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Chicago Tribune •

Coal ash by Vermilion River raises alarms amid heavy rains, delays in erosion report

For more than 70 years, Mike Camp has never lived more than 2 miles from the Vermilion River.
Growing up on his family’s dairy and crop farms in Vermilion County in east-central Illinois, Camp spent his childhood and adult life swimming, fishing and canoeing along the meandering bends of the river’s Middle Fork.
“We’ve floated the river our whole lives,” Camp said.
He and his wife, Kristin, currently live less than a mile and a half from the river in Collison. They have spent more than a decade...
Chicago Tribune •

As study shows pesticides drifting onto Illinois schools and parks, residents push for better tracking

TREMONT, Ill. — On her 43 acres of woods and reclaimed native prairie in rural Tazewell County, Katie VandenBerg walked the edge of her property, inspecting a line of oaks bordered by miles of corn and soybean fields.
The oak leaves are curled and stunted — damage she believes is tied to pesticide applications on nearby farms. 
Since buying the land three years ago, VandenBerg, whose family has lived in Tazewell County for seven generations, said she has “gone down a rabbit hole” trying to under...
Chicago Tribune •

Studies raise alarms as more warehouses are built near homes and schools in Illinois

ELWOOD — For Stephanie Irvine, the latest proposal for a massive warehouse and logistics center in Will County came as a relief. The new plan, unveiled earlier this month, moves warehouses north of her property in Manhattan.
But for Elwood resident Terri Papish, one of the proposed buildings now sits next to her home.

“You literally have a building right on top of us,” Papish told officials with Kansas City-based NorthPoint Development during a July 8 Jackson Township community meeting.
Chicago Tribune •

Law adds big cats, bears and primates to Illinois ban on traveling animal acts

When Marc Ayers attended the Sangamon County Fair in New Berlin last year, he was on a mission to stop one attraction from returning to the state: the Banana Derby.

Ayers, the Illinois state director for Humane World for Animals, said the welfare group has been tracking the show for years. When he went to see it firsthand, he watched in horror as two capuchin monkeys, Gilligan and Bert, dressed in children’s clothing, were tethered to the backs of dogs as they raced around the show ring, he reca...
Chicago Tribune •

Lake Michigan communities outraged by proposed rollback of federal coal ash rules

TOWN OF PINES, Ind. — In the herb garden beside her home on Colorado Avenue, Cathi Murray digs through the soil and pulls out two glittering black rocks.
They’re not ordinary stones, she said. They’re pieces of coal ash — waste from coal burned at the nearby Michigan City Generating Station, less than 3 miles away on the southern shores of Lake Michigan.

The rocks and dust she finds in her backyard and along the overgrown right of way behind her home — places where her two daughters played growi...
Chicago Tribune •

Guinness record-holder completes run of every Chicago street with flag race celebration

A light 2-mile jog Sunday morning was all that stood between Joabe Barbosa and the finish line of a journey more than 5,000 miles long. His goal: to run every street in Chicago.
“I’m the first person to run every single street, every single dead-end,” Barbosa said. “I don’t know if I’m happy that I’m done, or if I’m sad that I’m done.”
As the skies cleared from morning rains, hundreds of people carrying red, white and blue Chicago flags joined the 25-year-old on his final stretch along the Magni...
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel •

He helped rid the Fox River of toxic chemicals. Then cancer came for him.

From his 240 Volvo front-end loader, Scot Meisenheimer could hardly see the ceiling lights.

Dust hung heavy and low in the warehouse, and a persistent itch crawled up his throat. His denim coveralls scratched at his skin, crusty from the prior days' work.

At the environmental cleanup site where Meisenheimer worked, three large pipes pulled thousands of gallons of sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from the Lower Fox River every hour. The sludge arrived in the wareho...
Chicago Tribune •

At peak time for migratory birds flying through Chicago, birding groups are tracking deadly window collisions

As dawn broke over the Loop, Annette Prince patrolled the streets armed with a lime green net, racing to collect four colorful birds lying dead under glass skyscrapers before seagulls could snatch them up.

It’s like an Easter egg hunt, she said — just not the fun kind.

Every morning during the spring migration season of March to June, Prince, director of the Chicago Bird Collision Monitors, leads hundreds of volunteers who scour downtown Chicago searching for migratory birds that have collided w...
Chicago Tribune •

As data centers seek more power, Constellation launches nuclear plant upgrades to meet rising demand

BRACEVILLE, Ill. — Inside Illinois’ largest nuclear power plant, massive turbines pull 100,000 gallons of water a minute from Braidwood Lake.

