Will Asian Carp assault Chicago, Lake Michigan similar to the way Godzilla terrorized Tokyo in the movies?

It has long been the fear of environmentalists that Asian Carp, a breed of fish considered particularly devastating to our ecology, is someday going to manage to work its way into Lake Michigan and the surrounding of the Great Lakes.

Have Asian Carp arrived at Lake Calumet? Photos by Gregory Tejeda

So it is with much trepidation that there is now evidence indicating that the Carp have made it past the electronic barricades further south near Romeoville (which the Army Corps of Engineers installed thinking that was the absolute solution to keep the Carp out of Chicago) and are now in existence in Lake Calumet.

FROM WHICH, IF they really have made it that far along the path, only now have to swim upstream through the Calumet River for about seven miles through Chicago’s South Side and will then be in Lake Michigan proper.

The Asian Carp, who initially were released accidentally into the Mississippi River somewhere down near New Orleans have managed to make it up across the nation, and across our state through the Illinois River and could now be about to take over the lake that is pride and joy to our Chicago.

Which, of course, will have many people eager to blame Chicago for letting the Asian Carp loose – even though one could claim it was the ineptitude of those who initially let the Carp loose down south who are truly to blame.

From Lake Calumet mouth to Calumet River … 

But the reality is that there’s nothing that can be done to undo the damage in the mighty Mississippi. But we can still hope that our officials can act in ways to bar them from Lake Michigan.

SO WHAT’S THE big deal about the Asian Carp? The fact is that the Asian Carp feed on anything and everything in their paths.

In doing so, they’ll devastate the ecosystems of whatever water supply they manage to get to. In a sense, everything that is alive and thriving now in Lake Michigan could wind up becoming barren, if the Carp make it that far.

And the reality is, we may well find there’s nothing we really can do to stop the Asian Carp from making the final stretch of their journey to Lake Michigan and all the other Great Lakes.

and up the river, past the Chicago Skyway bridge

If they’ve managed to work their way north from New Orleans to Chicago this far, what’s to make us think there’s anything that can be placed in their way during the final seven-mile stretch of the Calumet River?

NOW IT SHOULD be noted that the Asian Carp proper have not been found in Lake Calumet itself. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said last week that traces of DNA from Asian Carp have been found in the lake’s water.

The Chicago Tribune reported that the DNA could consist of evidence of skin cells, secretions and feces (just think, fish poop), and that those substances could well have been in the bilge water of the ships that pass through the area – if not the Asian Carp themselves.

Too bad the Asian Carp can't read signs!

It could be just genetic junk, and not the fish themselves that have made the lengthy journey from down south. Which means that rather than blaming Chicago for letting the Carp into the Great Lakes, we ought to be thinking in terms of whether or not Chicago will be “heroic” enough to prevent the trip from being completed.

I suppose we’re now on the lookout for the Asian Carp, which have been sited by the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam – located just south of the lake – to see if they’ve made it a few miles farther north to the lake proper, then well on their way to the “big” lake itself.

IT WILL BE intriguing to see what kind of last-ditch measures our federal and state officials (Gov. J.B. Pritzker has written to the Army Corps of Engineers offering whatever assistance the state can provide) can concoct to try to keep the Asian Carp out of the Great Lakes.

Will we see some new sort of technology devised to try to barricade off Lake Michigan? Or are we destined to see the same kind of electronic barricades erected at the mouth of the Calumet River headed into the lake as one last-ditch attempt to kill off any sort of creatures?

Will the Asian Carp be reminiscent of Godzilla films?

Is it inevitable that Lake Michigan (and the other Great Lakes) as we now know them are doomed? Or can they be saved?

It makes me wonder if we’re destined for some sort of story in our future resembling the old Godzilla movies – with the Asian Carp being a threat to our ecological well-being and threatening Chicago similar to the way the cinematic dragon-like creature used to terrorize Tokyo!

  -30-

Where should Chicago casino be?

Soon-to-be-former Mayor Rahm Emanuel let it be known just where he’d like to see Chicago develop a casino as part of a plan to let the city raise tax monies to pay off pension-related debts.

Envision a casino in the shadow of the port district near Lake Calumet

Not that it’s a shoo-in that a casino will be built any time soon. The city, after all, has been talking for decades about plans to have casino gambling within the municipal limits – without a thing becoming of such talks.

BUT EMANUEL IS talking about a casino down near Lake Calumet on a site by the Illinois International Port, which is the border between the 9^th and 10^th wards – which also are the far southeastern corner of Chicago AND adjacent to the Illinois/Indiana border.

What it is not is a location up at the exact opposite far northwestern corner of Chicago which would be adjacent to O’Hare International Airport, or somewhere near downtown Chicago (perhaps near Navy Pier).

Either of those sites would clearly be meant to entice tourists coming to Chicago to blow a significant amount of their money at our gambling casinos and (in the process) help Chicago pay off some serious bills it has developed.

