It's business as usual at Calumet Harbor Tuesday March 2, 2010 even though the Asian carp is a few miles away from Lake Michigan in the Illinois Ship and Sanitary Canal. Its introduction into the Great Lakes could be a disaster for the environment.
Jose More/Chicago News Cooperative

Proposals to block Asian carp from invading the Great Lakes have largely focused on the costs and inconvenience of closing off Chicago-area waterways into Lake Michigan. But now business and environmental groups are exploring a possible upside: a broadly based infrastructure investment that would benefit much of northern Illinois.

Construction, jobs in the freight sector and money-saving improvements in transportation networks could be among the results of efforts to create what environmentalists call “ecological separation” between Lake Michigan and the rivers and canals leading to the Mississippi River, the source of the voracious carp that have made their way nearly to the lake.

Other Great Lakes states estimate if the carp established itself in the lakes it would cause billions in economic damage. They have sued Illinois to prevent that from happening.

Tour-boat companies, barge operators, recreational boaters and others have cried out against one proposal: the intermittent closing of two locks that connect the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal to Lake Michigan. The Illinois attorney general has argued in a court filing that such closings would threaten a system that carries $16 billion in goods through the state each year. The Illinois Chamber of Commerce is expected to release a report next month putting a price tag on what a lock closing could cost.

But an unlikely alignment of environmental and business interests is looking beyond such claims toward the longer-term benefits of a permanent solution to the carp problem. Some of them say separating Lake Michigan and the Mississippi watersheds would lead to construction of shipping and terminal facilities that could bring hundreds of millions of dollars in investment as well as thousands of new jobs.

“People get all worked up about the carp when the large-scale stuff is just not getting attention,” said George A. Ranney Jr., chief executive of Chicago Metropolis 2020, a business group that advocates for regional transportation planning. “The issue is, can we build a consensus on something bigger than just stopping that fish?”

In a 2005 report, Chicago Metropolis 2020 called for building major terminals where freight could be transferred easily among different modes of transportation, like rail cars, trucks and river barges. The terminals would allow shippers to load their goods onto the most efficient means of transport. Construction of five such terminals in key locations on the outskirts of Chicago, along with other efficiencies and infrastructure improvements, could save $5 billion a year in trucking costs alone, the report said.

The report has drawn little attention, but proposals for intermodal transit facilities and other far-reaching measures are beginning to emerge now that Congress, the Obama administration and state governments are trying to find ways to contain the carp.

“The real debate needs to be on how to separate the Illinois waterways from the Great Lakes in ways that benefit the entire region,” said Joel Brammeier, president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, an environmental group.

Creating a permanent, ecological barrier between Lake Michigan and Illinois waterways would require, at a minimum, building a water treatment facility that would eliminate the possibility that any aquatic creature could move between the lake and Mississippi River watersheds. Backers of such a project liken its potential ecological impact to the reversal of the Chicago River’s flow nearly a century ago. That historic engineering feat kept the city’s waste out of the lake while this one would keep out marauding fish.

The water treatment plant would be part of a larger transportation complex that would enable shipments to move efficiently and quickly up and down the Illinois River and other waterways. The complex might include cranes capable of hoisting boats from the water, railroad sidings and truck bays — and possibly massive conveyor belts to move cargo or even boats.

While the federal government would most likely cover at least part of the construction cost, private industry has already demonstrated a capacity to build such facilities without massive government aid. The railroad company Union Pacific is building a $370 million intermodal facility on 3,900 acres outside Peoria that is set to open this year.

The debate over how best to stop the carp has intensified along with the invasive fish’s seemingly irresistible progress toward Lake Michigan. Illinois has battled other Great Lakes states in a war of words about the costs and risks associated with Asian carp. When a Michigan-sponsored study that was released last month claimed that the closing of two key locks leading into Lake Michigan would cost the Illinois economy only $70 million, the Illinois Chamber of Commerce began a new research effort intended to counter what it saw as an outrageously low estimate.

The Michigan study, by Prof. John Taylor of Wayne State University, is “so far removed from science I don’t know how to comment” on it, said James Farrell, executive director of the Illinois Chamber.

