Progress Illinois

Lake County residents and environmentalists are asking the new owner of Waukegan’s aging coal-fired power plant to produce a long-term transition plan for the facility in collaboration with local community stakeholders.

Toting signs reading "Clean air wins" and "It's time for a clean and healthy lakefront," about 25 members of the Clean Power Lake County Campaign mailed more than 2,500 petition postcards on Tuesday to New Jersey-based NRG Energy Inc. The petition calls on the company to set a retirement date for the 90 year-old Waukegan plant, located on the city's lakefront, and make investments in clean energy projects that will hire local workers. A transition plan for the outdated plant should also consider the city of Waukegan's tax base as well as those currently employed at the site, the petition states. 

A mayoral task force released a report Saturday with broad guidelines for how to redevelop the site of two Chicago coal-fired power plants on the Southwest Side that shut down in August. A main recommendation was that the sites be used to create local jobs in non-polluting industries.

Community advocates who live in the Pilsen neighborhood, the site of the closed Fisk plant, and Little Village, home of the shuttered Crawford plant, credit Mayor Rahm Emanuel not just for working with Midwest Generation company to shut down the plants, but also for using a task force to spark community dialogue.

“Usually task forces are where something goes to be forgotten,” says Nelson Soza, executive director of Pilsen Alliance and a member of the task force. “But this task force raised the profile of these sites.”

However, the panel did not weigh in on a central concern of community residents: who will take on remediation, i.e. the process of cleaning up the industrial site. The report reads that, “The issue of remediation was discussed by the Task Force, but the Task Force was unable to reach consensus on a recommendation for further action.”