I can already hear people inclined to want to trash Emanuel in his final months as mayor for picking the “wrong” site for a casino. They’re probably going to dredge up the same tired old rhetoric that they’ve used for ages against the part of Chicago that I actually was born in – and where I have cousins who are life-long residents of.

BUT LISTENING TO Emanuel’s rhetoric, it would appear he realizes one fact that is all-too-true. There are Chicagoans who like to gamble who enjoy the fact they have casinos not that far from where they live.

As Emanuel pointed out, the casinos of Northwest Indiana (particularly the Horseshoe Casino of Hammond that is less than one mile from the Chicago city limits) take in about $40 million per month in gross revenues from people who cross over the state line from Illinois – mostly from Chicago.

Which means Emanuel’s motivation is that he wants to keep people IN Illinois and within the city limits when they choose to throw their money away into slot machines or playing other games of chance.

I’m sure this will offend the Indiana Legislature-types who seem determined to want to bolster their economies off the proximity of part of their state to Chicago. But I can’t say that fact would bother me in the least, since those parts of Indiana with proximity to Chicago usually are amongst the most civilized and livable parts of the Hoosier state.

YES, I KNOW full-well how many people make the cross-over to Indiana for the cheap thrills they can derive from gambling, whereas a full-fledged trip to Las Vegas can be ever-so-costly.

I myself have been to those casinos on occasion, and it never fails to amaze me the amount of Illinois license plates on cars bringing people in to those casinos. I don’t doubt in the least that many of those people would stay closer to home, if only such a gambling facility existed.

As for those people who can’t envision something of the pseudo-luxury level of a casino being built in that part of the city, I suspect they’ve never seen the Harbourside International Golf Center.

It’s a one-time landfill that was converted to a golf course in the mid-1990s, and Emanuel points out there is open land upon which a casino and hotel could be built. It would force people to give up their image of the Southeast Side as a land of slag piles and sludge – which is something that would be beneficial to the city as a while.

SO I WILL be intrigued to see just how successful Emanuel is in his final effort to try to gain something on behalf of Chicago. Although I’m also realistic enough to know what a long-shot the concept is.

There are those who will see this being put at the city’s far Southeast corner and will figure it won’t benefit their home areas in the least.

Particularly those places where horseracing is predominant when it comes to local gambling opportunities. Because all-too-often, casino bills get dragged down because the racetracks want to be offered something to compensate them for the fact that many people will prefer the idea of throwing their money into a slot machine – rather than sticking it under a window to place a bet on the ponies.

For despite all the rhetoric we’ll hear about the glories of horseracing being the “Sport of Kings,” the fact is that most people who go to either racetracks or casinos really have only one goal in mind – a dream of a jackpot big enough that they don’t ever have to work again for a living!

  -30-

All it takes is one to create a problem

I don’t doubt that most people give little thought to the concept of Asian Carp.
 

Not far from Great Lakes, where Calumets converge

For all I know, on the occasions they do think about it, they dismiss it as some sort of artificial emergency situation created by intellectual types who have way too much free time on their hands – perhaps similar to the doomsday we were supposed to face on Jan. 1, 2000.

IT DOESN’T SEEM that many people are getting all that worked up over the concept of the Asian Carp – a species of fish that Mother Nature never really intended to exist in this part of the globe. Maybe they think it's what you get when you order Chinese carry-out!

So the fact that scientists inadvertently let them loose into the Mississippi River and they have steadily worked their way upstream is a problem that those scientists get all worked up over. But which elicits a great big “Yawn!” from the bulk of us.

As things turn out, the Asian Carp have worked their way up the river and into Illinois – where they’re alive and thriving in the Illinois River. I recently stumbled across a news report that said the waters around Havana, Ill., have more Asian Carp than any other place on Earth.

Now why should we care about the Carp?

THE FACT IS that the eat everything in sight. They devour all the natural plant life that fish nature intended to be in the area would feed off of. As a result, the types of fish who “belong” wind up being threatened.

 

Lake Calumet a direct path to Lake Michigan

The potential exists for nature to be erased, and replaced with something glutton-ish that was never meant to be!

Back in 2010, an Asian Carp was actually pulled out of Lake Calumet – that isolated patch of area on Chicago’s far South Side that connects directly to Lake Michigan by the Calumet River.

And on Friday, the Asian Carp Regional Coordinating Committee said another Asian Carp was caught by a fisherman just south of the T.J. O’Brien Lock and Dam – which is near Lake Calumet – and clearly within the Chicago city limits.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL AND WILDLIFE types like to talk about those electronic gates they erected south of the city that supposedly kill off any Asian Carp that try to swim too close to Chicago or Lake Michigan. But it also seems at least two managed to figure out a way to get past.
 

Could the Carp someday swim past 95th St. bridge?

Which creates the possibility that many more also succeeded. For all we know, they have managed to get to Lake Michigan proper – and we just don’t know it yet. Or equally likely, they are going to continue to try and the day will come when we’ll have the Asian Carp feeding off the Great Lakes.