Professor Taylor has defended his study, which makes a case that the Illinois waterway running into Lake Michigan is hardly the vital economic lifeline that the Illinois Chamber and other defenders insist it is. Using U.S. Army Corps of Engineers data, he showed that the O’Brien Lock, the key barge channel into Lake Michigan, saw barge traffic drop by half from 1994 to 2008, to 7,063 total barges. In addition, trips by tour boats and other recreational and commercial vessels, which principally use the Chicago Lock near Navy Pier, fell 39 percent during the period, to 34,249 total trips, Professor Taylor wrote.

The alternative to permanent separation — temporary and stopgap measures — has its costs, too.

Despite electronic barriers and other efforts to contain the carp, a recent University of Notre Dame study found traces of carp DNA in Calumet Harbor, near Navy Pier and at the Wilmette pumping station.

Because two electronic barriers have not completely stopped the advance of the carp, the Obama administration set aside $78.5 million this year for building a third electronic barrier.

The Corps of Engineers’ proposal to close two key locks intermittently this summer, one near Navy Pier and the other near Calumet Harbor, could cost shipping, recreation, tourism and other companies millions of dollars.

Ozinga Brothers, a concrete producer based in Evanston, ships the equivalent of 100,000 truckloads of material by barge from downstate into Chicago each year, the company said. If a lock closing forced the company to ship by truck, freight costs would jump as much as 40 percent, said Aaron Ozinga, president of the company’s material handling division.

At Shoreline Sightseeing, whose tour boats ply waters from the Chicago River into Lake Michigan, uncertainties about the lock at Navy Pier are causing difficulty at the worst time — when the company typically is hiring 40 captains and more than 250 crew members even as its cash flow is at its ebb tide. This year, hiring plans may have to be delayed.

“One of the big unknowns is whether this is a temporary, one-season thing, a one-month thing, or a bigger-picture thing that could be even more devastating,” said Chip Collopy, president of Shoreline Sightseeing.

A permanent separation of Lake Michigan from the rivers and canals that connect it with the Mississippi would not cause significant dislocation of commercial waterway traffic, according to data from the Waterways Council, which lobbies on behalf of inland shippers.

The two systems are already essentially separate commercial entities.

In 2005, some 7,568 kilotons shipped through the O’Brien Lock, in the Cal-Sag Channel on the far South Side, which is the key transit point for cargo traffic between the lake and the Illinois waterway system. That amounted to less than 1 percent of the tonnage through all Illinois locks that year.

Indeed, most of the river and canal traffic in Illinois originates below the O’Brien Lock and involves grains, ore and other commodities that do not travel through the Great Lakes.

Jeffrey Adkisson, executive vice president of the Grain & Feed Association of Illinois, said the debate over proposals to stop the Asian carp had prompted less alarm among the group’s members than he had expected.

“Our members are largely going down the river to the gulf,” Mr. Adkisson said.

Within weeks, the Army Corps is expected to propose a solution for containing the carp.

Henry Henderson, director of the Midwest Program for the Natural Resources Defense Council, is pushing for a permanent solution.

“We think the longer-term, permanent solutions can actually enhance the transport and movement of goods throughout the region,” Mr. Henderson said.

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Alderman Scott Waguespack sat for a portrait recently at Jim Newberry's Bucktown studio.
José Moré/Chicago News Cooperative

If you’re not doing anything the evening of March 19, you might consider a visit to the Johalla Projects Gallery in Wicker Park for the opening of the “Aldermen Project: 50 Aldermen/50 Artists” show.

There’s a good chance that attendees will encounter one of the following: a largely empty exhibit space, populated by several dejected artists, a few junior City Council members and some sweaty cheese cubes; mass hysteria, a police presence and flaming piles of artwork; or a cheerful, civic-minded mix of local politicians, artists and people who love art and politics.

The artists Lauri Apple and Jeremy Scheuch are confident the third scenario will prevail.

They are co-organizers of the Aldermen Project, which pairs 50 Chicago artists with the 50 aldermen who make up City Council. The resulting portraits, which Ms. Apple said might be turned into a voting guide or possibly a deck of playing cards, are intended to remind voters that aldermen are people.

