PHYSICAL INFRASTRUCTURE: Improving Patterns of Water, Waste, Energy, Transportation and Land Use

Quoting from the consultant's report on the Lake Calumet Airport site, "The magnitude of the total combined infrastructure systems in the Lake Calumet area is truly astounding (water, sewage, power, transit and rail infrastructure, roadway and expressway accessibility),... Furthermore, while this extensive infrastructure has been maintained and periodically expanded during the past 10-20 years, system demand has actually decreased due to the loss of the major steel industries from the southeast side. The loss of extensive employment and population in the area over the past two decades has created an underutilized development zone with an infrastructure network that is in place and currently operating well below capacity."³⁴

Infrastructure in the Calumet region is underutilized, even while residents help subsidize new infrastructure spending in farther out suburbs. The 6-county Chicago region spends about $2.6 billion in public funds annually to build, maintain and support its road infrastructure. Over half of the costs, $1.3 billion is for capital projects. Operating costs -- minor repairs, snow removal, street lighting and signals-- account for $800 million. Police, courts and primarily administration costs account for nearly $500 million. ³⁵ According to the Metropolitan Planning Council, these costs exceed user-based revenues by $600 million or 25 percent. Thus, residents in older communities are subsidizing new development, which also leaves existing infrastructure underutilized.

Transportation Infrastructure

Industry came to the Calumet region because of the crossroads for rail and water transport at the base of Lake Michigan and the Calumet waterways. ³⁶ When Southeast Chicago Development Commission surveyed 50 companies in the Calumet Industrial Corridor, 81% of the thirty-seven companies which responded said that rail service was an important asset. ³⁷ Transportation infrastructure presents a tremendous opportunity for the Calumet region, but it also has deficiencies.

The highways of the Calumet region, a major center for steel production, connect virtually all of the automobile and transportation equipment assembly plants in the U.S.³⁸ The Calumet region's surface transportation network includes direct links to I-80, I-90(the Chicago Skyway) and I-94 (the Calumet Expressway) in east-west corridors and to I-55 and I-65 in north-south routes, with indirect links to interstates I-64, I-70, and I-75. Highway use to move commodities, particularly for manufacturing goods, is expanding rapidly while rail is falling.

However, in a number of locations, the interior of the Calumet region is not easily and safely accessible. Inadequate infrastructure is causing hazards, business problems, and eyesores in key areas of the Calumet Industrial Corridor.³⁹ Examples include flooding at 130th and Doty and 122nd Street between Torrence and Stony Island. These are problems which the Industrial Corridor Strategic Plans are trying to address.

Also, major highway decisions are made independently by the two state departments of transportation in the region. NRPC and CATS share information for long term planning and projects. Still, both agencies were criticized in 1996 in the federal certification review for lack of coordination and for inadequate public involvement in their planning processes. ⁴⁰

Many local rail lines originate in the Calumet region to serve local industry. Other rail lines pass through the region. Freight train lines are predominant, but commuter rail service is also provided. Existing rail lines were inventoried for the Calumet Regional Airport Feasibility Study. Sometimes as many as 60 trains serve this region in a day. Hundreds of trains going to and from Chicago move through Indiana on the most heavily used rail corridor in the country.⁴¹

However, many rail rights of way are being absorbed into developments and lost. CATS and NIPC, in their new transportation plans, are paying more, but still not enough, attention to intermodal opportunities in the Calumet region. The many railroads in the region generally don't work together. Many of their facilities have been allowed to run down. They often won't sell land, and they generally don't organize locally to improve transportation.

An interesting infrastructure issue for the Calumet region is the shift from rail to truck transport of goods. Road traffic by truck is accounting for a growing share of the shipment of goods, particularly manufactured goods. This underutilizes a regional resource, while it also harms the region's air quality and wastes energy. Table V shows the vastly higher share of energy use relative to ton-miles of freight shipped for trucks. Truck traffic has received vastly more infrastructure support than rail in recent years. Intermodal trips -- rail hauling of truck trailers -- is up.

