Conscious Choice: Burning Issue

June 2006

Burning Issue

Ford Heights: A town where industry can take your breath away. Of course, the industry in this south suburban community is a tire incinerator gearing up to burn 700 tires per hour near an after-school program

By Susan DeGrane & Marla Donato

Bobbie Bell is a young mother living in Ford Heights, a Cook County suburb about 25 miles south of Chicago. Bell’s four children attend an after-school program offered by F.U.T.U.R.E. Foundation Youth Services, Inc., 1628 Drexel Ave. The program has an enrollment of 80, with about half of those pupils attending the center almost daily. The regulars include Bell’s children, who make their way to the former rolling skating rink where they are given healthy snacks, homework help and the chance to play with other children under adult supervision.

“This program is very important to me because I can’t do it all by myself,” said Bell, who wants her children to do well in school and stay out of local gangs.

While F.U.T.U.R.E. Foundation attempts to address problems wrought by poverty, some residents say they are concerned about a more basic human need — breathing clean air.

Around the corner, less than a block away from the F.U.T.U.R.E. Foundation, Geneva Energy is gearing up to burn up to 700 tires per hour to produce steam to generate electricity, according to Illinois Environmental Protection Agency documents. The plant is expected to generate 20 megawatts of continuous energy, enough to power 20,000 homes. The electricity would be fed into the grid for wholesale distribution.

The tire incinerator at 1705 Cottage Grove Ave., has been shut down since 2004, when the previous owner, New Heights Recovery & Power, went into bankruptcy after a steam turbine-generator malfunctioned, according to the Illinois EPA. The plant is expected to go online this summer, and recently has been fired up for test runs, but only natural gas has been used for the tests, according to Emmit George, a Geneva Energy executive and corporation counsel. The goal is to have the plant running by June, George said.

The impending burning of tires at the plant has upset some residents, many from neighboring communities, including a non-profit community group called South Suburban Citizens Opposed to Polluting Our Environment (SS-COPE). Through the Chicago Legal Clinic, the group has filed two formal grievances: one with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, mailed this spring; and an earlier one mailed to the Illinois EPA in late 2005. Both allege that by allowing the plant to operate the IEPA is in violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. The complaint mailed to IEPA also alleges that allowing the plant to operate would be a violation of the state EPA’s own Environmental Justice policy.

“Several aspects of this permit will create a significant, adverse impact on the disproportionately minority residents who live near the facility,” SS-COPE’s attorney Keith I. Harley told the IEPA in a letter dated Dec. 19, 2005. The IEPA ignored the group’s earlier request for environmental-justice analysis as well as residents’ concerns about asthma and other issues that surfaced during an IEPA draft-permit hearing on Sept. 7, 2005, Harley wrote.

In a March 2006 letter, the IEPA responded that “The Illinois EPA is aware that the community near the plant is predominately minority and largely low income…The permit has been drafted to be protective of public health and environment,” pointing out mandated improvements to the facility. “Furthermore, air quality impact modeling and analysis do not indicate any significant air quality impacts from plant emissions.”

The village’s population is nearly 96 percent African American, and 45 percent of its families fall below the poverty line, according to 2000 Census figures.

The financially-strapped community has worked hard for decades to attract industry, including changing its name from East Chicago Heights in the late 1980s in an attempt to attract a Ford Motor Company plant within its borders. The attempt was unsuccessful and the newly christened Ford Heights took on yet another identity: It gained the dubious distinction of being identified as “the nation’s poorest suburb” in a Roosevelt University study based on 1985 per capita income information.

Things haven’t improved much since. The per capita income was $8,938 in 1999 dollars, according to 2000 Census data that put the total population at 3,456. In the same year, unemployment was near 40 percent and the community was noted for having the nation’s highest percentage of single-mother households, 34 percent, according to the Chicago Historical Society’s Encyclopedia of Chicago.

“When we bought the (tire) plant, it was already in Ford Heights,” wrote Ben Rose, Geneva Energy president, in an email interview. “Since we had no involvement in the facility until recently, I can offer no insights about the decision to site the plant in the village.” He added that if Geneva Energy had not bought the plant, “the bankruptcy court would have permitted the owners to abandon the property, creating a serious public safety hazard.”

Geneva Energy, according to the state EPA, is not responsible for the water bills that were left unpaid by the previous owners and were discharged in bankruptcy court. The plant is expected to use about 60,000 gallons of water daily, according to Geneva Energy estimates released by the IEPA.

Health Concerns

Geneva Energy is the third owner of the plant since the mid-1990s, when it was first permitted to burn waste tires as fuel. Since that time, some residents have grown concerned about possible health problems resulting from the plant’s operation.