Ms. Apple and Mr. Scheuch insisted that the project would produce legitimate and ultimately useful work, despite the admirably — some might say perilously — democratic process by which the artists were selected: the only requirement was the willingness to pay the $20 registration fee. The portraits, due March 12, are bound by just two restrictions; they must measure 16 by 22 inches and be two-dimensional.

Sounds simple enough. But let’s be realistic: We’re talking about the intersection of art and Chicago politics, and that has proved to have the potential for megawatt drama and serious political fallout.

In 1988 a student at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, painted an inflammatory portrait of Harold Washington, the city’s widely admired first black mayor, who had died a year earlier. The portrait, depicting Mr. Washington in women’s underwear, was on display in a student art show until the Chicago police removed it after an outcry by several black aldermen.

The organizers of the Aldermen Project said they did not expect any controversy. But they also said they had not seen any the portraits yet.

“They could be making portraits out of marshmallows for all we know,” said Ms. Apple, an assistant editor at the Chicago Reader, a free weekly newspaper that is a sponsor for the event. (James Warren, a Chicago News Cooperative columnist, is the publisher of the Reader.)

She and Mr. Scheuch will get their first look later this week when they have received all 50 portraits, some by artists who have never shown before. They said they would honor their commitment to mount every one of them in a public forum.

“We’ll hang whatever we get, ” Mr. Scheuch said. “We’re not going to censor anybody.”

A majority of the 48 current City Council members are cooperating with the artists, the organizers said. Two Council seats are empty, but unless replacements are named in the next few days, the artists paired with those wards will depict the former aldermen. Those who are less accommodating — organizers won’t say how many — will be included in the show anyway, with the artists using photos or other sources as the basis for their work.

“The goal of this show isn’t to make fun of the aldermen unless they deserve it,” Mr. Scheuch said. “There are, and have been, some really bad aldermen, but there are some really great aldermen who don’t take advantage of their position.”

The risk, however small, of being the target of political satire did not deter Alderman Scott Waguespack of the 32nd Ward, who quickly agreed to a photo shoot with Jim Newberry.

Mr. Waguespack arrived at Mr. Newberry’s Bucktown studio accompanied by Elizabeth Gomez, a staff member, and his wife, Jade Cheah, who brought along a couple of extra shirts and a sweater in case Mr. Newberry was not happy with the alderman’s choice of blue jeans and an oxford shirt.

“This is my normal outfit,” Mr. Waguespack said, positioning himself in front of Mr. Newberry’s camera and smiling stiffly at the lens.

Alderman Ed Burke of the 14th Ward is also likely to be safe from mockery. As Jennifer Greenburg, a professional photographer, set up her tripod at Mr. Burke’s Gage Park offices, she surveyed her surroundings with a practiced eye. “This is perfect,” she said. The wood paneling was covered by photographs of Mr. Burke hugging constituents, plaques praising Mr. Burke’s service, and framed newspaper clippings. Forty-plus years in city government takes up a lot of wall space.

When Ms. Greenburg approached Mr. Burke’s staff about a possible shoot, his press secretary ran interference, interviewing her “at length,” the photographer said.

“It’s completely understandable,” said Ms. Greenburg, an unabashed fan of Mr. Burke. “He wanted to make sure there wouldn’t be any surprises.

“He is very committed and ambitious. And he’s a famous person. Or at least a quasi-famous person.”

The “Aldermen Project: 50 Aldermen/50 Artists” will open at 7 p.m. on March 19 at the Johalla Projects Gallery, 1561 North Milwaukee Avenue; chicagoaldermenproject.blogspot.com.

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Norma Reyes, commissioner of the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, and Patricia Scudiero, commissioner of the Department of Zoning and Land Use Planning, have agreed to the year moratorium, Mr. Schulter said.

Alderman Tom Allen (38th) said city inspectors should focus on safety, adding, “I don’t consider not having a tree or an ornamental fence a heinous offense.”

In an interview last week, Mr. Stroger said nobody pushed him out of the position. Still, he suggested that some of his fellow 8th Ward Democrats gave up on his re-election bid.

“Do I believe that everyone worked as hard as they could?” he said. “No. It was an uphill battle from the beginning, so I don’t blame anyone.”

Under the leadership of his father, John Stroger, the 8th Ward Regular Democratic Organization was among the most powerful ward groups in the city, and its loyalists were rewarded. A Chicago Tribune investigation in 1999, when the elder Mr. Stroger was Cook County Board president, found that 100 of 115 members of the 8th Ward Democratic organization held city, county or state jobs.