On a recent tour of the Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station, a sprawling facility the size of two football fields and anchored by dual reactors, Constellation operators and technicians worked around the clock. Every 18 months, the plant shuts down one of its nuclear reactors and brings in over a thousand specialized contractors to replace fuel and perform...
Chicago Tribune •

‘The year bald eagles decided to make history’: 3 eaglets born in Chicago for first time in a century

Hyde Park birding couple Pat and Steve Pearson have ventured out to Chicago’s Southeast Side once a week for over a year keeping their eyes and camera focused on two bald eagles soaring above South Deering.
The couple watched the birds carry large twigs high into the treetops near Park No. 597, just south of Indian Ridge Marsh, gradually building a massive nest.

They weren’t sure the nest would produce a baby eagle — but they hoped.

The national bird hasn’t been born in Chicago in over a century...
Chicago Tribune •

Illinois farmers hope Supreme Court protects state safeguards in Roundup cancer case

Harold Wilken still remembers the moment nearly 30 years ago when he was sprayed with herbicides after a hose broke on his family farm in Danforth, Illinois.

A decade later, Wilken was diagnosed with cancer. He said he believes years of herbicide exposure contributed to his health problems, including tonsil and lymph node cancer.

“I’m done with this,” Wilken said of herbicides.
Today, Wilken grows 4,000 acres of grain, rye, corn and soybeans in central Illinois with his son — without the use of...
Chicago Tribune •

McHenry County residents wall off homes against rising Fox River

Jason Bell has lived in Nunda Township for 27 years, long enough to have seen the Fox River flood multiple times. And this week, it’s flooding again.
Along Beach Street in the Bayview Beach subdivision, where homes line a narrow channel off the river, docks and boats have been flooded over. Since Wednesday, Bell has taken time off work, spending his days stacking sandbags along the road, trying to hold the water back from him and his neighbors.
“It’s been all hands on deck,” he said.
The thousan...
Chicago Tribune •

Hundreds march in Pilsen, demand answers in unsolved fatal hit-and-run

Hundreds of protesters filled the streets of Pilsen on Sunday afternoon, chanting for justice and answers in a fatal hit-and-run that has remained unsolved for nine months.
Dressed in black and pink, members of the crowd marched from Harrison Park to the Chicago Police Department’s 12th District precinct, calling out the name of 22-year-old Marcela Herrera.
“When detectives ghost us and leave us with no answers, what do we do?” demonstrators shouted. “Stand up, fight back!”
Herrera was killed ar...
Chicago Tribune •

Chicago suburbs in Cook and Lake counties prepare for Des Plaines River flood

Homeowner Maha Amin moved three dozen sandbags from the trunk of her car to her driveway Thursday, bracing for more flooding in Des Plaines.

After 16 years in her home without flooding incidents, she watched as a couple feet of stormwater poured into her basement during Sunday’s storm, destroying her clothes, furniture and TV.

After days of hauling out waterlogged belongings, Amin had to take a week off work to fortify her home with sandbags as flood risks linger into the weekend.

“It is really, really bad,” she said. “I need all those bags and, still, I don’t know if it will be enough or not.”
Chicago Tribune •

Floods overtake Chicago’s Northwest Side after rainiest April day since 2013: ‘People really got slammed’

Water began pouring into David Tahara’s North Park home Tuesday night around midnight, thanks to a late-breaking rainfall and a basement storm drain that smelled of sewage at certain points.

By daylight, the water had receded, but Tahara couldn’t help but smell what he described as the lint-like residue as he and his wife swept the basement floor. Thankfully for Tahara, 82, he said his belongings were spared.

“It’s been a long time since it’s rained that hard, that steady,” Tahara said.
Chicago Tribune •

Hundreds gather in Springfield to push environmental bills on wetlands, plastics and data centers

More than 200 Illinois residents gathered in Springfield on Wednesday for Environmental Lobby Day, joining lawmakers and advocates in the Illinois Capitol rotunda to push for a trio of environmental bills aimed at curbing pollution and protecting natural resources.

“We’re facing some really, really big fights here,” said Cate Caldwell, senior policy manager at the Illinois Environmental Council, which led the rally.

Caldwell addressed a crowd surrounded by young demonstrators holding signs that read “Protect our wetlands,” “Say farewell to foam,” and “Power belongs to the people.”

The proposed legislation includes the Wetlands Protection Act, which would safeguard more than 500,000 acres of unprotected wetlands across Illinois, the Disposable Food Service Container Act, which would phase out harmful single-use plastics, including polystyrene foam, and the POWER Act, which seeks to regulate the water and energy demands of rapidly expanding data centers.
Chicago Tribune •

Chicago space expert weighs in on launch of mission to orbit the moon

After weeks of delays, four astronauts are preparing to launch Wednesday evening on a trip around the moon, the first such spaceflight to be undertaken in more than 50 years.

“It’s really just a historic mission for the future Artemis missions, but also to prepare us for the human journey to Mars and further space exploration,” said Voula Saridakis, National Aeronautics and Space Administration Solar System ambassador. “So it has this wider purpose, if you will.”

