Blue Island Mayor Donald Peloquin said city officials are nearing an annexation agreement with the owners of the abandoned Premcor oil refinery on the city’s southwest side.
Premcor officials, he said, are negotiating an annexation agreement with nearby Alsip that would give that village control of the property west of Kedzie Avenue near 131st Street.
Blue Island would annex portions of the 170-acre plant east of Kedzie Avenue.
“If it’s agreeable to Alsip, we’ll probably adopt the same agreement,” Peloquin said. “We’d like to have some control over that property.”
He said the company also has begun preliminary work on an environmental cleanup at the site, expected to last until at least 2006. The refinery closed after it was cited for releasing more than 27.7 tons of catalyst dust in June 2000. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency ordered the cleanup and will monitor it.
Peloquin said plans still include redeveloping the land into a clean-coal burning electricity plant.