Las plantas de carbon necesitan ser descontaminadas y el nuevo dueño se podría tomar hasta 10 años para decidir qué hacer con ellas. Dicen que tomarán en cuenta las sugerencias que la comunidad ha hecho en el pasado y por lo pronto han decidido no convertir la planta Crawford en una tienda comercial. LVEJO dice que se asegurará de que construyan algo que beneficie a la gente. Midwest Generation filed for bankruptcy and another firm took over the sites in March. Now it looks like plans are finally moving forward. An administration official at City Hall told the Tribune the city is days away from signing an agreement with the sites new owner, NRG Energy, to proceed with a project at the Fisk site. The company also has hired a real estate management firm to shop the Crawford site. The 111-year-old Fisk plant in Pilsen sits across the street from a park. The 89-year-old Crawford plant in Little Village is on potentially valuable riverfront property. We are just as determined to see these sites put to good use for the surrounding communities and the city at large, said David Gaier, an NRG spokesman. But challenges abound. Both plants require asbestos removal and the soil beneath them might need to be cleaned of contamination. Tony Hopp, a partner at Edwards Wildman Palmer in Chicago, who has worked with environmental remediation cases, said remediation can cost as much as $40 million to $50 million per site. Still, the sites have a lot going for them. They are plugged into transmission lines and fiber optic cables. But more importantly, they are close to downtown, sit near major interstates including I-55 and I-90/94, and also are near rail lines and the Chicago River... Within two years more than 179 of the nations 523 coal plants are expected to be shuttered, according to Sierra Club. On average, it takes about 27 years from shutdown to redevelopment, the Chicago-based Delta Institute, a nonprofit sustainability organization, said in report published in October. Delta Institute, which looked at 25 active coal plant redevelopment efforts in urban areas around the country, found that once a site was sold, it took less than 9 years on average to finish the project and that community involvement reduced that time significantly. Nearly half of the sites Delta Institute studied were redeveloped commercially, which created jobs. But none brought manufacturing companies. Of the sites reviewed, 16 used public-private partnerships for redevelopment. Before NRG took over the sites, a task force led by the Delta Institute spent five months in 2012 pulling together recommendations and guiding principles for redeveloping the site. The group included representatives from Midwest Generation, Commonwealth Edison, organized labor and the City of Chicago as well as community organizers, and two aldermen... The task force conducted surveys and public hearings and sketched out nine guiding principles for redevelopment, among them, that whatever was built should provide living wage jobs and minimize pollution and waste. The task force also sketched out what they didnt want: big box retailers because they might threaten the viability of small neighborhood businesses. Ideas for redevelopment ranged from light manufacturing to a sports center. Residents also suggested converting an abandoned rail line into a trail, and they wanted access to the river... Not all of the combined 115 acres of the sites can be redeveloped. About 40 to 50 percent of the land at Fisk and about 75 percent at Crawford can realistically be redeveloped. The sites contain ComEd switchyards, transmission lines and other electrical equipment necessary for getting electric power to those neighborhoods, according to ComEd... One positive sign is that when Midwest Generation put out a call to interested developers, nearly 20 firms responded and 10 sent in redevelopment proposals, according to the Delta Institute. Some bid several million dollars for each site, Delta Institute said. But efforts to move forward were dashed when Midwest Generation filed for bankruptcy in December 2012, only three months after the Delta Institute report was issued. NRG, which in March acquired the sites along with several operating power plants in Illinois, told community groups it would abide by the task forces guiding principles but that it needed time to digest the acquisition of Midwest Generation assets. Coalition members said they were impressed when NRG representatives toured the Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods, not just the plants. The Task Force, and all of Chicago, are awaiting NRGs decision about how they want to move forward, not only with Fisk and Crawford, but with the many other decisions they face, Delta Institute wrote in an October 2014 report. Since then, NRG has said little about Crawford and Fisk except that the plants will not be turned back on... Kim Wasserman, executive director of the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, said NRG faces so many other issues that redeveloping a site such as Crawford is probably last on their list. And thats okay with Wasserman. We dont want to just redevelop for the sake of redevelopment, she said. We want to do something that is more patient and more thought-oriented that really builds consensus... Wasserman has been criticized by residents for participating in a TV political ad touting Mayor Rahm Emanuels reelection bid. In the ad he is credited for helping close Crawford and Fisk, the last remaining coal plants in a major U.S. city... Wasserman in an interview defended her decision to side publicly with Rahm in his reelection campaign, saying she was speaking as a voter, not on behalf of the community or her organization... I would hope that NRG and the city are smart enough to realize that if we fought 12 years to shut these down and 15 years for a park, that we will bring that level of fury upon them if they try to make a move without us. Thats a promise, she said. If anything, this gives us more power.
Posted on: Tue, 02 Dec 2014 01:18:00 +0000
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