As head curator of the Griffin Museum of Science and Industry, Saridakis is also preparing to bring the celebration of this historic space launch to Chicago — offering residents and visitors an opportunity to experience history firsthand.
Chicago Tribune •

Illinois farmers brace for another bruising season as Iran war spikes fertilizer prices

From sunrise to well past sundown, Rodney Bushmeyer has been driving his tractor over freshly turned soil on his western Illinois farm, planting soybean seeds. He has covered nearly 800 acres. But with another 2,200 acres to go, spring planting season is far from over.

Bushmeyer has been cultivating fields in Hull for over 50 years, growing corn, soybeans and wheat on land that’s been farmed by his father and grandfather before him. Like many other Illinois farmers, Bushmeyer had already applied nitrogen fertilizer to the ground last fall to prepare corn crops for planting.

But as the Iran war enters its fifth week and fertilizer prices surge, he’s not sure he will be able to afford additional applications that could boost his crop production.

“We’ll put some fertilizer on after the crop comes up,” Bushmeyer said. “But if the price stays where it is now, we may not. We may need to sacrifice yield for it, but it’s a balancing act.”
Chicago Tribune •

Illinois bill would ease rules on solar plug-ins, expand access to renters and condo owners

As energy bills climb across the state, lawmakers are exploring new ways to expand access to renewables. And one green option is outpacing the others: solar.

Although Illinois is committed to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2050, a large group of state residents, including renters and condo owners, remain shut out of the solar transition.

“Clean energy shouldn’t be a privilege reserved for people who own a single family home with a rooftop,” said state Rep. Laura Faver Dias, a Democrat representing Lake County.
Substack •

The Future of Ice Climbing

It’s a snowy February evening at dusk. Mari Lee and Monni Raphael peer out at Munising Falls—a striking 50-foot-wall of ice at this time of year in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Armed with ice picks, crampons and headlamps, the mother-daughter duo wait for their guides and for the sun to set.They’re gearing up to ice climb the frozen falls at night.The Raphaels were among over a thousand ice climbers at the 2025 Michigan Ice Fest, one of the oldest ice climbing festivals in the world. Hosted in th...
Chicago Tribune •

A push to protect Morgan Shoal — a marine wonder on the South Side — and the Chicago shoreline

A few hundred feet off the shoreline of Kenwood and Hyde Park lives an underwater marvel few Chicagoans ever see: the remnants of a 400 million-year-old coral reef scattered with ancient fossils and the wreckage of the Silver Spray, a steamship that sank after striking the shallow bedrock in 1914.

For free diver Jessica Christopher, the milelong stretch of underwater dolomite known as Morgan Shoal is a rare natural refuge along Chicago’s otherwise engineered lakefront.

When the weather warms, Christopher can glide over fossilized coral and sponge formations while fish weave through the crevices of the shallow bedrock.

A Logan Square resident and former competitive swimmer, Christopher first visited Hyde Park in 2012 to experience the shoal’s unusually crystal clear, sand-free waters. She returns to Morgan Shoal for the community of swimmers that gathers above it — often meeting atop the sunken ship’s boiler, which emerges during periods of low water levels.
Chicago Tribune •

Trump vows to fight invasive carp in Great Lakes, but Illinois federal funds remain frozen

A recent pledge by President Donald Trump to protect the Great Lakes from invasive carp comes as his administration continues to withhold federal funding for a key Illinois project designed to stop the spread into Lake Michigan.

Illinois officials say they welcome the president’s public support but are urging immediate action. State leaders, including Gov. JB Pritzker and Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin, are calling on the federal government to release funding to begin the Brandon Road Interbasin Project, a critical barrier system near Joliet aimed at preventing carp migration.

“Illinois has always done our part, and it is past time President Trump does his,” Pritzker said in a statement Friday.
Chicago Tribune •

Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller wins Illinois’ 2nd District over comeback effort by former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller was declared the winner of the Democratic primary in Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District Tuesday, ending a comeback effort by former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr.

Miller, who ran a health care-focused campaign, weathered criticism from opponents that her campaign was overly backed by a pro-Israel lobbying group. She won 40.4% of the vote reported Wednesday afternoon, according to unofficial results from The Associated Press.

“The voters of the 2nd Congressional Di...
Chicago Tribune •

Illinois EPA rejects coal ash cleanup plan in Joliet, a ‘heartening’ win for environmentalists

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency denied Midwest Generation’s application to clean up more than 3 million tons of toxic coal ash in Joliet earlier this week, saying the company’s proposal was “insufficient.”

The decision marks the first time the agency has rejected a coal ash cleanup permit since Illinois finalized its coal ash regulations in 2021, said Jenny Cassel, a senior attorney with Earthjustice.

“This is a place that has been fighting for so long and dealing with so many burdens,” Cassel said. “It is absolutely heartening to see the agency telling Midwest Generation, ‘Go back to the drawing board.’”
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