Lake Michigan

Power Station's Closing Could Create Problems

Mon, 02/13/2012
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...

Making the Chicago River Fit to Paddle, Never Mind the Cat in a Coffin

Wed, 01/11/2012
A dead dog, a cat in a coffin and a body floating in a submerged car. Those were just a few of the items police fished out of the Chicago River on a single day last week. Little surprise, then, that Chicagoans generally view the waterway much as New Yorkers see the East River: a toxic receptacle for human and industrial waste, unfit for the...

Study Stirs Debate on Future of Chicago Waterways

Mon, 01/02/2012
A new Army Corps of Engineers study of Chicago-area waterways has stirred the debate over whether to sever the connection between Lake Michigan and inland waterways that were created by the construction of canals a century ago. The study, released on Dec. 7, is part of the Corps’s nearly decade-long process aimed at preventing invasive species,...

A Bid to Keep Asian Carp in the Public Eye

Fri, 11/11/2011
There was a time, not long ago, when environmentalists could arouse fears of invasive Asian carp by highlighting videos of four-foot-long fish leaping out of downstate rivers or the discovery of carp DNA samples a stone’s throw from Lake Michigan. But a recent event in Chicago suggested that sparking public panic about Asian carp these days...

Urban Decay Lures Hollywood to Gary

Wed, 08/17/2011
When Gary, Indiana was booming, the city’s factories belched a constant cycle of smoke and steel. When the industrial hub thirty miles south of Chicago went bust, those buildings decayed with equal fervor. The steel industry has not returned, but the crumbling remains of Gary’s last viable economy are offering some small hope of a new one. Last...

Humans Not to Blame for Beach Bacteria

Wed, 06/29/2011
Some of Chicago’s most popular beaches had bacteria levels above amounts considered safe on more than one out of every five days last summer, according to a national report on beach water quality released Wednesday by the Natural Resources Defense Council. The report found that Rainbow Beach, Montrose Beach, 31st Street Beach, South Shore Beach,...