They include Bell, whose daughter has suffered from severe bouts of bronchitis.

“And they (village officials) didn’t let us know anything about” the plant reopening, Bell said. “Nobody told us.”

The Illinois EPA said the public comment period began on July 24, 2005 with the publication of the notice in a local Chicago Heights paper, and then subsequent notices were published in the south suburban Daily Southtown newspaper.

Residents complained that the Illinois EPA’s notice of a hearing on the matter was not posted in the Village Hall until just hours before the evening public hearing, on Sept. 7, 2005, Harley said in his complaint, adding that some south suburban residents still managed to attend, to voice their concerns. For instance, Katherine Kemp asked about evacuation procedures for the nearby middle school in case of a fire. And Leon Norwood, a Park Forest resident, cited a litany of complaints about the incinerator’s previous operation. These included foul odors, and a slick, oily residue on roads that caused traffic accidents.

Norwood said some Ford Heights residents complained that tomato plants, flowers and backyard gardens that once flourished would no longer grow. Soot from emissions, he said, made problems for Ford Heights residents, both big and small.

“If they wash their car, 30 minutes later, it’s dirty again,” Norwood said. “In summer time, you can’t sleep with your windows open. You can’t breathe that stuff.”

Norwood insisted that asthma-related visits to the emergency room at St. James Hospital and Health Centers in Chicago Heights have been more frequent. But Karen Hellman, spokesman for the hospital, said St. James does not track asthma cases by location and noted nothing unusual to coincide with operation of the plant.

County Department of Public Health statistics for the South District — which covers 34 south suburban communities, including Ford Heights — noted the highest number of bronchitis and asthma related cases — 4,966 — of any Cook County jurisdiction outside of Chicago, from 2001 to 2003. And for children 18 and under, the number of asthma cases per 100,000 was 155.6, while the overall county rate was 123.2. The more densely populated Chicago rate was 165.6 per 100,000.

It’s difficult to isolate one source of pollution when analyzing a region’s overall air quality. And Rose wrote in his email response that he feels comfortable having his children spend time near the Ford Heights plant. “My children, including one with asthma, have already been to the plant many times,” Rose said. “I do not worry about their health being affected as a result.”

Critics point out that it is not yet fully operational, and according to plant executives, has been burning natural gas during its recent test runs.

According to the construction permit for “changes to the tire combustion facility” issued in October 2005, the Illinois EPA said the permit was “issued based on the (facility) not being a major source of emissions of hazardous air pollutant(s)” with “specific limitations on emissions of hydrogen chloride, formaldehyde, and arsenic.” Under the terms of the permit, the plant is allowed to emit contaminants at a rate of approximately 114 pounds per hour, for a possible total of 466 tons of contaminated emissions a year. Besides the three listed above, the emitted contaminants listed in the permit also include sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide and particulate matter.

But what’s equally as troubling as the contaminants that are to be monitored are those that are not, Harley said. In a letter to the Illinois EPA, he pointed out that an EPA permit granted in 1999 to a similar facility, Exeter Energy in Sterling, Conn., also included limits on emissions that apparently will not be monitored in Ford Heights. These include dioxins/furans, lead, mercury, and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s).

In its October 2005 response summary to public questions and comments, the Illinois EPA responded by saying that “while the limits for additional pollutants in the permit for Exeter Energy facility superficially provides (sic) a permit that is more protective, the actual benefits of these limits is unclear… The effectiveness of these devices can be addressed with limitations on select pollutants. For example, zinc, while not a hazardous air pollutant, is an appropriate pollutant to address control for metals from the boiler.”

Particulate policy

The U.S. EPA considers particulate matter responsible for a myriad of serious respiratory problems.

While limits for particulate-matter emissions are laid out in Geneva Energy’s Illinois EPA permit, that limit could be reduced for all plants that emit particulate matter under a proposed revision of the U.S. EPA’s National Ambient Air Quality Standards for Particle Pollution.

Illinois already has 12 “nonattainment” areas that do not meet National Ambient Air Quality Standards. The areas are mostly designated by county boundaries: Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, Will, McHenry, Kendall, Madison, Monroe, St. Clair, and two areas within Grundy County.

The final decision for revising national particulate standards is expected in September, but things don’t look very promising for groups concerned about particulate pollution, according to Brian Urbaszewski, director of environmental health programs for the American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago.

“The EPA has always gone by the recommendations of the Clean Air Scientific Advisory Committee (comprised of doctors and scientists from across the nation). They always adopt their suggestions,” Urbaszewski said, “and this time they’re ignoring them.”