Now those who want to think of issues in a partisan way often want to place blame on the Asian Carp issue on Chicago itself. We are the city that back in the 19^th Century created the connections between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

Those connections were a large part of the reason why Chicago became the dominant Midwestern city so much larger than places like Detroit, Milwaukee or St. Louis.

ARE WE SUPPOSED to wither away and cease to exist because others allowed the Mississippi River to become tainted by the Asian Carp?

Now I’m not about to offer up the solution to keeping the Asian Carp out of Lake Michigan. It seems we’re doing what we possibly can thus far, and this may wind up being an issue of how things can always go wrong.

Fact that area fenced off causes many to give Calumet lake little thought. All photographs by Gregory Tejeda

All I know is that this issue is one we all ought to be giving greater thought to, rather than thinking of it as something that is occurring down around that lake many of us never pay attention to.

For if we do wind up facing the day of devastation to the Great Lake upon which our city’s existence is so reliant, it won’t be as “ho-hum” an event as it was the day after Dec. 21, 2012 – when the world didn’t come to an end as the Mayans allegedly once predicted it would.

  -30-

Petcoke cleanup underway, but it will be awhile before Sout’East Side is clean

The far Southeast corner of Chicago (the land where the eastern boundary is Indiana – NOT Lake Michigan) has always been a heavily industrialized portion of the city.

Chicago's southeast corner far from pristine. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

 

It’s a place where the steel mill and other factory jobs that created the bulk of the local economy were located literally across the street. It was a place where the employees could walk to work.

HENCE, IT ALSO is a place that is far from pristine – particularly since it saw decades worth of buildup of various pollutants from back in an era when some people were inclined to think of “environmental cleanup” as some sort of alien concept.

I am a native of that part of Chicago (I am the grandson of immigrant steel mill workers whose one-time employers are now large, vacant plots of land), and my visits to the “old neighborhood” have always included being able to see things that just wouldn’t be tolerated elsewhere.

Although now, it seems they’re not even being tolerated in places like the East Side or South Chicago – as in a couple of the neighborhoods that comprise that distant part of Chicago. How distant? Try standing on the 106^th Street bridge over the Calumet River.

Look off to the north, and you can barely see the tip of the top of the Sears Tower (You call it Willis, I’m refusing to right now).

BUT THIS AREA got the attention of downtown this week when officials reached an agreement with companies that have had piles of petroleum coke along the edge of the Calumet River. That agreement by Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Illinois attorney general’s office was to be filed with a court on Thursday, although Emanuel said later in the day he would not be willing to go so far as an outright ban in Chicago.

A whole 'nother world from the Loop

Known more commonly as petcoke, the substance is a byproduct of the petroleum-making process. It results in mounds of the substance that then gets blown about by the breezes.

Which means that people who live in the area have been stuck having to accept as fact that their homes will get covered in the petcoke dust. Some people tell stories of finding the dust all over their freshly-washed clothes (if they put them out on a clothesline to dry).

It is inevitable that they (and I, when I have reason to return to visit) have inhaled the petcoke dust. Who knows what long-term damage is being caused?

The Port of Chicago presence (off in the distance) hasn't completely devastated Lake Calumet

 

THAT IS WHAT has motivated the activist-minded residents of the area, who in turn have put their share of pressure on government officials. Which is why government officials felt inclined to do something that makes it appear as though they’re resolving the situation.

Although it should be noted that earlier this month, locals noticed that the petcoke piles were being put onto ships and being taken out of the area. The agreement reached this week says that companies in the area that have petcoke are going to have to store it indoors, and also will have to monitor the levels of air pollution around those facilities.

Which sounds sensible enough; something that should have been agreed upon a long time ago. Except that such actions create expense that reduce the financial bottom-line, and therefore are considered to be a hassle by the more corporate-minded.

Yes, I’m pleased to learn that something is being done with regards to petcoke. I have relatives who live within blocks of these piles. I’m sure they will (literally) breathe easier.

ALTHOUGH IT’S FAR from over. All those decades of industry have left more than their share of pollution. With the vacant remains of many of those factories still in place, I can’t even envision just how tainted those Southeastern neighborhoods remain.

And how much of a miracle it is that something like Lake Calumet still manages to maintain so many species of nature despite all the toxins in the area.

What would they think in Lake View?

It’s going to be a long time, if ever, that my part of Chicago will be as clean as a place like Beverly or Sauganash – where the concept of a giant pile of salt out in the open would be unheard of, yet doesn’t even capture a second glance from the locals.

  -30-

There are times when far southern side can’t seem to catch development break

When political people talk about possible improvement to the city’s far South Side and its surrounding suburbs, there are a trio of projects they bring up.

Port known more for out-of-date sign than its assets

A new airport to be built in the farm fields north of Peotone, development of a new toll highway connecting Indiana to Illinois further south than the existing I-80/94 connection, and the improvement of the Port of Chicago down near Lake Calumet.

