Conscious Choice: Calumet's Cinderella Story

July 2000 | News of the Earth

Calumet's Cinderella Story

by Dave Aftandilian

Back in 1985, when the Lake Calumet Study Committee began investigating the possibility of creating an ecological park on the far South Side of Chicago and northwestern Indiana, most folks thought the idea was crazy. Once the center of a booming steel industry, the area now had the dubious distinction of having some of the worst toxic waste dumps in Illinois, a high unemployment rate, and a really bad reputation among other Chicagoans — bad enough that whenever Chicago needed a site for a new incinerator or landfill or airport, people immediately thought of the Calumet region.

But precisely because so many companies had moved away and left only their waste on acres of otherwise open land, the Calumet’s dunes, wetlands, and prairies also played host to better than 700 plant species (85 of them rare, either globally or statewide) and 200 bird species (18 of them rare, either globally or statewide, and confirmed to be nesting), according to the Calumet Ecological Park Feasibility Study published by the National Park Service (NPS) in 1998. The study concluded that the Calumet region’s designation as a National Heritage Area "would afford the rare opportunity to revitalize an industrialized region and protect natural communities."

The National Park Service’s recommendation did not go unheard. Coalitions such as the Calumet Heritage Partnership and the Lake Calumet Ecosystem Partnership brought together members of industry, conservationists, historical preservationists, community groups, and governmental agencies to find ways to preserve the natural and cultural resources of the region and revitalize its economy.

The hard work and dedication of these and other groups bore their first fruits this past June, when Mayor Richard Daley and Governor George Ryan announced a multimillion-dollar joint city and state plan for the Calumet area. Recognizing that "good environmental management is good for business, and good industrial development is good for the environment," as Mayor Daley put it, the plan calls for the creation and ecological management of the Calumet Open Space Reserve, the building of a new environmental center in the area, the cleanup of the Cluster Sites near Paxton landfill, and the building of a renewable energy center there. The plan also calls for the creation of a Lake Calumet Area Industrial Tax Increment Financing (TIF) District that will help fund both industrial development to create new jobs and preservation and restoration of the area’s natural habitats.

The planned Calumet Open Space Reserve will permanently protect more than 3,000 acres, including Indian Ridge Marsh North, Indian Ridge Marsh South, and Heron Pond, all three of which were identified in the NPS study as valuable natural resources in need of protection. Ask any local birder why and they’ll tell you that Indian Ridge Marsh serves as the nesting site for around 700 state-endangered black-crowned night herons — one of the largest nesting colonies for this bird in Illinois. Part of the funding for land acquisition for the reserve will be provided by a $4 million grant from Governor Ryan’s Illinois Open Land Trust program over the next two years. It is unclear as yet what other parcels are on the city and state’s "to protect" list, but Marian Byrnes of the Calumet Ecological Park Association and the Southeast Environmental Task Force suggests Big Marsh, Calumet City Marsh, and Hegewisch Marsh as very high-priority areas for preservation.

One of the challenges the NPS study saw for the region was the development of a unified management strategy for land owned by many different public and private entities. The joint city/state plan will address this problem through a comprehensive ecological management plan. Jessica Rio of the City of Chicago’s Department of Environment says that the plan will be "looking at the watershed as a whole, improving water quality by protecting wetlands, which are connected to each other through the water table." Rio also explained that the plan will "facilitate the environmental health of the region by creating habitat corridors between these areas." The corridors will also have a recreational component; canoeing, biking, and other low-impact uses will be encouraged.

To help interpret the uniquely linked natural, industrial, and labor history of the Calumet region for visitors, a new environmental center will be built in the area (at a site yet to be determined). Jack Darin, state field representative for the Illinois Sierra Club, sees the Calumet region as "a unique place in which to tell the story of how our society impacts the environment and how we address those impacts." Many of the city’s science and nature museums will collaborate to tell that story through exhibits and programs for the new center, including the Field Museum, the Shedd Aquarium, the Adler Planetarium, the Museum of Science and Industry, and the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum. Even the building housing the center will be a part of the story; the City of Chicago has committed $1 million toward constructing a state-of-the-art, energy-efficient facility. The Chicago Environment Fund and the Illinois Institute of Technology are cosponsoring an international competition to solicit an environmentally friendly building design.

But perhaps the most innovative aspect of the joint city/state plan is the restoration of the abandoned Cluster Sites near the (closed) Paxton landfill into a renewable energy center and natural habitat. The restored site will house the largest solar power generating station in the nation, with a maximum generating capacity of 2.5 megawatts of electricity, as well as a plant to extract methane gas from the adjacent landfill and convert it into electricity. ComEd will invest at least $3 million in the energy center, according to Rio; Chicago has committed to jump-starting the project by purchasing energy from the facility. Given the recent Illinois utility deregulation laws, maybe Chicagoans will be able to choose to buy their electricity from this renewable-energy center — or perhaps public pressure could persuade ComEd to offer its customers a clean-energy package, partly powered through this site.

If all this sounds like a dream come true for the Calumet region and the people who live there, that’s because it is. Marian Byrnes of the Calumet Ecological Park Association and the Southeast Environmental Task Force said that "we’re very pleased; there are very positive possibilities here." Jack Darin of the Sierra Club echoed her sentiment, calling the joint city/state plan "a big victory for conservationists and local community residents, who have fought tirelessly for at least two decades to draw the attention of government officials to the valuable natural habitat and the real need for pollution cleanup" in the Calumet area.