Table V
Energy Used and Ton-Miles Shipped for Various Modes

	Energy Used	Ton-Miles of Freight Shipped
Trucks	83%	29%
Freight Trains	7%	30%
Water	6%	24%
Air Cargo	1%	<1%
Oil Pipelines	3%	16%

Source: Office of Technology Assessment, Saving Energy in U.S. Transportation, 1994.

Public transportation could become more of an asset for the Calumet region in Chicago than for most of the Chicago metropolitan area. It can contribute to air quality and a sense of community. Redevelopment around public transportation nodes could jump start community revitalization. Residents of the region are used to using public transportation when it is available, as shown in Table VI.

Table VI

	Calumet	City	6-county	Suburbs
In past week, took any public transit	41%	45%	26%	13%

Source: MCIC 1996 Survey

Regional transportation infrastructure includes both the Port of Chicago and the Port of Indiana. The Port of Chicago is a collection of private and municipally-owned marine terminals along the Calumet River from its mouth upstream into Lake Calumet. The Port of Chicago is unique among other Great Lakes ports since it offers seaway draft during the shipping season, and year round barge service through the Mississippi River (the U.S. Corps of Engineers reported 10,600 loaded barges in 1991). The Port District owns two terminal areas. Iroquois Landing is at the mouth of the Calumet River. Lake Calumet Harbor is six miles inland on the Calumet River, and contains a Foreign Trade Zone operated by the Illinois International Port District.⁴²

The Port of Indiana/Burns International Harbor is located on the southern shore of Lake Michigan at Portage, Indiana, in between Bethlehem Steel and LTV Steel. It is open year round for inland waterway traffic, but closed in winter for ocean and lake vessels. It is the newest of the major Great lakes ports, and has modern port design and infrastructure. The Port has 530 acres of land and handles any maritime cargo. ⁴³ The Port is in the heart of the U.S. steel producing region, and so it actively seeks the development of steel service processing facilities.

The Calumet River and Lake Calumet Harbor are essential transportation features for many industries in the area. Nevertheless, transportation by seaway is falling, especially for non-commodity tonnage because of the 9 month season, vessel size limits, pilotage costs, dreging, rail competition, and disposal of contaminated dredging materials. In 1987, 1.27 million tons were shipped along Lake Calumet (which includes the entrance channel from the Calumet River to the harbor area at south end of the Lake) and 9.52 million tons were shipped through the Calumet Harbor and River (which includes the Harbor and the River to the Lake Calumet entrance channel). This is a huge decline in tons shipped by water from shipments in 1978.⁴⁴ In addition, the bridges on the Calumet River which are needed to move goods to barge or ship have deteriorated.⁴⁵ Seaway transportation is not likely to be an engine for development. Bringing products through the seaway is a seasonal business, and there is major competition from unit trains.

Progress has been made in improving regional infrastructure in the past 10 years. The City of Chicago Department of Planning has done a lot to improve infrastructure (bending and curving streets, lowering viaducts, etc. The efforts of the Calumet Area Industrial Commission, Southeast Chicago Development Commission, and City of Chicago Department of Planning and Development are bearing fruit.

Land Use

Land use in the Calumet region is primarily manufacturing with surrounding residential areas, and commercial and business land use generally adjacent to the residential areas.

There is a great deal of vacant land in the Calumet region which, if put back into use for industrial, commercial, residential, and recreational development, could boost revitalization of the region. One estimate is that four thousand acres of available industrial land lie vacant just in southeast Chicago.⁴⁶ Both industrial and residential property is relatively well-priced.