But in the primary on Feb. 2, the 8th Ward Democrats mustered only 41 percent of the vote for their native son — a margin of just 500 votes over Toni Preckwinkle, who won the nomination — as Mr. Stroger finished last countywide in the four-way race.

“He didn’t show strength, so they deserted him,” said William Beavers, the Cook County commissioner and a longtime ally of Mr. Stroger and his father.

They’re calling it “A Day of Education in Defense of Public Education,” and participants will make virtue out of necessity, venting on one of four furlough days mandated for the rest of the school year. Central topics include the $500 million that the state owes the University of Illinois for a fiscal year that’s almost over.

Dick Simpson, the decidedly sober but deceptively passionate head of the U.I.C. political science department, said he had not seen this much on-campus emotion and faculty mobilization since the campus was closed after the 1970 shootings of students at Kent State University by members of the Ohio National Guard.

“At what point does the higher ed system collapse?” said Mr. Simpson, a former Chicago alderman and a teacher with 43 years’ experience.

That’s a long way off. But he detailed prospects for his department: fewer classes, staff members, adjunct professors and graduate students. Next year, there will be a drop in the 1,300 students who can take his department’s courses.

And there’s the likelihood of sharp tuition increases, which was labeled as a de facto tax on students by one of the legislature’s experts in higher education.

“To continue to tax students is not the way to go,” said State Representative David E. Miller of Lynwood, the Democratic nominee for state comptroller and former chairman of the Appropriations-Higher Education Committee. “But just like people asking us not to increase taxes, higher education needs to make hard choices on cuts and to justify what they are and what they plan on doing.”

Mr. Miller also said that there was insufficient student diversity and that the universities themselves were not tough-minded enough in how they operate. Indirectly, he reminds us that lost in Monday’s cri de coeur over allocating state dollars will probably be basic questions about the far more perilous condition of elementary and secondary education and the role and functioning of traditional four-year colleges, which are now facing intense marketplace rivalry.

The University of Phoenix, online Capella University, Downers Grove-based DeVry University and Chicago-based Flashpoint Academy are part of a boom in for-profit and online institutions. Phoenix has more than 450,000 students at 200 campuses, topping the undergraduate enrollment of the Big Ten.

That competition is why B. Joseph White, who exited as University of Illinois president amid last year’s controversy over politically driven favoritism in admissions at the Champaign campus, fought honorably for a different type of high-quality, affordable, online degree for the many who can’t commit to four years at a campus.

But Mr. White’s failure to execute his Global Campus vision, which elicited reflexive pushback from many faculty members, showed the challenges in adapting to a changing educational landscape.

Restructuring higher education is torturous. The system in the United States has been the world’s best, so it’s tough for administrators to concede immense flaws in it and how time may be passing it by in some ways.

For example, where’s the real accountability for outcomes? Do legislators have a clue as to the actual education results at the schools they finance? Consider the average workplace and how bosses are responsible for staff performance. Why aren’t most professors held accountable in some clear fashion for how much a student may, or may not, learn during a semester, or over four years?

Even granting, especially at research universities, the importance of matters other than teaching students, why doesn’t compensation turn on clear measures of how much students learn? Given the primacy of tenure, one can wonder if the system offers the wrong incentives.

Then there’s goofiness like State Senator Rickey R. Hendon, Democrat of Chicago, a k a Hollywood Hendon, pushing through a still-unreleased $40 million for a West Side campus for the South Side’s Chicago State University. Chicago State is a patronage dumping ground with an awful record for graduating students.

Expansion might be rewarding failure. But how would the legislature know? Perhaps it can furlough itself for a few days and take fact-finding field trips to the worried academic beneficiaries of its shrinking largesse — and then ask some tough questions.

Click here for corresponding article.

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Ron Gibson (right) opens up a meeting of the Cafe Society with introductions of all the people in the room at Ron's Barber Shop on the West Side of Chicago Friday, February 12, 2010.
John Konstantaras/Chicago News Cooperative

In bright red letters, “Ron’s Barber Shop” is printed on the glass front at 6058 West North Avenue on Chicago’s far West Side. A bumper sticker is plastered on the shop’s back door with a message to the community: “Stop. Killing. People.”

