoking a pack of cigarettes a day. Those sludge pits must be cleaned up sooner than later.
In 2002, the Illinois EPA said the coal-ash ponds were leaking arsenic and other pollutants into Lake Michigan. The ponds were lined to stop the leakage, but are a reminder, like the 1,000 tons of spent nuclear fuel in Zion just yards from the Big Lake, of the area’s industrial past.
A bill introduced in Congress the other day by U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Deerfield, would provide funding to communities like Zion which currently house spent nuclear fuel. A similar provision needs to be made for those areas with fossil-fuel plants being closed in their backyards.
The Sensible, Timely Relief for America’s Nuclear Districts’ Economic Development (STRANDED) Act would also provide tax incentives to promote homeownership, as well as fund research on how to spur development in those communities. He helped introduce the same bill in previous congressional sessions.
“We have a moral responsibly to help communities like Zion left housing the stranded spent nuclear fuel,” Schneider said in a statement.
So true, but the same can also be said for places like Waukegan where its polluted legacy continues to impede lakefront development prospects.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
Twitter: @sellenews