However, industrial uses for this land are much more likely to come from firms new to the region than those already there. Many companies located, for example, in the Calumet Industrial Corridor have under-utilized land already. Only 3% of the 39 firms in the corridor who responded to a Southeast Chicago Development Commission survey strongly agreed that the availability of land was not a concern. Most companies in the area have sufficient land to expand on if they want to do so. ⁴⁷

A major barrier to reusing land in the Calumet region is environmental contamination. Chicago's 2,000 brownfield sites -- former industrial or commercial property that may contain environmental contamination -- are concentrated on the southeast and west sides of the City.⁴⁸

The Calumet region has a long history of serving as a disposal site for industrial, commercial and residential wastes.⁴⁹ Prior to the industrial development of the region, much of the land was low and marshy, and unsuitable for residential or industrial development. However, it was suitable for waste disposal and in-fill. Developers filled marshland with dredge spoil, slag and fly ash to enable industrial development.⁵⁰

According to the Illinois Department of Energy and Natural Resources the legacy is as follows:

"The effects of past pollution in the form of contaminated water, sediment, and soils in the region are continuing threats to the environment. Land and water pollution in the Lake Calumet area is a threat to humans who work, recreate, hunt, and fish in the area as well as to native and migratory fish and wildlife." ⁵¹

In fact, a big part of the problem with toxic pollution today is what is already leaching out of disposal sites, being burned in incinerators, and re-entering water systems from contaminated sediments. The consultants who produced the Lake Calumet Airport Feasibility Study are probably right that a comprehensive remediation plan is needed for the area, but will not occur without a plan for reuse of the land.⁵² Alternatively, building markets for urban wastes could be a way to spur comprehensive remedia tion.

According to the Center for Neighborhood Technology, the Chicago portion of the Calumet region contains an estimated 42 toxic sites, none of which yet qualify for Superfund because the link with groundwater contamination has not been documented.⁵³ According to David Moberg, well over 200 acres are known to be severely contaminated in the Lake Calumet region of Chicago. ⁵⁴ There are large numbers of small environmentally-stressed properties, including abandoned brewery grain elevators, oil tank farms, metal plating plants, and chemical and paint producers. ⁵⁵

Northwest Indiana has eight Superfund sites, 206 C.E.R.C.L.I.S. sites where the risk to human health or the environment is not enough to be considered a Superfund site, and eight Indiana state clean up sites. Over $70 million has been spent to clean up waste sites, with another $100 million planned over the next 10 years.⁵⁶

One thing which may be different about the Calumet region is that a few actors own a large share of available land, including the Department of Interior and the steel companies. USX's South Works is the largest brownfield site in Illinois and one of the largest privately owned brownfields in the U.S.

South Works

The United Steel's South Works steel plant used 575 acres of property fronting Lake Michigan on the southeast side of Chicago from 79th to 91st streets. The plant shut down in 1992. USX would like to redevelop the site, and is participating in a voluntary cleanup plan with state environmental officials. There is probably heavy metal contamination in some areas of the site, and some areas have PCBs.

Other large properties include Wisconsin Steel, Standard Railway Equipment, American Bridge, and portions of plants still operated by Inland Steel, USX, LTV, and Bethlehem Steel.⁵⁷ Efforts to redevelop the land in Illinois have not been very successful yet. The land that has been abandoned through the loss of 50 percent of Lake County, Indiana's industrial jobs in the last 15 years is also generally not being used for new industry. Many believe this is because of the cleanup costs of pollution. The costs of site development in urban brownfield locations can often be four times that of a greenfield location.⁵⁸

Some feel that government rules and processes discourage private capital from coming into Southeast Chicago for remediation (because of uncertainty and fear of retroactive liability) and discourages voluntary remediation by current owners (because of the uncertain process and, therefore, cost). It is easier to build new industrial parks than to redevelop these sites, leaving behind health risks, infrastructure investments, and abandoned communities.⁵⁹ Also, companies whose managers and workers don't live in the region don't really have a stake in improving the region's image. Self-interest is not in clean up. They don't see the benefit to themselves.

A big problem is simply that there is not enough money for clean ups. No site in Southeast Chicago has qualified for federal funds earmarked to clean up the nation's dangerous contaminated sites. Because local drinking water comes from Lake Michigan, groundwater is not considered as a migration pathway in scoring the area under the Hazard Ranking System. Also, the ranking system is not suited to grouping sites to assess cumulative risk. Illinois' state Superfund has not had funding sufficient to remediate Southeast Chicago contaminated sites. And it is difficult to identify ownership of some land (no one wants to admit ownership because of potential liability). Finally, there is no region-wide plan for how to recapture the costs of a broad clean up efforts if it could be financed.

