Another piece of Chicago’s industry moves to far sout’east corner of city

Reports of a company that shreds scrap metal choosing to locate along the Calumet River in Chicago’s 10^th Ward really isn’t that surprising.

Remnant of Republic Steel plant whose site will someday have a scrap yard. Photographs by Gregory Tejeda

What caught my attention in the reports about General Iron Industries is that the scrap yard is leaving its current location, which is along a portion of the Chicago River in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.

WHILE I REALIZE that Lincoln Park hasn’t always been the upscale place for Chicago’s excessively wealthy to live (and at one point in the 1960s was close to evolving into an ethnic enclave for people of Puerto Rican descent), it makes me snicker that such an industrial company was ever located there to begin with.

It is a reminder that lakefront (and riverfront) property once was viewed as prime sites for industry. You could bring in your raw materials on barges and dump your waste into the water.

That is, until all those pesky environmentalists started spewing their rhetoric about the need for clean water and public health. How times change!

Which is why I’m sure General Iron is moving on from their long-time site. They’re no longer going to have to listen to the complaints from area residents who can’t stand the sight of piles of scrap lying around near their million dollar-plus homes and the stench of certain metallic odors that can waft through the air.

Salt piles amongst area's cleaner substances

NOW, THEY’RE LOCATING to a place that long has been a prime location for all the kind of industry that no one – if they can at all avoid it – wants to live in proximity to.

Specifically, they’re moving to a site along the Calumet River in the East Side neighborhood; that part of Chicago where you’re south of Lake Michigan altogether and the eastern boundary is State Line Road (a.k.a., the Illinois/Indiana border). They’re actually going to be on part of the site that once was Republic Steel – the site of that Memorial Day 1937 labor protest that ended with police beating dozens of picketing union members and killing 10 of them.

Along the Calumet River

It is a place where the locals are used to certain foul stenches wafting through the air. But since they don’t have “million-dollar homes” in places like the East Side or South Deering, the political people don’t seem to care. Where else would one find a sub-neighborhood literally known as “Slag Valley” because of the piles of iron slag and petroleum coke that lie out in the open near homes – no matter how much the locals complain.

I’m familiar with the area because it is the part of Chicago that is my birthplace. Specifically, the South Chicago neighborhood, but I have cousins who live in all the other neighborhoods that comprise the 10^th Ward.

I KNOW FULL well how paying a visit to certain members of the family can be an unpleasant experience – and not because those cousins are annoying. It’s because the stink can be overpowering, and the sight of waste can be unpleasant.

Of course, this attitude is because much of the industry that sparked development of such neighborhoods has long withered away.

There no longer are steel mills working round-the-clock, and local residents justified the unpleasantness of the environment as evidence that they had working-class jobs that actually paid a living wage.

I am the grandson of two such men who worked in steel mills for a living, which is how my family developed an attachment to the area – it was near their jobs. Some of the old-timers who remain claim that old days of pollution were bearable because it was evidence they were employed.

BUT NOW THAT the jobs aren’t so plentiful, some people want to act as though we ought to be thankful for the few that remain. And may well try to act as though complaints about pollution are somehow elitist rants by people who have to right to think of themselves as elite.

When 10^th Ward Alderman Susan Sadlowski Garza says, “we’re tired of being the city’s dumping ground” (as she told the Chicago Tribune recently), I’m sure certain others in Lincoln Park are coping the attitude of “better you than me” in terms of having to cope with pollution.

Envision one-time police car soaring through air

How polluted is the part of Chicago my family hails from? One can’t help but note the continued failure of plans to turn the one-time U.S. Steel Southworks site into something economically viable – with some hints being that the pollution remaining from the plant that closed over a quarter-of-a-century ago is too toxic for serious development.

A place that too many Chicagoans regard as something utterly ignorable – except for when they stumble onto the old “The Blues Brothers” film and once again see that car-jumping scene over the 95^th Street bridge – which is only about 2 miles from the site where General Iron plans to set up its new home by 2020.

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How strict can we get with petcoke regulations when I suspect most people don’t have a clue what it is

When it comes to petcoke, I have a funny bias in favor of the local residents.

I’m not one of them any longer. But I am the grandson of a pair of Mexican immigrants who found their particular version of the “American Dream” through work in the steel mills that used to dominate the 10^th Ward.

HECK, I STILL have relatives who live in places like Hegewisch, the East Side and South Deering (and who know exactly what Slag Valley is).

So when I hear about petcoke, it’s not some abstract concept. Nor is it something that inspires silly gags about colas or cocker spaniels.

I have seen the piles of the petroleum byproduct and fully appreciate how decades of industrial pollutants have given the air in the city’s far southeast corner a particular stink.

And I totally appreciate how people who still live in the area, including an uncle and a couple of cousins of mine these days, would love to see the piles of pollutants removed.

THE FACT THAT it easily gets blown about and can wind up adding a layer of grime to one’s home (or totally coat their newly-washed laundry with filth) makes life all the more unpleasant.

So I can comprehend the disgust felt by local residents when they say they want an outright ban on petcoke being stored within the city – only to be told by attorneys for city government (who probably avoid traveling to the 10^th Ward at all costs) that they’re being unreasonable.