The back entrance to Ron Gibson’s shop leads to a small area with a chess table, opening to a large room with five leather chairs, five barbers, children playing video games and customers sharing stories and opinions on the usual barbershop topics: relationships, local political races, President Obama, high school football, churches, favorite places to eat and good movies.

But two Fridays a month, at 5 p.m., Mr. Gibson silences the cacophony coming from two televisions and turns his shop at the corner of North and Meade Avenues into a forum for the kind of academic discussion not usually heard in a barber shop.

The sessions, sometimes led by professors from the University of Illinois at Chicago, have recently explored issues like domestic violence, rape and the state of public education.

Mr. Gibson, 41, said he hosts the talks in hopes that a frank exchange of views would help solve community problems. The discussions are organized by the Illinois Humanities Council and the university.

At one recent meeting, about 50 men and women sat on benches and listened to Beth Richie, professor of criminal justice and African-American studies at the university, speak about her book, “Compelled to Crime: The Gender Entrapment of Battered Black Women.” The discussion explored why some black men beat women.

Fallon Wilson, 27, who said she saw violence against women within her family, told the group that she believed there were multiple, intersecting reasons, including the devaluation of women.

“I think it goes back to how we construct traditional masculinity,” said Ms. Wilson, who researches gender-based violence at the University of Chicago.

Ayesha Truman, 37, a teacher at Hinsdale South High School, said she was disturbed by the way some male students treated female classmates, and she pointed to negative messages about women in music and on television.

“How do we break the cycle?” Ms. Truman asked.

Mr. Gibson and four other barbers cut hair during the discussion. The male customers listened quietly.

Mr. Gibson said the barber shop was a natural place to hold community discussions, whether formally organized or otherwise.

“It’s a big melting pot,” said Dwayne Rushing, 32, who lives in St. Charles and works in Chicago. One of his sons, Nicholas, got his first haircut from Mr. Gibson when he was a year old.

“It brings in a lot of people with different socio-economic backgrounds and lifestyles,” Mr. Rushing said of the barber shop. “You get some fairly well-off people and some very poor people. I wouldn’t say anybody discounts your opinion one way or another depending on where you are in your life. When you’re in a barber shop, your opinion counts.”

On a recent Saturday, a barber, Jeff Williams, 50, flicked a toothpick from either side of his mouth, cutting a customer’s hair and singing along with “Serpentine Fire” by Earth, Wind and Fire. “Gonna tell a story, morning glory.”

Aniyah Rushing, 6, wore a pink sweater with her jeans tucked into her boots, and danced around the center of the shop.

Gloria Hooker, a minister in a red sweater and a lifelong resident of the West Side, who was waiting for her hair to dry, chatted and let out belly laughs between sips of Pepsi.

“There are still good people here who still want to have a beautiful spot for their children and children’s children,” she said.

Mr. Gibson keeps close a reminder of why it is important to address community issues. A plastic heart-shaped pin with his cousin’s name sits in a drawer beside his chair. In 2008, the cousin, Ryan McDonald, 22, was shot to death on the sidewalk about three miles from the barber shop.

“A lot of times, we stand too divided because we do have our opinions,” Mr. Gibson said. “We have older folks that say young folks don’t know nothing. We have younger folks that say old folks think they know everything.

“I don’t blame any one person for that. If we had a place or a situation where I can hear you, you can hear me, I can hear your opinions, we can disagree without being disagreeable, eventually we will have every question answered.”

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Billy Petrick, 25, pitched eight games for the Chicago Cubs in 2007. Petrick treats his arm after a workout at Bo Jackson's Elite Sports Facility in suburban Chicago, Friday February 26, 2010.
Sally Ryan/Chicago News Cooperative

Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Billy Petrick.

The capacity crowd at sun-splashed Wrigley Field on June 27, 2007, had reason to make the connection between those names when Petrick made his major-league debut with the Cubs. Like Wood and Prior, he was a big, strong right-hander with an imposing build, intimidating stuff and a flinty mound demeanor that the scouts salute as country hardball.

