Thank you community organizers and Rahm: Victory to close polluting coal plant in Chicago
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s agreement yesterday with the Midwest Generation energy company to close the Fisk coal-fired power plant in Pilsen and Crawford coal plant in Little Village is a milestone for residents in the moderate-income, predominantly Latino neighborhoods.
“This is a huge victory for our community and for Chicago Latino communities,” says Maria Torres, an organizer at Pilsen Alliance.
Community advocates have spent years documenting premature deaths and asthma attacks that come from people living by plants so old that, in the 1970’s, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency actually declined to regulate the plants, figuring they would soon shut down.
“We have been working for ten years on this,” says Jerry Mead-Lucero, an organizer at the Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization. “To have a victory on this after ten years of fighting is just unbelievable.”
http://www.progressillinois.com/posts/content/2012/02/29/pilsen-little-village-residents-cheer-coal-plant-shut-down