The chances for redevelopment of brownfields in the Calumet region is also diminished by continued shifts in population and economic activity to communities farther from Chicago. Sprawl will make certain suburban areas appear to be in a rapid growth economy while many built-up communities loose population and employment.⁶⁰ In Indiana also, new development is expected to continue to reach further away from the old industrial core. Current indicators that this will continue include building permits, water and sewer construction, land acquisition, and planned highway expansion,⁶¹

This is particularly distressing because many brownfield sites only require modest expenditures for clean up. It makes a lot of sense to try to identify these sites and move them into market as quickly as possible. Recent research by Daniel McGrath at University of Illinois suggests that key steps are to assemble larger sites and improve the image and quality of life in surrounding areas. McGrath has found that the variables which have the biggest effect on whether a parcel of urban industrial land is redeveloped are the size of the profit to be gained, the racial composition of the neighborhood, and the size of the property. According to McGrath's analysis, industrial property in areas greater than 75% Black were 20% less likely to be redeveloped than equivalent parcels not in Black areas. Parcels of land greater than 50,000 square feet were 20% more likely to be redeveloped than smaller parcels.⁶²

Recent efforts to clean up brownfield sites in Southeast Chicago and Northwest Indiana provide some reasons for hope. Residents and organizations committed to reclaiming former industrial and waste disposal sites in Southeast Chicago, such as People for Community Recovery, have gotten the attention of federal, state and local officials. The Chicago Legal Clinic has gathered support for clustering Superfund sites, and Regional V is recommending it for the Calumet region. EPA is developing a detailed assessment of 13 contaminated sites in Southeast Chicago, including groundwater tests. In addition, the Illinois State Water Survey is conducting a study which will explain how different kinds of fill material react to conditions in the shallow aquifer, how uniform is the fill material, how can rapid changes in groundwater conditions at a single location be explained, and what is the flow of water between Calumet River and Lake Michigan. Answers will help with the development of clean up strategies.

A variety of community and environmental organizations have been working together through a brownfields working group, including Center for Neighborhood Technology, Calumet Ecological Park Association, People for Community Recovery, Chicago Legal Clinic, Mexican Community Committee, Community Workshop on Economic Development, Committee for Economic Recovery, Grand Cal Task Force, and Calumet Project for Industrial Jobs. The working group identified priorities for community involvement, such as USX South Works, Wisconsin Steel, the southern portion of LTV Steel property, the West Pullman brownfield cluster near 119th and Halsted Street, and a 25-acre property south of the Altgeld Gardens housing complex.⁶³

Local coalitions of community groups and educational institutions are working on adding an old sewage treatment farm near the Altgeld Gardens public housing complex to the Cook County Forest Preserve. Three environmental organizations have initiated a dialog with the developer to facilitate the redevelopment of the South LTV site as an eco-industrial park.⁶⁴ A coalition of community, environmental, and educational institutions is also looking at the clean-up plan for the 570-acre USX South Works site. At the request of the groups, the State of Illinois has created an information repository and intends to provide a public comment period on USX plans for clean-up.

Specific clean ups, such as the Navistar and Dutchboy facilities in West Pullman, are proceeding with all of the parties at the table. At this particular site, the City of Chicago has demolished buildings and is cleaning up surface contamination. U.S. EPA is trying to persuade the past and current owner of one site to enter into the State of Illinois' voluntary cleanup program. ⁶⁵ The Burnside brownfield site (96th and Kimbark) is about to be marketed. The worst sites with open drums in Southeast Chicago have been cleaned up.

In November 1993, the department of Environment, Planning and Development, Law, Buildings, and the Mayor's Office formed an interdepartmental workgroup on brownfields, which today has $50 million for brownfields clean ups. Back then, the working group launched three initiatives to identify and overcome barriers to reuse of abandoned industrial property.