His seven-up, six-down performance in two innings that day was the story of the Cubs’ 6-4 victory over the pennant-bound Colorado Rockies. And there was more to that story: Petrick, then 23, had grown up a Cubs fan in nearby Morris, Ill., and was thrilled to be their third-round pick in the 2002 amateur draft. Close to 40 friends and family members had made the 50-mile trip to Chicago to witness his first appearance in the majors.

Five scoreless outings followed his debut, and then nothing for more than two years. The parallels with the star-crossed Wood and the figurine-fragile Prior were ominous. Petrick had undergone surgery for a torn labrum in 2005, and his right shoulder was wearing out on him.

“My velocity dropped the whole time I was in the big leagues,” Petrick said after a recent workout at Bo Jackson’s training facility in Lockport. “I came up throwing in the mid-90s, and I could get it up to 97, 98, without much effort. By the time I went back, I was throwing 87, 88, and it was a struggle to reach 90.”

Pitching through it wasn’t the answer, though Petrick tried after the Cubs sent him back to Class AAA Iowa. Neither was rest, therapy, exercise — anything he did during a frustrating 2008 season spent mostly among the rawest farmhands at Class A Daytona.

“I was getting those guys out because I knew how to pitch,” Petrick said. “But I wasn’t fooling myself, and I wasn’t fooling the gun. I was throwing in the mid-80s. That’s not what the Cubs wanted. I’m 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds. Guys half my size can throw in the mid-80s.”

A month in the instructional league was also unavailing, and the Cubs released Petrick in November 2008.

“It got to be a numbers thing,” said Jim Hendry, the general manager. “Billy’s a good kid, but he hadn’t thrown hard for two years.”

Petrick said that he understood, and that there were no hard feelings.

“I’d reach back for the good fastball, and it just wasn’t there,” he said. “It wasn’t a sharp pain or constant discomfort, but something wasn’t right. It’s really frustrating when you’re used to doing something your whole life and all of a sudden it’s like you can’t do it anymore.”

A pitcher who makes it to the major leagues at 23 feels invulnerable. When he’s out of baseball a year later, he knows better. He’ll go anywhere for a chance to work his way back. Petrick chose Crestwood, Ill., home of the Windy City Thunderbolts of the independent Frontier League. From Wrigley Field, it’s 27 miles by car. For a ballplayer who has tasted big-league life, the distance is immeasurable.

He went to Crestwood at the behest of Mike Kashirsky, a Thunderbolts coach who had managed Petrick as a teenager on a south suburban travel team. Eleven games into his new career as a closer — a 2.13 earned run average, three saves, 15 strikeouts in 12 2/3 innings — Petrick felt a telltale pop in his right elbow. A torn tendon, leading to Tommy John surgery last July.

“It’s possible the elbow gave out because I was protecting the shoulder,” he said.

The procedure sent him back to Square 1 for rehabilitation, but Petrick will not give up. The memory of that magical afternoon at Wrigley helps keep him going.

He’s throwing three times a week with Kashirsky’s team at Robert Morris University and working out with a personal trainer. He looks trim and strong and reported no discomfort last week after a vigorous 70-minute throwing session. “Just tired,” he said. “A good tired.”

Kashirsky considers himself Petrick’s friend as well as his coach. He’ll advise and encourage him, but he won’t mislead him or offer false hope. “If hard work is what it takes, he’ll make it,” Kashirsky said. “He was throwing really well before he got hurt last year.”

Petrick has been helping out in his dad’s home-repair business and giving pitching lessons. He has a contract offer from the Joliet Jackhammers of the independent Northern League and hopes to be pitching competitively by June or July. But he knows better than to rush it.

“My arm hasn’t felt good for three years,” Petrick said. “Now it does. I’ve always had good movement, and I know how to pitch. If I can get my velocity back in the low- to mid-90s and hit my spots, I know I can get people out.”

He also knows that some of the most talented arms aren’t meant for the rigors of high-level pitching. Kerry Wood’s 77 victories for the Cubs over 10 seasons came with 12 trips to the disabled list. Mark Prior’s career declined into a mind-numbing succession of towel drills and simulated games after his breakout 18-victory season in 2003.

“I’m still only 25, and if I pitch well, somebody will see me,” Petrick said. “There’s a Plan B, but I’m not there yet.”

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