Plant Operations

“Geneva is fully committed to running the plant in a safe, efficient and environmentally friendly manner,” Rose said. “A properly run plant will not negatively affect the health of area residents.”

Geneva Energy has made several improvements, such as rebuilding the steam turbine, upgrading control systems and adding a new ash-handling system that is expected to “reduce or eliminate fugitive dust,” Rose wrote in his email. Additional plans call for adding a “baghouse leak detection system” to monitor particulate emissions — a measure not required by current regulations, he added. He said the company has hired The Wood Group, an international company with its American headquarters in Texas, to operate the Ford Heights facility.

Emergency Response

Geneva Energy received its permit from the Illinois EPA in October 2005, after providing assurance of plant upgrades and improvements. But that permit does not require an emergency evacuation plan for the community — even though the plant operates in close proximity to the Head Start Program, the F.U.T.U.R.E. Foundation’s after-school program, a health clinic and Cottage Grove Middle School.

The permit does, however, require the plant operator to put in place its own “contingency plan” and emergency fire-safety plan. “The plant site is ringed by an internal fire water system with 17 high-pressure hydrants,” Rose wrote, adding that employees have been trained in emergency response.

Tire disposal

“Tire incineration has not been identified as an important source of toxic pollutants,” according to Jill Watson, Illinois EPA manager of communications, who pointed out that since the early 1990s, Illinois has been a tire-derived fuel state, meaning that tires can be burned to generate electricity.

An EPA website lists “several advantages to using tires as fuel,” otherwise known as “tire-derived fuel.” These advantages include producing “the same amount of energy as oil and 25 percent more energy than coal.”

The sheer volume of scrap tires poses a significant problem for the state, with Illinois alone generating 13 million used tires per year and another one million recovered from illegal dumpsites around the state, Watson said. Tires also can become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and West Nile virus, and left unmonitored, they can burn uncontrollably, she said.

Under the terms of the IEPA permit at the Ford Heights plant whole tires “shall only be stored in transport trailers, ‘cages’ or inside buildings.” However, shredded tires are another matter and up to 6,250 tons of shredded tires are allowed to be stored outside on a concrete pad, measuring approximately 100 by 200 feet.

This prompted the citizen group SS-COPE to send yet another letter through their attorney in April to the IEPA alleging the shredded tire pile presents “significant risk of fire and consequent environmental contamination of the surrounding residential area.” The letter requested that the IEPA require Geneva Energy to construct a berm, hire a full-time security attendant and increase the surrounding fence height to 10 feet.

“While alternatives other than combustion exist for used tires, such alternatives — which include recycling waste tires into rubber matting, ground cover for playgrounds, and use as an additive in asphalt paving — are simply not enough to deal with the sheer volume of used tires that accumulate in Illinois,” Watson said. “This is why the General Assembly has specifically authorized the use of discarded tires as fuel in appropriately designed boilers.”

Recycling and higher end uses for tires must be further developed if incineration is to be avoided, Watson said.

In 2003, more than 290 million scrap tires were generated in the U.S. Nearly 100 million of them were recycled into new products and 130 million were turned into “tire-derived fuel,” according to the EPA.

Economic incentive

But whether or not the plant helps solves a statewide tire problem, on the local level, it represents an economic opportunity to some residents in the impoverished area.

Rose noted that the plant would provide sorely needed jobs. Currently the plant has seven employees, one from Ford Heights, but eventually the workforce is expected to be expanded to up to 35 employees, according to company executive George.

“We will go through a process to re-employ and try to call back those who were here before,” he said.

In decades past, some community officials actively campaigned to have the tire plant begin operations. More recently, according to Emir Hardy, executive director of the F.U.T.U.R.E. Foundation, the start-up was embraced by local officials as well. Veria Ely, the village’s director of community development, declined to comment for this article.

“If this operation were that safe, you can be sure they would have located it in another community,” Hardy said. But, “We don’t have that many opportunities for business.”

Comments and complaints to the EPA can be made on the EPA’s toll-free Environmental Helpline, 1-888-372-1996, or to the Ill. EPA’s Regional Office, 847-294-4000; online at epa.state.il.us/pollution-complaint/index.html; or by writing Illinois EPA — Bureau of Air Pollution Control, 9511 W. Harrison, Des Plaines, IL 60016.

The American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago will address air quality issues and particulate matter generated by power plants and idling diesel engines this summer. For more information, visit the association’s website, lungchicago.org, or the U.S. EPA website, epa.gov/ttn/naaqs/

Susan DeGrane and Marla Donato are assistant editor and editor, respectively, at Conscious Choice. Jack Bess also contributed to this article.

Recommend this page to a friend

Top Ten pages recommended to friends: