Residents of Chicago’s Southeast Side descended on the Thompson Center Wednesday morning to urge Gov. Pat Quinn to veto a bill that would pave the way for a coal-to-gas plant to be built in their neighborhood.
The deadline for the governor to sign or veto the legislation is March 14, and he has not said whether he plans to sign the bill, which would require utilities to purchase the synthetic natural gas the $3 billion plant would produce for the next 30 years.
Synthetic natural gas is expected to be more expensive than natural gas for the next two decades, and those extra costs would be passed on to people via home heating bills before the plant is expected to save them money.
Residents said they are outraged that another source of pollution would be added to their neighborhood, which is one of the most polluted in the nation.
New York-based Leucadia National Corp., the company fronting the project, has said most emissions would be captured for reuse, but residents said they were concerned about dust and other contaminants that could filter into the air from the millions of tons of Illinois coal and petroleum coke from nearby refineries would be shipped into the neighborhood to feed the plant.
Tom Bulmer, a lifelong Southeast Sider, came dressed as a coal devil. Cloaked in black and holding a smokestack in one hand topped with coal. He said he does not want his children and grandchildren breathing the same toxic air he grew up with from nearby steel mills.
“I don’t want my children and grandchildren seeing this smoke, inhaling this smoke,” he said.
A local business man donated buses to drive residents to the Loop, and residents pooled their money to help with the costs. Earlier this week, some residents said they “ambushed” the governor at a nearby press event to talk with him about the project.
Wednesday, the group delivered nearly 1,000 postcards and handwritten notes to a representative from the governor’s office asking him to veto the bill and rallied around the Thompson center with handmade signs.
“I am 7 years old I want to live … because I love my lungs,” read a sign written by Beatris DeHoyos’ daughter.
DeHoyos said her daughter has asthma attacks regularly and recently had a bout with pneumonia.
“It scares me every time she has an attack,” she said.
The Southeast Side residents at the rally aren’t the only ones trying to get the governor’s ear.
Walter P. Turner III, pastor of New Spiritual Light Missionary Baptist Church in Chicago and president of the Illinois Faith Based Association, said he is setting up meetings with the Quinn’s office to ask him to sign the bill.
The area is desperate for the jobs the plant would bring, he said. The unemployment rate for 18-34 year-olds there is staggering, he said, far greater than reported because most of the young people there have dropped out of the job market. He estimated it was about 70 percent.
“This land has been vacant, has been barren. It has been barren for years,” he said. ” … If we don’t do this now, when will we?”
Leucadia has said the plant would produce 2,800 jobs, 200 of them permanent, and provide a way for the state’s high sulfur coal to be used in-state.
jwernau@tribune.com
A high-pollution, rate-payer subsidized boondoggle that only the developer will make money on. They claim jobs, but are these the jobs that area needs? The costs to the economy from higher gas prices and the cost to the environment from pollution produced will far outweigh the 200 jobs this project claims it will create. Construction jobs are transitory and will disappear when the project is complete.
governor flip-flop will probably sign the bill touting the use of Illinos
coal and the creation of jobs. But we already pay huge amounts to Peoples
Energy, North Shore and others for natural gas used for heat and hot water
so what is the purpose of this boondoggle ? We are being told from the
onset that it will not save money but cost more for it’s product.
It is so unnecessary and appears that the state wants to get rid of some
coal that is lying around or a political favor is being paid.
But it is not what the people want or don’t want that matters but what the
politicians want them to have. And the governor is starting to backtrack
on some promises he made when he was trying to get the job.
He does not have a clue. Madigan and Cullerton are actually running the
state of Illinois.
The coal to gas is going to polute and has to result in less energy than one started with (coal) since energy is always lost in any transforming process.
AND, this synthetic gas costs more? So Quinn, explain just why one would even consider this unless it’s a scheme to put money in some politician’s (or their cronies) pockets?
Just use regular natural gas which is plentiful, cheap, and not imported!
READ WHOLE STORY BEFORE YOU COMMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHY IS IT THAT PEOPLE THAT DON’T LIVE IN THE 10TH WARD OR EVEN ON THE SOUTHEAST SIDE HAVE TO THERE MOUTH AND SAY SOME OF THE STUPIDEST THINGS. READ THIS STORY AND WHEN YOU GET TO THE END YOU WILL READ WHAT I MEAN. THIS GUY PROBABLE HAS NEVER EVEN BEEN TO THE SOUTHEAST SIDE LET ALONE WERE THEY WANT TO BUILD THIS PLANT. PEOPLE LIKE THIS NEED TO KEEP THERE THOUGHTS TO THEMSELVES AND THERE OWN COMMUNITY. WHY DON’T WE BUILD THIS PLANT NEXT TO HIS CHURCH ON 7566 South South Shore Drive. THAT’S A BAD AREA THAT HAS WHAT HE CALLS LETS QUOTE HIM “This land has been vacant, has been barren. It has been barren for years,” he said OH IM SORRY RAINBOW BEACH IS ANY BETTER.
Contact Governor Quinn’s Office at http://www2.illinois.gov/gov/Pages/ContacttheGovernor.aspx, asking him to veto Bill, SB3388 that proposes to build a coal gasification plant on the Southeast Side Of Chicago. Once in operation, the plant would increase all Illinois Residents heating bills and pollute the air. Tell Governor Quinn that we want Clean Energy Jobs, ie Windmills & Solar Energy.
In order to build yet another California dam it was necessary to move an Indian resrvation. Ronald Reagan said:’I think we have done enough to the indians.’The dam was never built.
Th 10th ward does not need a coal gasification plant.Staements to the effect it will be somehow eco-friendly are rubbish.
What the tenth ward, the city and the state need industries that provide jobs and hope for the children of some of the hardest working people in the world.
Terrible! They think that promoting JOBS will make it all better. THEN!!! they announce on 200 will be permanent? They need to stop using our home as deeping grounds!