BUT JUST WHERE are those projects actually headed?

The airport has been a decades-long battle that should have been resolved some 20 years ago. Whether it can ever achieve its potential may well have been undermined by the endless delays – many of which are caused by rural interests that want to pen in the spread of metro Chicago further south.

The tollway (known as the Illiana Expressway) is meant to connect Lowell, Ind., to Wilmington, Ill. It is meant to make it easier for people to cross over the state line by an interstate highway WITHOUT having to travel all the way north to Gary before turning west.

But the same people who can't stand the idea of the Chicago-area spreading far southeast into Will County combined with the ones who view the Illinois/Indiana border as a barricade – which is what led the Chicago Metropolitan Area Planning entity to officially exclude Illiana from its long-term plans.

AND NOW, WE’RE getting the reports about the one city-based project on this southern Chicago wish-list – the Port of Chicago had potential to be turned over to a private company that supposedly could have revitalized all the shipping of goods that involves the area around Lake Calumet.

Will any of these Illiana routes, ...

Except that the Colorado-based company is now saying it is ending negotiations without reaching a deal. Which means the money that would have been spent to upgrade the port to make the improvements necessary isn’t going to be spent.

The port (which those of you who ever venture far enough south to travel on the Bishop Ford Freeway probably drive right past without ever noticing it, except for the fact that it took them years before they removed Rod Blagojevich’s name as governor from their sign) likely will languish in its current state.

... or this airport, ever become reality?

Which is to say a port that gets underutilized, even though it is the port that connects Chicago to the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico through the rivers that lead to the Illinois River, which flows to the Mississippi River.

IT IS PART of the network of assets that make Chicago a national transportation hub – and is the reason why Chicago gets compared to New York or Los Angeles, rather than Milwaukee, St. Louis or Indianapolis.

Yet perhaps it is the fact that all these potential assets (from airport to expressway to sea port) are located south (in most cases as far south as one can go and still think they’re in the Chicago area) that causes them to get the shaft – so to speak. It reminds me of a moment some 25 years ago when I was told by a developer-type person that planning a new airport to the south was a waste of time and resources, because the only people and growth that mattered was taking place to the north of Chicago.

At least in the case of the airport, Illinois state government is in the process of purchasing land – which causes the airport opponents to send out pictures of homes to be destroyed, with caustic messages about what a waste it is to eliminate housing for something they don’t want to see built!

It creates a perception of wondering how many more decades will have to pass before something can be built – and will the aviation landscape change so dramatically that a new Chicago-area airport won’t be as essential?

MEANWHILE, THE SOUTHERN Chicago economy that is counting so heavily on these projects for a jolt not only of jobs but the perception that something of significance is located there continues to lag.

Which ought to be something our government officials ought to be concerned about – except that they’re more worked up over partisan maneuvers that they think can be used to ding their opponents.

The mouth of Lake Calumet gives the Port its ultimate access to the Atlantic and the Gulf of Mexico. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

 

There are times I wonder if the endless delays over resolving the funding mechanisms for government-overseen pension programs is because someone wants their opponent to get the blame? All of these failures has me wondering how the list of projects (airport, expressway, port) will have to be amended whenever political people talk about the potential for southern Chicago.

It might be government’s ultimate indictment if nothing on that list of potential achievements becomes reality!

  -30-

Chicago: it’s so many cities in one!

What I most enjoy about the character of Chicago is that it has so many characters.

The differing neighborhoods and elements of society that come together within the city limits literally create a condition in which you could take two life-long Chicagoans, compare their stories and find totally different circumstances.

I wish the lettering could remain beyond the museum exhibit's end in May. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

 

YET THEY’RE BOTH fully legitimate in claiming their “life-long” status that might come across to some as boasting. So be it.

It creates for an area where if one is diligent and adventurous enough to travel about the city, one can encounter so many differing experiences. I might be approaching age 50 in just a few more years, yet there are still unseen delights I feel the need to experience without having to travel anywhere.

Which is why this weblog, on many occasions, has proclaimed the wonderfulness of Chicago – even if there are certain elements that might make some people question our sense, even if they truly do add to the overall character of the city.

Life isn’t always pretty, and Chicago at times reflects that reality – while also creating a sense of hope that these problem areas (which in some cases are only problems if your sensibilities were formed by rural communities that were isolated from the rest of the world) will be overcome.

MY NEED TO state a perspective about Chicago was inspired by the New York Times, which on Sunday published what purported to be a “book review” about three new volumes written about differing aspects of our city. Although I have to confess that I saw it, put it aside to read until later, and didn’t get around to it until after I heard from others about how allegedly “outrageous” it was.

Some have interpreted the essay by DePaul University drama professor Rachel Shteir as being a “hit job” on the city. How dare this dame from Noo Yawk say anything bad about us!?!

The one-time 'world's busiest' corner

I’m not going to get all worked up over her, in part because I don’t know anything about her. Although from reading this essay, I get the sense she wishes she were in New York.

