Attempts by some to drag us backward to those good old days are being met by those who see a sunny future: A tomorrow energized with solar power.
Such is what is happening in Lake County, especially Waukegan, and across Illinois. On the city’s northwest side, a once-useless Superfund site of more than 40 acres has been turned into a powerful solar farm providing future breaks on energy bills for city residents.
The time is right for such an enterprise. A recent Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds Americans are increasingly concerned about rising electricity costs.
The AP survey found electricity bills are a “major” source of stress for 36% of U.S. adults at a time when the expected build-out of data centers increasingly taxes the nation’s power grid. Such a data hub, with upwards of 20 buildings offering more than 10 million square feet of space on 160 acres, is planned for Grayslake, making it one of the biggest construction projects in Lake County in some time.
There is concern that data centers, supporting cloud and artificial intelligence applications, sap great amounts of electric power. Especially since Illinois has a goal of 100% clean electricity produced by 2045.
Of course, the cost of electric power isn’t the only thing Americans are worked up about, according to the AP poll. Soaring prices for groceries, housing and health care also play into their angst, despite President Donald Trump’s pledges to lower inflation and rule over an economic boom, although the cost of gasoline seems to be dropping.
For an estimated 1,000 Waukeganites, electric price savings from the 20,000 solar panels installed at the farm at the old Yeoman Creek landfill, bounded by Sunset, Lewis, Western and Glen Flora avenues, will be forthcoming. Those who sign up and qualify monetarily for the solar program could see a drop in their electric bills of nearly $400 a year, backers of the project estimated in an Oct. 1 front-page News-Sun story by Steve Sadin.
The landfill, one of several that once operated within the city limits, was open from 1958 to 1969, accepting garbage from Waukegan residents, commercial and industrial sources. Trash deposited in the landfill included oil, chemicals, heavy metals, ammonia and other toxic substances.
The landfill first came to the attention of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in the late 1970s with reports of pollution leaching into Yeoman Creek near the dump’s western boundary. It was placed on the U.S. EPA’s list of Superfund sites in 1989. It is one of the EPA’s six Superfund sites in Waukegan.
While the Yeoman Creek site remains monitored by environmental officials, the use of it as a solar farm gives hope that another Superfund site in the city can see a bright future. That would be the far-north location of the old Johns-Manville asbestos factory.
Sitting on the Lake Michigan shoreline off Greenwood Avenue, the 150-acre reminder of Waukegan’s industrial legacy is a desolate location. What better place for a solar farm than next to the former ComEd coal-fired generating station?
The site is full of primarily asbestos dregs from the red-brick plant and ancillary manufacturing buildings, which were closed in summer 1998. The plant was razed in 2000.
The U.S. EPA estimates that about 3 million cubic yards of asbestos products and wastewater sludge were dumped at the site. It has been cleaned up to a point, but still needs remediation. Signs warn anybody coming near it of the toxic wastes inside the chain-link fence line.
Still, turned into a solar farm, it could reap additional potential power-saving benefits for Waukegan residents. Some see clean and renewable energy in the form of solar power as a way to shift us from fossil fuel usage.
As of April, Illinois has seen 4,321 megawatts of solar capacity installed, including the Yeoman Creek Community Solar Farm, its official name, according to state officials. That is enough to power 265,526 homes in the state.
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The Land of Lincoln has invested more than $2 billion in solar energy plans alone. This is at a time when the federal government is backing away from alternative energy sources and clean-energy tax breaks for individuals and corporations.
Waukegan’s polluted past can be turned into a dazzling future with bold programs like the solar farm at the Yeoman Creek landfill.
Charles Selle is a former News-Sun reporter, political editor and editor.
X @sellenews