The Brownfields Forum was formed to devise practical reforms to environmental and economic development policies which will improve clean up and redevelopment of contaminated properties. This diverse group of about 100 people, with facilitation by Clean Sites, came up with 63 recommendations for overcoming barriers to brownfields reuse which will be carried out by nine project teams headed by public, private, and nonprofit entities. ⁶⁶ Some of the action projects include improving coordination with various levels of government, implementing a communications strategy, conducting government/business dialogs on brownfields issues, developing better legal tools for the City to support redevelopment, creating a brownfields data base and information network, developing federal, state, and local financial incentives and funding pools, and involving communities in planning for sites.

The Brownfields Pilot Program was devised to clean up and redevelop demonstration sites in distressed neighborhoods using $2 million in general obligation bonds. There were originally 5 pilot remediation projects, chosen because they represented the best combination of environmental factors and redevelopment potential. Later additional sites were added. The sites include the former Burnside foundry at 92nd and Kimbark and the former Dutch Boy site in West Pullman.⁶⁷

The Brownfields Economic Analysis was commissioned to (1) develop economic models that account more accurately for environmental and social costs and benefits of brownfield versus greenfield development decisions and (2) develop decision-making tools to help city government assess the redevelopment potential of various sites.⁶⁸

One lessons learned from the Brownfields Pilot Program was that the fear of environmental costs and liabilities is sometimes out of proportion with the reality. Of Chicago's five original brownfield sites, one was found to be clean, and another had only minor contamination. The typical brownfield is much smaller and less hazardous than a federal Superfund site. The city's pilot program prepared five properties for reuse for approximately $850,000. The Pilot Program helped to show that brownfields might more accurately be viewed as "complex real estate transactions than as prohibitively costly environmental quagmires."

A related lesson is that lenders and investors who lack expertise in evaluating brownfield risks often avoid them altogether. Other barriers to reuse include tax and transportation policies that prejudice the market against brownfield redevelopment, legal obstacles to the city's efforts to gain control of abandoned sites, and inadequate public- and private-sector financing. ⁶⁹

Most people believe that the Chicago Brownfields Forum represents a great opportunity for the Calumet region. Still, some are concerned that the Forum could be used as a way to get around environmental performance focusing on value added real estate development rather than clean up, environmental justice, and restoration. There are also concerns that, while clean up efforts are moving forward, they are focused on single sites, basically ignoring transport and the need for a comprehensive approach in the Calumet region.

Northwest Indiana is also beginning to make progress on brownfields redevelopment. The Northwest Indiana Brownfield Redevelopment Project, Inc. grew out of the strategic planning required for the combined Empowerment Zone application developed by East Chicago, Gary, and Hammond, Indiana three years ago. The project received a $200,000 EPA Brownfield Pilot Grant from the Common Sense Initiative Iron and Steel Sector project of U.S. EPA, and a matching $200,000 from the Indiana Department of Environmental Management. Residents are being invited into the redevelopment process through citizen workgroups for each pilot site. East Chicago selected an undeveloped portion of the American Steel property adjacent to the Ship Canal and Hammond chose a property called West Point near the Indiana Toll Road. Gary has not yet chosen.⁷⁰ The $400,000 will be used for site evaluation, public outreach, and administrative costs. ⁷¹ The hoped-for outcome will include a model process to transform the remaining 300 brownfield sites across the Calumet Region. ⁷²

Indiana and Illinois both have voluntary site clean up programs. Indiana has 3 sites in its program and 2 which have been completed and are waiting for a covenant from the governor that he will not sue in the future and a certificate of completion issued by IDEM releasing the parties from future legal liability for cleanup if they don't create new contamination.

