Triggered by her son’s alarming asthma attack, Kimberly Wasserman rallied her neighbourhood to confront Chicago’s coal power plants. Image Credits: Wikimedia Commons.
In 1998, Kimberly Wasserman was a young single mother living in Chicago’s Little Village neighbourhood when her three-month-old son suddenly began gasping for air. A Harvard study later estimated that emissions from the two plants were associated with more than 40 premature deaths, 550 emergency-room visits and 2,800 asthma attacks each year. A study published in the American Journal of Public Health analysed asthma-related emergency-department visits among children aged four and under between 2009 and 2017. It found that asthma-related emergency-department visits fell by about 12% in areas near Chicago coal plants after the plants closed, compared with areas farther away. The closure was announced in February 2012. Illinois Environmental Protection Agency records confirm that Crawford operated from 1924 until 2012, while federal and state agencies monitored the sites during and after their shutdown. By 2012, the two coal plants near Little Village were no longer producing electricity, and later studies found health benefits for children.
She rushed him to hospital, where doctors told her he had suffered an asthma attack. Wasserman lived less than a mile from the Crawford Generating Station, one of two coal-fired power plants operating on Chicago’s southwest side, according to the Goldman Environmental Prize . The frightening episode would change the direction of her life. Instead of treating it as an isolated incident, Wasserman began asking what in the air around her home could be affecting her child. The other was the Fisk Street Generating Station. Their smokestacks stood close to densely populated neighbourhoods, and coal storage and other industrial activity heightened residents’ concerns about air quality. The health concerns were not based only on anecdotal reports. Research examining the Chicago plants later provided evidence of what happened after they shut down. Their closure marked the end of coal-fired electricity generation at two long-running Chicago facilities and opened the way for discussions about the future use and redevelopment of the former industrial sites. What began as one mother’s response to her child’s asthma attack grew into a community-wide effort. Wasserman’s story connected a personal health crisis with industrial pollution, public activism and the future of the neighbourhood’s land.
Crawford and Fisk subsequently closed that year, ahead of previously expected timelines.
