Getting Fisked

I don't know what it is about the Fisk Generating Station at 1111 W. Cermak, but it's largess just does it for me. I see it everyday out the window of my office. I've taken a few pictures of the power plant, and while it is dramatic, it's not as dramatic as the State Line Generating Plant, which was literally built on the Indiana side of the Indiana-Illinois border. All this time I thought it was on the Chicago side, since all the power produced there is sold to ComEd.

The funny thing, to me at least, is that there is a movement in Pilsen and Little Village to clean up Fisk, and its sister plant Crawford. Built over a hundred years ago, they are exempt from the Clean Air Act, and combined they pump 230 lbs of mercury, 17,765 tons of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and 260,000 lbs of soot into the air of those surrounding communities. Down in the far South, however, State Line Generating is plugging away without complaint. That community is no stranger to fighting back against faceless corporations, so maybe State Line is in compliance.

There's something about a power plant looming over a low neighborhood, contrasted against church steeples on the skyline. From forty stories up in the Loop, there is a stoic beauty in the plant and the wisps of smoke drifting off the smokestack. I don't know what will happen with the power plants on the South West side; going back through my pictures of Fisk, though, it's clear I have a problem. I've taken way more pictures of the plant that I've posted on my Flickr page.