Illinois has the EPA Pre-Notice Site Cleanup Program, which under a new brownfields bill, enables owners of property to enter the program, pay for Illinois EPA oversight of cleanup, choose among clean-up options which depend on future use and health risks, clean up, submit a completion report to the State, get Illinois EPA approval and a "No Further Remediation Letter" releasing the owner from further liability. ⁷³

Energy Efficiency

The industrial sector -- supplied by coal, petroleum, natural gas, and electricity -- used somewhat more that a quarter of the South Lake Michigan region's total energy consumption, with a higher percentage in Indiana than Illinois because of the steel industry. The Southern Lake Michigan Metropolitan Area has many energy intensive industries such as steel, automobiles, and petrochemicals. The Amoco refinery, built in 1889, is still the third largest refinery in the world, and the major industry in Whiting, Indiana. Other refineries -- Shell, Sinclair and Cities Service -- are in East Chicago, Indiana.⁷⁴ The energy intensity of selected manufacturing industries is in Table VII below:

Table VII
Ratio of Offsite-Produced Energy Consumption Per Unit of Output Measured as 1000 Btu per 1982 dollar of value of Shipments and Receipts

SIC Code	Sector	1985	1988
20	Food	2.72	2.98
26	Paper	13.96	12.86
28	Chemicals	12.40	11.34
29	Petrol and Gas Prod.	4.87	5.67
33	Primary Metals	14.64	14.37
35	Industrial Machinery	0.95	0.77
36	Elec. & Other Elec.	1.25	1.18
	All Manuf.	4.43	4.23

Source: Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Review, 1992.

In Northwest Indiana, chemicals and primary metals alone account for 74 percent of industrial electric use and 45 percent of total electric use.⁷⁵ In Northern Illinois, the biggest industrial electricity users are primary metals industries, chemical & allied products, food and kindred products, petroleum refining, and machinery. Together, these industries account for 11% of electricity use in northern Illinois in 1994.⁷⁶

ComEd serves all of northern Illinois. Of the 85 million megawatthours of electricity it produced in 1994, almost 64 million megawatthours were from nuclear and almost 23 million were from coal. ⁷⁷ NIPSCO has four coal-fired generating stations supplying 90.5 percent of its electricity.

The largest quantities of chemicals released by burning fossil fuels are sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx), and carbon dioxide (CO2). SO2 reacts with the environment to form acid rain. NOx reacts with volatile organic compounds and sunlight to form smog. CO2 is the largest greenhouse gas contributor to global warming.

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel. In 1991 in Northwest Indiana, NIPSCO burned 6.4 million tons of coal releasing an estimated 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide into the air.

Efforts to improve industrial energy efficiency would benefit both the environment and the economy of the bi-state Calumet region. One opportunity is through the recycling and reconditioning of finished goods. About three quarters of all industrial energy consumption is for extraction or production of basic materials such as steel. Only one quarter is used in the transformation of materials into finished goods.⁷⁸

This presents a strong argument for reconditioning finished goods to extend their lives as a way to reduce energy consumption. Some estimates are that ninety percent less energy is needed for remanufacturing aluminum or plastics, 50 percent for steel or paper, and upwards of 30 percent for glass.⁷⁹ Energy savings are usually greatest for reuse, followed by recycling to the same product, recycling to a lower-valued product, combustion for energy recovery, incineration without energy recovery, and, last, landfill. Product life extension would also be a net job producer since it uses about three times as much labor as the production of virgin materials. ⁸⁰

Even though cars are using less fuel for every mile of travel-- fuel efficiency has grown from 17.14 miles per gallon in 1983 to 21.68 miles per gallon in 1991 -- people are traveling more miles due to sprawl, and increasing vehicle-related air pollution. Sprawling land use patterns in Northwest Indiana, for example, are a sign that energy use -- and dissipation -- will grow.⁸¹

The Southern Lake Michigan metropolitan region is designated a severe ozone nonattainment area. Exposures to ozone causes permanent lung damage and difficulty in breathing. As mentioned above, NOx reacts with volatile organic compounds and sunlight to form smog. Most NOx is the product of burning fossil fuels in electric utilities, industrial furnaces, and automobiles. Sources of VOCs include auto emissions, vapors released during auto refueling, paints, thinners, and cleaning solvents.⁸² In Northwest Indiana, automobiles and trucks cause about 17 percent of the smog and ozone problem and industry contributes most of the rest.⁸³

Energy efficiency is also important because of its impact on economic opportunity. From 1988 through 1992, energy prices increased faster than the average income of poor families.⁸⁴ Energy saving initiatives can reduce these costs.

Back to The Calumet Region - Table of Contents