Organizations

• The Chicago Academy of Sciences and its Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum
• Civic Lab
• Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke
• Uncommon Commons
• Southeast Environmental Taskforce

Issues

Southeast Chicago, as an old steel mill industrial area, has a history of industrial pollution and brownfields. There has been a lot of press about a new and recent environmental issue - massive piles of 'petcoke' or petroleum coke waste left over after refining from Canadian tar sands that are being stored in open-air piles in Southeast Chicago. Oil that is refined across the state border in Whiting, Indiana and then is being sent to southeast Chicago for storage to evade some environmental regulations. Concerns from petcoke dust bowing over the neighborhood and causing health issues have been raised many times by residents, activists and media outlets such as NPR as the businesses involved are owned by the Koch brothers and the increasing debate on environmental effects of tar sands practices.

Projects

The Southeast Environmental Task Force is hosting a workshop in March to construct an aerial map of petroleum waste piles using balloon mapping techniques. The group is expected to visit several sites around Southeastern Chicago, and construct maps of multiple piles. Using methods described here, the group hopes to use these balloon maps to also estimate the volume of the piles in the area.

Map