But this is far from the end of the story. Byrnes praises the various governmental agencies involved with the Clusters Sites restoration for "being very positive and cooperative" about community groups that are involved in helping set the agenda for the restoration. However, she also cautions that "we want to be sure to be involved in the details of planning of specific projects" pursued as part of the joint plan in the future. Hopefully Mayor Daley and Governor Ryan will take that into account over the next couple of months as they appoint an advisory committee to help guide the implementation of the plan.

And there’s still the question of whether or not the Calumet region should be designated as a National Heritage Area (see "News of the Earth" from January 2000). The joint plan certainly doesn’t preclude that option; indeed, groups advocating the designation "view the city/state plan as an important part of building a National Heritage Area," according to Byrnes. The renewed commitment to the region of the city and state governments, as demonstrated in the joint plan, might help convince the National Park Service that the region is significant enough to be a National Heritage Area. And that would be another dream come true, not just for natives of the Calumet region, but for anyone who cares about preserving Chicago’s beautiful natural areas alongside its rich industrial and labor history.

Saving Roadless Areas
in Our National Forests

The greatest threat to our pristine national forests is not fire nor floods nor invasive species nor even chainsaws. Instead, it is the one big domino that can bring along with it all those other ills and send majestic old-growth trees crashing to the forest’s floor: roads. Once a road is built into an area that didn’t have one before, logging companies have easier access to ancient groves they consider ripe for clearcutting. Soil starts eroding out from the cuts for the road often in steep slopes, silting up streams that provide habitat for fish and sources of drinking water for many communities, and increasing the likelihood that torrential rains will send deadly and costly mudslides hurtling down onto the homes of folks who live downslope of the forests. Invasive plant species find easy rooting in the disturbed soil, gaining a foothold from which they can outcompete native vegetation and quickly spread throughout the forest. Fires — natural and human-caused — become both more frequent and more severe. And roads fragment habitat, reducing its quality for the many plants and animals that make their home in these wild lands.

Most roads in our national forests are heavily subsidized with federal money, so we’re all paying for logging companies and others to exploit our public forests for private gain. According to the Forest Service, the backlog on maintenance and reconstruction of the existing road system is more than $8 billion; they only receive 20 percent of the funding they need from the government to take care of these roads. As Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck has said, "It makes little sense to build new roads into valuable roadless areas when we cannot afford to maintain so much of our existing road system."

In October of 1999, President Clinton directed the Forest Service to develop regulations that would protect the more than 40 million acres (about 25 percent of all national forest lands) of its inventoried roadless areas larger than 5,000 acres from commercial logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. He also required the Forest Service "to determine whether such protection is warranted for any smaller‘roadless’ areas not yet inventoried." The president’s instructions followed a March 1999 announcement by Forest Service Chief Mike Dombeck of an eighteen-month moratorium on road-building on many national forest lands.

In May 2000, the Forest Service opened up its proposed management strategy for roadless areas in the national forests for public comment. The draft proposal would prohibit new roads in 43 million acres of inventoried roadless areas, and would provide opportunities for additional protection of these and other "unroaded" areas through local forest planning, but would defer until 2004 the decision on whether to protect the more than 8.5 million acres of inventoried roadless areas in Alaska’s Tongass National Forest. Logging would still be allowed in these areas, provided roads were not required (helicopter logging is already being done in some areas), and mining for locatable minerals — gold, silver, copper, gypsum, and barite — would also be permitted, including the construction of roads to reach claims filed under the 1872 Mining Law (see "News of the Earth" from May 2000). Recreational use of these lands would not be affected, including access for off-road vehicles. The Forest Service is conducting hundreds of public hearings about the proposed rules, and is also accepting written comments through July 17.

While the draft roadless areas regulations the Forest Service has announced are certainly a step in the right direction, they’re a far cry from the full protection of these areas that President Clinton called for last October. William H. Meadows, President of the Wilderness Society, said that "the Forest Service draft plan does not reflect President Clinton’s vision. And more importantly, it ignores the desires of the American people, three out of four of whom, in poll after poll, have responded overwhelmingly in support of that vision." The Wilderness Society, the Sierra Club, and a coalition of ten other environmental groups all recommend that the draft plan be amended to include:

• full and permanent protection for all national forest roadless areas in excess of 1,000 acres, whether they have been inventoried or not;

• prohibition of all road-building, logging, mining, off-road vehicle use, and other destructive activities in these areas;

• full and permanent protection for roadless areas in the Tongass National Forest, the nation’s largest temperate rainforest

Vice President Al Gore also favors full protection of roadless areas in our National Forests. He has said that, "If I am entrusted with the presidency, it will be a national priority to preserve these roadless areas as they are — no ifs, ands, or buts about it. No more destructive development and exploitation. And just so I’m crystal clear about it, no new road building and no timber sales in the roadless areas of our national forests. Period. . . .Our Forest Service must seek long-term protection, not commercial development. And if you elect me president and stick with me, it always will." Gore also supports "total and permanent protection for the roadless areas in the Tongass."

Until July 17, we all have the opportunity to let the Forest Service know what we think of their draft roadless areas regulations. You can e-mail a message through the "Public Comment" section of the official roadless areas Web site where you can also attain more information about the proposed rules. You can fax your comments toll-free to 877-703-2494. Or you can send a good old-fashioned letter, addressed to: USDA Forest Service-CAET, Attn: Roadless, P.O. Box 221090, Salt Lake City, UT 84122. Now is our best chance to protect some of the most beautiful, and most vulnerable, parts of our national forests for future generations. Don’t let this opportunity pass you by.

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