And not just anywhere, but Manhattan – the downtown area. The glitz and glamour, and the kind of people who think places like Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens are an embarrassment to be hidden away.

EVEN THOUGH I’D argue they are the “true” New York that give that city its character. The kind of people who get worked up over Manhattan are the same kinds who think all those touristy joints out on Navy Pier are the “true” Chicago.

She can have her opinion. I really don’t care. I remember when I lived in other cities, I was considered the insufferable one because I could easily talk about the wonders of Chicago, and couldn’t wait to return.

Although the one line from her essay that caught my attention was her bit that Chicago winters seem more mild these days, “thanks to global warming.” I’m sure the ideologues who want to believe that global warming is a liberal myth will spend the rest of their lives hounding her for expressing such a sentiment.

The way City Hall, the state government building and the former Bismarck Hotel come together make Randolph and LaSalle streets an intense political intersection.

 

But back to Chicago and what makes it unique, and why we realize that people like Texas Gov. Rick Perry are just being "dinks" when they try to trash us and steal our business entities. Deep down, they probably wish they were us.

WE HAVE THE cultural and business amenities (the symphony orchestra, the mercantile exchange, just to name a couple) that ensure the city has significance beyond the occasional “Chicago” dateline that crops up in out-of-town newspapers when they publish stories about the occasional crime occurring here.

Some still wish they could shop here

Yet we also have vibrant neighborhoods that exist in-and-of themselves. There are those people whose lives don’t revolve around a downtown viewpoint. You can even take your pick about what to see. What some claim as excessive segregation is also the notion that so many differing groups have their own communities – rather than a generic mish-mash of people that loses its character.

One can easily find the downtown hustle and bustle of millions of people co-existing (which personally, I have always found to provide a greater sense of privacy than being in a tiny community where everyone feels compelled to mind the business of everybody around them).

But just the other day, my duties in writing for one of the daily newspapers in the suburbs took me out to the shores of Lake Calumet.

You could almost forget you're in Chicago ...

I’M TALKING THAT body of water that usually is kept fenced in by the Illinois International Port District – but which also has unique environmental opportunities.

It was a trip to be standing out in the prairie grass just a few feet away from the water feeling that sense of isolation – yet also knowing that if I turned to the south, I’d be able to see the Port of Chicago. And a view to the east would show me the Bishop Ford Freeway and the structures of the Pullman neighborhood off in the distance.

Yet at no point was I outside the city of Chicago. The city limits were literally about three miles further south (and the state line about three miles to the east).

... until you turn around and see the Port of Chicago in the distance

Chicago is, the hope that someday a Lake Calumet might actually be revitalized enough to show that nature and urban life can co-exist.

IT ALSO IS, the belief that the oft-random violence that occurs here (and in other places too, check out the “Five dead in Manchester, Ill.” story that cropped up Wednesday morning) really is of the fluke nature and does not define our essential character. The way we respond to it does.

 

And it is that sense that we have easy access to those cultural amenities. I once had a friend try to downplay that aspect by snapping, “Who goes to the Opera every day?” Yet it beats not even having the option!

A Cub-free zone!?!

In fact, about the closest I can come to a negative about Chicago is when the talk turns to baseball and the Chicago Cubs.

That much losing on a steady basis can be downright depressing. Thank the Lord those of us who couldn’t take it without experiencing mental collapse have another ball club to follow.

  -30-

The newest trend – marijuana crops being “hidden” right out in the open

Signs like these exist all throughout the area surrounding Lake Calumet, which likely added to the 'cover' for the marijuana fields discovered this week. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

Perhaps my sense of smell is deteriorating as I age.

For whenever I drove along the Bishop Ford Freeway in recent months and sensed an “off” aroma, I presumed it was from the nearby trash landfills.

THEY MAY BE capped and covered and the stench isn’t anywhere near as bad as it was when I was a child back in the 1970s, but there’s still a bit of a funk in the air in the land between Pullman and the East Side neighborhoods.

But the “big” story Wednesday morning was the fact that the Chicago Police Department have discovered a big, huge field of marijuana plants – the size of two football fields – in the area around 106^th Street and Stony Island Avenue.

That’s near the Harborside International Golf Center (the attempt to turn polluted landfill into luxury golf courses) and has the traffic of the Bishop Ford (which a part of me still thinks of as the Calumet Expressway) whizzing by.

Which sounds like a pretty public place for somebody to be doing something that can warrant criminal charges. Yet all those people seem to have served as the perfect cover for the pot fields.

THE MOTORISTS DRIVE by, doing their best to avoid paying attention to the surroundings. People using the golf course do their best to pretend that the surroundings (which include Lake Calumet and its shipping) don’t really exist.

Most people passing through the Southeast Side notice nothing more than landfills such as this one by the Land & Lakes Co. near the Chicago-Dolton border. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

And because much of this former industrial area is heavily polluted, much of the area is fenced off with signs telling people that wandering around has the potential to be regarded as a criminal offense.

