The Price of Clean Air

The Fisk Generating Station in the working-class Pilsen neighborhood on Chicago's Lower West Side once symbolized the future. The largest of its kind when it opened, the single-stack, coal-fired plant powered factories and residences throughout a growing metropolis.

That was in 1903. Today, Fisk and its slightly younger sister, the Crawford Generating Station, located nearby in another densely packed area, are relics: two of the more than 200 "legacy" coal-burning plants nationwide that were grandfathered in under 1977 amendments to the Clean Air Act. As a result of legislative compromise, these aging plants remain exempt from some of the act's main requirements that industrial facilities use modern pollution control methods.