Chicago: "Power Station’s Closing Could Create Problems"

The closing of an 83-year-old coal-fired power plant near Chicago, one of the area's top polluters, will have economic consequences.

"For years, environmental and health organizations have called for the closing of the 83-year-old coal-fired State Line Power Station, one of the Chicago area’s top polluters.

Now the plant, which is in Hammond, just across the Indiana border on Lake Michigan and adjacent to Calumet Park, is burning through its last stores of coal. It will stop generating electricity by March 31. Federal air quality regulations that take effect in coming years and — more immediately — competition from inexpensive natural gas make it uneconomical to run the plant, according to Dominion Resources, the Richmond, Va., company that bought it in 2002.

While many environmentalists are cheering the closing, it raises new environmental and land-use challenges. It will also be an economic blow to Hammond, and to about 100 employees, most of them members of the United Steelworkers union and many who have worked there for decades."

Kari Lydersen reports for the Chicago News Cooperative February 13, 2012.