So it’s not an area that people pay close attention to. Which motivated the people who want to earn their living by satisfying the public’s “desire” for marijuana to use the land for their growing fields.

Both the Chicago Sun-Times and WGN-TV quoted Chicago police as saying some of the plants on the huge fields were the size of “Christmas trees.” It almost sounds like a fantasy sequence from a “Cheech and Chong” film!

THE POLICE ADMITTED on Wednesday that they didn’t truly appreciate the size of the operation until they got a helicopter in the air and saw the fields from the sky.

Not that anybody has been arrested. When police arrived at the pot fields to confiscate the crop, nobody was around. Police are asking us to keep their eyes open for anybody who comes back to the area trying to salvage something from this operation.

Then again, we’re the same people who had a huge pot field growing in our midst and didn’t have a clue.

So the individuals may have to “write off” this particular operation, and turn their attention to what I’m sure is another open field of marijuana growing somewhere in an equally-public place.

THE ODD THING is that this is not the first time I have heard of such pot plants growing in the open.

About a month ago, police in suburban Lynwood (just a bit further south where the Bishop Ford turns into Illinois Route 394) found a smaller-scale operation – but one that was equally huge in the public eye.

A two-acre field of marijuana plants in various stages of growth – with a nearby house with rooms set up for various stages of the processing, packaging and marketing (so to speak) of marijuana. Two tons of the crop were confiscated.

To the best of my knowledge, no arrests were ever made in that case. And it took the Cook County sheriff’s police helicopter task force to let the Lynwood police comprehend the scale of that site.

ARE WE GOING to start finding more of these fields out in the open, counting on peoples’ willingness to not look too closely as their cover. And how do police destroy a crop that large – without creating the potential for jokes about a city-wide pot party sponsored by “da Law!”

It reminds me of a viewpoint I once heard expressed about the best way to hide a piece of information – create an obscure website on the Internet and post every graphic detail.

Then count on the fact that there is so much clutter on the Internet that your site likely will get lost in the shuffle and never be looked at.

  -30-

Eco-terrorism? Somebody’s prank? Or is the “Calumet Asian carp” nature’s fluke?

Excuse me for finding it very believable that an Asian carp found earlier this summer in Lake Calumet was likely planted there by another human being.

It just always struck me as being very unlikely that one of the carp had managed to make it so far north undetected past all the security measures that the Army Corps of Engineers put in place to keep the invasive species away from Lake Michigan.

NOT THAT I’M saying I have complete faith in the federal government’s efforts to control the Asian carp’s movement. I’m sure anything is penetrable.

But it just struck me as completely odd that the Asian carp went from being seen out around Will County, then suddenly was discovered within the Chicago city limits only six miles from the Great Lake (which is the target that the environmentalists are dreading that the carp will get to someday).

So reading the reports this week about how it is suspected that somebody deliberately put the Asian carp into Lake Calumet is reassurring. In addition to scary.

It is reassuring in that it means the security measures – including those electronic barriers that are supposed to keep the carp back – didn’t necessarily fail. It may turn out that it won’t be a federal government failure that prevents the Asian carp from someday getting through the Chicago Sanitary & Ship Canal to Lake Michigan, from where they could eventually spread throughout the Great Lakes.

BUT IT SCARES me that, despite all the word that has gotten out about the potential threat from the Asian carp, someone would think so little of the concerns that they would go so far as to put a carp into Lake Calumet on purpose.

It makes me wonder if a person who would deliberately put an Asian carp into the lake is the same type of person who thinks it all a batch of hooey that man ever walked on the moon – stories about the carp killing the lake’s ecosystem are for people gullible enough to not see the “wires” on the footage that purports to be Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on a rock in the cosmos.

Although I’d have to admit that I’d rather believe it was somebody’s naïve foolishness that caused the carp to get into the lake, rather than someone’s malicious intent. Because then we’d be talking about possible criminal activity, although I can already imagine the late night TV crowd having a field day if someone were actually hit with criminal charges and brought to trial for planting a fish in the lake.

As for the conservative pundit crowd, they’ll probably decree it “God’s punishment” to Chicago for being so Democratic Party-oriented for so many years.

IN SHORT, ONLY nonsense can result from this situation.

Officials say they’re not sure of the exact motivation of whoever it was that caused an Asian carp to get into Lake Calumet. One researcher at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale said it may have been some sort of cultural ritual. Or it may have been some sort of fisherman’s accident.

The only thing those researchers are sure of is that the three-foot-long Asian carp (weighing about 20 pounds) found back in June had spent nearly all of its life on the “wrong” side of the electronic barrier that is meant to keep the carp out of the Chicago area altogether.

The only thing I am sure of (aside from the nonsense factor) is that I doubt this story will change anybody’s mind about the whole Asian carp conundrum.

PEOPLE FROM ACROSS the Midwestern U.S. who are determined to think of this situation as “Chicago’s fault” are still going to persist in thinking that, and they’re likely to continue to push for those measures that close off Lake Michigan’s access to the rivers that connect it to the Mississippi River – even though it is that access that largely drives the Great Lakes states’ economies.

Closing off that access would wind up backfiring and hurting all of the region. Unlike the way people in Michigan (which seems to be particularly nasty in the way they’re pursuing this issue) think, they’d wind up hurting themselves and everybody else around them by persisting in legal actions meant to cut off the access (which allows for shipment of goods and helps bolster the local economy at a time when we need every advantage we can get).

Officials with the Alliance for the Great Lakes went so far as to tell the Chicago Sun-Times that this latest discovery is not a “game-changer either way.” I’m inclined to agree.

But the sad part is that I almost am resigned to the fact that the Asian carp are likely to find a way to get into Lake Michigan, and the Great Lakes, eventually. It probably will be the human factor that allows it to happen someday.

WHICH MEANS I am bracing myself for the eventual trial of somebody facing charges related to the ecological devastation of the natural wildlife in the Great Lakes.

One of the first major “stories” I covered as a professional reporter-type person was the shooting rampage by Laurie Dann some 22 years ago in the North Shore suburbs. Perhaps one of the last stories I will cover will be the future trial of a “Great Lakes terrorist” whose crime was letting a fish loose into the lake when he shouldn’t have.

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Asian carp comes to Chicago. What now?

With the international character that has long comprised Chicago, perhaps it is only appropriate that we now likely have Asian carp among our residents within the city limits.

For that is what the situation has become, even for those of you smartalecks who like to claim that the Far South Side of Chicago is its own little world – and not really a part of Chicago.

FOR THE FEAR that officials have long had seems to have been confirmed – we have the Asian carp in the area. All of those tests in the past that made it appear that the carp had not yet reached the Chicago area appear to be wrong.

For the news reports that came out Wednesday indicated the most blatant evidence that the carp are real – somebody who was fishing for fun actually caught one. It was down in the 10th Ward, in Lake Calumet to be exact. The news reports indicate the fisherman was in the part of the lake near the Harborside Golf Course.

The carp itself was nearly three feet long and weighed about 19 pounds.It’s carcass is now being sent off to various laboratories where it can be studied in great detail while people fret about what can be done.

What catches my attention is the fact that just a few weeks ago, officials from the Illinois Department of Natural Resources working with federal environmental and wildlife officials actually poisoned part of the water of the Little Calumet River that runs into the lake.

THEY FIGURED THAT any carp in the water would die and their carcasses would float to the top. None did. Yet now, we’re finding this particular fish in the lake that literally lies only about six miles from Lake Michigan. Lake Calumet has been reconfigured so many times throughout the centuries that the presence of an Asian carp almost doesn't seem invasive at all. Map provided by Chicago Area Paddling/Fishing Guide.

Which means we’re destined to get more rounds of political ranting and complaining from our Great Lakes States neighbors (particularly those whiners from Michigan, the state) who want to make it appear as though Chicago personally has introduced the Asian carp to the Great Lakes.

Now I realize the seriousness of this issue. The Asian carp is a species not native to this part of the world, and its presence in the Great Lakes would be devastating to the species that are native to Lake Michigan and its counterpart lakes.

I also realize that this is a species that is determined to spread. After all, it is one that was introduced in the United States into the Mississippi River near Mississippi, and has managed to swim upstream all the way across our country to the point where that river meets up with the Illinois River.

IT ALREADY HAS done its damage in downstate Illinois, and is inching its way across the waterways to Chicago – despite the attempts to poison it and use electronic barricades to keep it from advancing.

Which is why I am convinced of two things

One is that this fish is going to make it to Lake Michigan – if it isn’t there already. My gut feeling says it is already there (even though we don’t have evidence of that fact, yet!). It is a determined little sucker, we have to give it credit for that.

The other is that people getting all worked up in trying to get the courts to issue orders to penalize Chicago for this problem are missing the point.

WE NEED TO be working together to figure out a way to minimize the potential ecosystem devastation that could be caused by the Asian carp getting into the Great Lakes. Having Michigan officials take a “holier-than-thou” attitude and trying to play the victim is a waste of time.

If anything, I agreed with one person who used the Internet to comment that trying to blame Chicago for the Asian carp would be the equivalent of filing lawsuit after lawsuit against Detroit officials because of all the air pollution we now have due to automobiles.

It might be true in a theoretical sense. But it would be a waste of energy that would accomplish nothing.

Now I am not claiming to have the solution. All I know is that there will be people on the Supreme Court of the United States (who in the past have refused to issue court orders demanding that the locks allowing water flow between Lake Michigan and the rivers across Illinois be closed) and perhaps President Barack Obama himself who will start hearing a lot more heated rhetoric.

PERSONALLY, I AM waiting for the day that some political partisan (maybe even Rush Limbaugh) starts blaming the Asian carp on Obama himself. It will be intriguing to hear the convoluted logic they will devise in their mini-minds.

If anything, we ought to remember those 2008 elections – when the Great Lakes states of the Midwest were largely united behind Obama’s campaign, instead of our usual partisan divide that tends to see our part of the world as Chicago versus the Midwestern U.S.

For if we don’t unite in trying to find a solution, I can’t help but think THAT will be the factor that allows the Asian carp to get to Lake Michigan. We might as well run up the white flag of surrender now, if that’s the case.

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Chicago canvass to keep Census Bureau busy

We soon will get the 21st Century equivalent of this 1920 Census Bureau worker doing a canvass to get a population count. Photograph provided by Library of Congress collection.

Today is “Census Day.”

It is the date upon which you were supposed to base the factual data that you reported on the Census form you received in the mail earlier this month.

IT ALSO IS the date by which you are supposed to have put your form in the mail. But it seems that Chicagoans have been lax in terms of filling out their forms. The bureau on Tuesday reported that while half of U.S. residents have sent their forms back, only 36 percent of Chicago residents had done so.

“We’re concerned about the relatively low response from parts of Chicago,” Census Bureau Director Robert Groves said, in a prepared statement.

Of course, it is not a universal problem. Go up and down the north lakefront, and you find neighborhoods with census tracts that exceed 50 percent, and where the bulk of the lakefront is in the 40 percents. For what it’s worth, the upscale South Loop neighborhood has census tracts with a 50 percent return rate.

The census tract that includes Wrigley Field only had 34 percent response to the count. Just out of curiosity, I had to look up the figure for the census tract around U.S. Cellular Field, where it turns out that 42 percent of residents who live near the White Sox’ stadium have bothered to send in their Census forms.

ON A MORE serious note, I couldn’t help but look up some of the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods of Chicago, on account of the fact that the Census Bureau spent significant amounts of money to promote the idea that Latinos should take a special interest in being included in the nation’s population count.

For it seems that the Latino neighborhoods of Chicago have lower-than-average return rates.

The South Chicago neighborhood (home of one of the city’s oldest Spanish-speaking communities) has census tracts in the 20s, and the census tract where my parents lived when I was born? It seems only 19 percent of people had bothered to put their form in the mail so it could be counted.

Not that others did any better. The Pilsen and Little Village neighborhoods that now contain the bulk of the Mexican ethnic population of this city have census tracts ranging from 19 percent to 26 percent, although there’s one tract on the far east edge of Pilsen where only 8 percent of people bothered to respond to the Census.

I GUESS THE Puerto Rican community centered around Humboldt Park did better, with census tracts in that neighborhood ranging from 28 percent to 36 percent. People living in the tract surrounding the park proper have responded at a 34 percent rate.

Heading back south, the University of Chicago campus intrigued me. It is split among four census tracts – with return rates ranging from 33 percent to 49 percent, with the percentage increasing the further east one goes along the Midway Plaisance.

In the same general neighborhood, I also checked out the one-time neighbors of Barack Obama. The census tract containing his home has a return rate of 43 percent.

Not that these percentages necessarily mean much.

THERE IS ONE census tract in the 10th Ward on the Far South Side. Stretching from 103rd Street to 130th Street and from the Bishop Ford Highway to just a little bit east of Torrence Avenue, it has a mass about six or seven times the size of most city-based census tracts (which can be as small as four square blocks).

That tract has a 38 percent return rate – right above the city average.

Yet anybody who knows that part of the city realizes that what we’re talking about is Lake Calumet, a portion of the Calumet River and the landfills that surround the area.

While I am aware of people who live near that area, I was not aware of a single soul who actually resided within that particular census tract Are we talking about 38 percent of the carp in the river who have managed to get themselves accounted for by the Census Bureau?

I AM SURE there are many more neighborhoods that have particular interest to certain individuals. But it amazes me that so many people in our area have their hang-ups about being acknowledged. It seems to be an urban thing. For I couldn’t help but notice the suburban counties surrounding Cook (which has a 43 percent return rate overall) all are doing better – with the highest rate being far northwest suburban McHenry County at 60 percent.

Which is why I’m wondering if Chicago is going to be the great unknown when it comes to those Census Bureau workers with their official shoulder bags and forms having to work their way through the streets trying to get to the people who couldn’t be bothered to fill out a form in the past few weeks.

I also can already hear in my mind the complaints from people who will insist that Chicago got undercounted, or that the suburbs are getting more than they deserve when it comes to political representation and government funding.

They’d be correct. But the bottom line is that people who couldn’t bother to be counted now probably don’t have a legitimate gripe a year or two from now if they get cheated out of something that could have been theirs.

-30-

EDITOR’S NOTES: Go ahead and look up your home census tract to see how many of your neighbors bothered (http://2010.census.gov/2010census/take10map/) to send in their forms.

I say let the conservative ideologues (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/us/31census.html) allow themselves to be undercounted. They’d be doing the bulk of society a favor in the long run.