EDITORIALS
KCBX Terminals Co. storages sites for coal and petroleum coke, or "petcoke" along the Calumet River in Chicago's 10th Ward where residents filed a class action lawsuit against the company storing the uncovered hazardous material. | Sun-Times files
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Last summer, piles of petcoke along the Calumet River on Chicago's Southeast Side suddenly grew into mountains several stories high, alarming area residents.
Now, a flurry of proposed solutions seems likely to grow into a mountain as well. That could be a problem if the result is a hurried set of rules that don't work well.
The public outcry and the political attention have created a perfect opportunity - right now - to reach a On Sales with the petcoke industry that is best for the Southeast Side. Almost certainly that will require enclosing the petcoke - an outdoor solution looks insufficient. Industry representatives, meeting with the Sun-Times editorial board last week, signaled a willingness to do so if officials will work with them on the specific steps and timing. They really don't want to leave town.
On Wednesday, an ordinance was introduced in the City Council on petcoke, a byproduct of petroleum refining that looks like coal. The city's Health Department is planning to announce its own new rules governing petcoke any day now. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is devising a set of regulations as well. On Tuesday, the Illinois attorney general sued KCBX Terminals Co. for allegedly allowing water runoff to carry petcoke into the Calumet River, the second lawsuit the attorney general has filed. Last month, a bill to regulate petcoke was introduced in the Illinois House. A class action lawsuit was filed last year. And three local Democratic members of Congress, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Quigley and Robin Kelly, have signed a letter asking for a federal investigation into how petcoke - also known as petroleum coke - is handled and what its health effects are.
Those are a lot of answers for an issue that industry doesn't see as necessarily a big problem.
Piles of bulk materials, including petcoke, that generate dust are an environmental issue that needs to be carefully regulated. Nobody wants to breathe the stuff on windy days. And as industry taps into heavy grades of petroleum, such as tar sands oil, there's going to be more petcoke to deal with.
The sites along the Calumet River act largely as transfer stations. Much of the petcoke comes in by rail from a refinery in Indiana and is transferred to barges for a global market that burns petcoke as fuel. The sites also are used to transfer coal. The Southeast Side, with its strong transportation networks, is an ideal location for this business, and the operators of the petcoke sites clearly want to stay there.
Some nearby residents, though, would rather see the sites be pushed out of the Southeast Side, a longtime home of heavy industry that struggles with a legacy of environmental issues. In August, heavy winds blew black, powdery dust from the sites, coating nearby homes and yards. But KCBX, which owns two sites, says $10 million worth of dust suppression measures installed since then, including water cannons to damp down the dust and a network of air monitoring devices, has solved that problem.
KCBX also is expressing a willingness to consider enclosing the piles of coal and petcoke on its sites, which might prove to be the ultimate solution. But the company says it would need cooperation from the city to go that route. Some of the proposals put forward so far, it says, would simply force it to shut down its facilities. KCBX also acknowledges it's unacceptable for petcoke dust to leave the company's sites, but points out it isn't more of a health risk than dust from any other type of bulk material.
If this issue winds up as a legal battle, it could drag on for years in the courts with an uncertain outcome. A better option would be to thoroughly air the various proposed regulations and come up with measures that both satisfy the industry while protecting the health of Southeast Side residents.
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