Yeah go after peaker plants that supply emergency electricity when other plants are overwhelmed because climate change. While pushing everyone to drive electric cars.
They're gonna be pedaling bicycles to power their lights like in Soylent Green.
"Justice" is only a virtuous costume placed onto corruption schemes operated by politicians. The pols promise a park or green public use redevelopment once the site is condemned and dozed over, but what actually happens is the sale of the undervalued property to another company for commercial use.
Pilsen Environmental Rights and Reform Organization (PERRO), the grassroots group that helped lead the fight to close the coal plants ... are frustrated by a lack of transparency and community input regarding the future of the site.
In 2019, The City Council agreed to grant Hilco a $19.7 million property tax break over the next 12 years after it announced plans to tear down the red-brick power plant, built in 1924 and shuttered in 2012, and replace it with a warehouse.
https://news.wttw.com/2020/06/19/what-s-left-crawford-power-plant-be-demolished-july-6-company-says
In Chicago the political buzzards have been circling these small plants for years. The zoning board declares the sites unfit for electricity production then, like magic, there now exists a large chunk of urban real estate available for development by another company which had been starved for property in the city. All happens with the flick of a pen (and probably a large check sent somewhere clandestine).
I'm sure it's only a coincidence that the last Chicago Zoning Committee chairman was forced to wear an FBI wire while investigating other Aldermen for fraud and corruption. I'm sure the Zoning Commissioner was only doing his civic duty to help the FBI catch bad guys, and not assisting only because he got caught doing something else and had to cooperate to avoid prosecution. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-solis-burke-fop-endorsement-20190123-story.html
This whole zoning thing is a deep, dark, dirty hole. But so long as they call it "justice" they'll get voter support for it (and the self-enrichment that goes with it), and that's really all that matters.
More info on Fisk and Crawford power plants: https://energynews.us/2019/01/16/intrigue-continues-around-plans-for-shuttered-chicago-coal-plant-site/
"Justice" is only a virtuous costume placed onto corruption schemes operated by politicians.
Very, very well said, Letters.
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