Seriously, they’ve been told that the industry that remains along the Calumet River has a right to be able to store the substance in some way.

Salt -- one of the least disgusting things piled up out in the open in the 10th Ward. Photograph by Gregory Tejeda

 

But what is the way that can be acceptable to local residents?

IN RECENT MONTHS, there has been speculation about some sort of petcoke storage ordinance. I’ve been at hearings where talk has been of requiring the substance to be stored indoors in specially-built structures that would be located quite a ways away from residential areas.

Although when one considers that industry in the 10^th Ward can literally be found right across the street from homes that families still live in, it is an odd environment.

There is much that gets tolerated by city officials about the 10^th Ward that would never be accepted elsewhere. A lot of otherwise unacceptable conditions get “grandfathered” in because it would (allegedly) be too expensive to get things up to code.

Just like how there are still troughs for men to pee in when they watch a ball game at Wrigley Field. At least with that disgusting concept, there is something resembling history and tradition.

YOU JUST DON’T get the same sentiment when having to breathe in petcoke.

Which is why I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of disgust when I learned about what happened Tuesday. Activists from the 10^th Ward were at City Hall, hoping for support for petcoke regulations that they felt were too weak, but were better than nothing.

Instead, the council’s Zoning Committee got to review an even-weaker proposal – one that permits petcoke storage on-site if companies can document that it was consumed on-site as part of a manufacturing process.

It also would allow for stockpiles of petcoke to be burned.

YOU JUST KNOW that will add to the stink in the air around the East Side. How weak will this regulation become by the time aldermen get around to approving something?

Now I realize that industry is not all-bad. It does provide employment (albeit, not as much as it did several decades ago). And part of the appeal of living in the 10^th Ward once upon a time was that the working class could get those decently-paying jobs within walking distance of their homes.

My father grew up in a house in South Chicago that was just a couple of blocks from the one-time U.S. Steel Southworks plant – the one that developers now want to turn into an upscale housing development right on Lake Michigan.

Which is a cute idea – although I wonder how many people would want to live there once they realize its proximity to communities that have those petcoke piles lying about.

Sitting in Chicago's 'corner'

BECAUSE CITY OFFICIALS right now seem more concerned about the business interests than they are of certain residents in the land of alphabet-oriented streets (Avenue O, anyone?). Perhaps they’ll get serious about cleaning up the mess if those upscale residents ever do settle in the city’s southeast corner?

Or if they ever get political clout that can get things done. Because I also couldn’t help but notice the same Zoning Committee gave its support Tuesday to construction of a new heliport on the Chicago River in the Bridgeport neighborhood.

It must be nice to be the neighborhood of Chicago mayors, rather than one of piles of petcoke!

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Was cellphone really worth it? Why can’t people be more careful w/ stuff?

Learning of the trio of people who fell into the Chicago River while trying to retrieve a cellphone brought back to my memory a childhood incident that had a less-tragic ending.

CHICAGO RIVER: Pretty on postcards, Repulsive in person

 

I forget how old I was exactly (it might have been 7), but I had just got a cheap camera as a gift. So when the family took a trip to the Museum of Science and Industry, I felt the need to take it along.

I RECALL BEING on an upper level of the museum, looking down at that giant layout of a model railroad that I’m sure all of us locals saw at one point or another in our lives. I wanted to take pictures of the trains from above.

But I got clumsy, lost my grip, and saw my new camera fall a couple of floors.

Following a brief angry blast from my father, he then went down and managed to get the camera – which surprisingly enough, was not broken. To this day, I still have the camera and it still functions. Or at least it did the last time I tried to use it many years ago.

Unfortunately, an early Monday incident had a much less satisfying ending.

FOR IT SEEMS a man was walking along the river when he lost his grip on the cellphone he was using to take pictures of the ice-covered river. It fell into the river, although based on the reports I have read, it seems like it floated on the water’s surface, which is why the man appears to have thought he could just reach into the river and grab it back.

River's St. Patrick's Day shade of green ...

But that is where any resemblance from my moment of clumsiness and this man’s moment of misery comes to an end.

For he slipped and fell into the river.

The woman and another man who were with him, all of whom were from Minnesota and were on their way to New Jersey, felt heroic and dived into the river to try to retrieve him.

... and its usual sickly green shade

IT ENDED BADLY. The body of the cellphone-less man was recovered, although he was pronounced dead at 3:14 a.m. at Northwestern Memorial Hospital. The woman’s body has yet to be found (my police reporter memories make me think she'll turn up in the spring when the ice thaws out), while the other man who tried to do a rescue was at Presence St. Joseph Hospital.

Alive on Monday morning, albeit in critical condition.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that the deceased man trying to retrieve his telephone was from St. Paul, Minn. It would make sense to think that all three of them were tourists visiting Chicago.

It is very clear to anybody who isn’t a native Chicagoan that they weren’t locals.

FOR ANYBODY WHO was from around here never would have dived into the Chicago River.

We may joke about how it’s a waste to dye the river green for St. Patrick’s Day because the water has a natural green (albeit sickly) color to it. From all the years of waste that got dumped into the river that once was officially classified as “toxic,” but is now merely “polluted.”

Exposure to the water for even a few minutes (which is how long it took for the Police Department’s Marine Unit to recover the men from the river) is long enough to cause severe illness.

Even if that one man survives, he’s probably going to have some lingering problems to his health as a result of his brief “swim” in the river.

I CAN’T THINK of anyone local who would risk that much to get a cellphone back. And I write that knowing full well how much of a pain in the behind it can be to switch cellphones if you don’t have your old phone to retrieve data from. If, as a kid, I had dropped my camera into the river, I never would have expected my father to try to retrieve it.

It’s why I sometimes sarcastically quip that when I die, I’d like to be cremated and have my earthly remains dumped into the Chicago River.

I can’t think of any fate that would more repulse a native Chicagoan than that. Let’s hope the woman’s body is ultimately found so that she doesn’t suffer that fate.

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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.

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Peoples’ imaginations, or legitimate concerns, about new East Side school

Did the family of one-time Alderman Edward R. Vrdolyak just manage to sell a polluted plot of land to the city for a proposed school building; thereby enriching itself while also creating the potential for exposure of little children to dirt and filth?!?!!



Parents in the red concerned about new school

To listen to the people who have way too much free time on their hands, the answer would be yes.

FOR ALL I know, they probably can come up with scenarios that are far more outrageous than the one I just created. Which in a certain sense is factually accurate, but has about as much spin on it as those people who are going to defend the Chicago Cubs’ potential for a 95-loss season as not being so bad because the White Sox will probably lose 98-100 games in 2013.

So what is going on here?

City officials let it be known Sunday that they want to build a new public school facility at 104^th Street and Indianapolis Boulevard. For those of you who don’t know the East Side neighborhood or the 10^th Ward in general, the site is just two blocks from where Indianapolis Boulevard intersects with State Line Road and Illinois evolves into our less cultured Midwestern brother known as Indiana.

But the East Side neighborhood rumor mill already is working itself into overtime, what with the people who are trying to figure out just how crooked a deal enabled this school building to be built.

Gallistel School has expanded significantly throughout the decades. But a new school building is now needed

 

EMANUEL DIDN’T DO himself any favors by the way he handled the announcement – he made a vague statement, then left without taking questions.

In theory, 10^th Ward Alderman John Pope was available to handle queries. I’ll give him some credit for trying to do the best he could with what information he knew to answer community concerns.

EMANUEL: Where'd he go?

But there are those who are suspicious of the deal, which was bound to be complicated by the mere fact that it is being built in a heavily industrial part of Chicago where there are some unique concerns that need to be addressed.

According to the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times, the plot of land was owned in part by a relative of Vrdolyak. So when it was sold to the city, it means someone in the family came away with a few bucks.

THE LAND ITSELF was the former site of a gasoline station. Later in its life, it became a car wash.

Which means its history includes underground storage tanks that may have leaked fuels (The Tribune has found out about preliminary testing that found one leaking underground tank, and the presence of benzene in the soil), along with chemicals used to clean automobiles being spilled onto the ground and seeping their way into the soil.

Yes, the site is polluted. Part of the cost of developing a school building at the site is going to include some environmental cleanup. Although there are bound to be some talks to see just how little can be done and still have the site be in compliance with environmental law.

We don’t want to find out that children are getting sick because of where they go to school. Do we?

IT BRINGS TO mind the climactic scene from the 1982 film Poltergeist – when we learn the reason the homes are tainted spiritually is because the nice, new suburban-inspired housing development was built atop a cemetery, and the developers thought it would be easier to just build the houses atop the graves without going to the “needless” cost of moving the bodies!

Now I don’t know of any plot to pollute East Side neighborhood children. Just like I don't know that a Vrdolyak relative made a financial killing off this deal.

Although I do wonder how it will work out to decide which children wind up at the new school, and which remain in the facilities of the Gallistel Language Academy at 104^th Street and Ewing Avenue.

The building has some character (its oldest portions date back to the late 19^th Century). But it is cramped.

AND SOME PARENTS are concerned that “favored” children will wind up in the new building, leaving behind others in the old, inadequate facilities. Of course, no one is specific about who would be considered a favored child, or who would be punished by remaining in the old facilities.

Then again, favoritism isn’t exactly an unheard of concept when it comes to Chicago or its political structure. Which may be why a lot of 10^th Ward residents have more than their share of concerns these days about what ought to be a wonderful announcement about building a new school.

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EXTRA: Trash talk about trash disposal? Or, who follows trash?

My ego ran amok for a new minutes on Wednesday, as I was interviewed for the “Afternoon Shift” program on WBEZ-FM about an issue I have been writing about for a suburban daily newspaper – whether or not the Land and Lakes Company will be allowed to annex part of Chicago into suburban Dolton so they can operate a garbage landfill at 138^th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue for several more decades without having to comply with city restrictions against such landfills.

If you care, you can hear my summarization of the issue on the radio station’s website. Although in all honesty, I have to say that David Lee – a doctoral candidate at MIT who worked on a project that attached sensors to garbage so that its ultimate destination could be tracked – is more interesting to listen to.

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