GS: Amidst the increasing global shift toward renewable energy sources, communities in Northwest Indiana have had their fair share of turmoil. The Michigan City Generating Station is nearly 100 years old, according to the Michigan City Public Library. And while the retirement process has already begun for this coal-fired power plant, it’s not set to be fully retired until 2028. For years, local residents have been expressing their own concerns about the risk of pollution caused by this plant. For these residents, the risks have been life-changing.
[Donnita Scully] We did some sort of canvassing and found out that individuals in the community had, they were waking up and having this blanketed black dust on their cars. (4:41)
GS: That’s Donnita Scully, the Environmental Climate Justice Chair at the Michigan City Branch of the NAACP. She was referring to the west side of Michigan City, which has been disproportionately affected by the coal ash and fly ash from the station. Coal ash is a waste product produced through operations at coal-fired power plants. It is often stored in landfills known as coal ash waste pits.
JK: There is a high concentration of coal ash waste pits all over Indiana. One of the major concerns with these waste pits is their ability to contaminate water ways. This is especially true for a plant that lies right on the shores of Lake Michigan. In this case, the waste pits can leech into groundwater or risk overflowing during floods.
JK: There is a steel wall built around the site by the Northern Indiana Public Service Company, known as NIPSCO. The wall has been complete for over 50 years, raising concerns among local residents who fear that the seawall will corrode and cause a leak into Lake Michigan.
[Susan Thomas] This is the drinking water for 10 million people at least. Once that wall goes, big oops, I mean how do you clean that up?” (17:50)
GS: That’s Susan Thomas, the Policy and Press Director for Just Transition Northwest Indiana. She called the seawall a “ticking timebomb.” Repairing the seawall is a point of emphasis for NIPSCO in 2025.
GS: In a statement to WNUR News, NIPSCO said,
GS: “NIPSCO and third-party professional engineers monitor and inspect the walls annually – based on standard industry definitions. Regular maintenance and improvements are made to ensure the continued safety of the protective barrier since its installation. NIPSCO is currently executing plans to replace the Trail Creek seawall structure in 2025, although studies conducted last year showed the seawall’s useful life is another 5-8 years.”
GS: This is not simply a matter of the Lake Michigan shores, however, as the coal ash has already had drastic effects on nearby communities.
[Ashley Williams] We really couldn’t see through a just transition for the site unless we really began to tackle the issue of the coal crisis at the Michigan City Generating Station on the shores of Lake Michigan and as we dug deeper, we realized that not only was the coal ash still there but it was also leaching into Lake Michigan and contaminating the groundwater, the neighboring tributaries, and so it was just blowing the lid off of what we really came to be the silent crisis. (1:45)
JK: That’s Just Transition Northwest Indiana’s Executive Director, Ashley Williams. Community members who heard about the contaminated groundwater had a variety of solutions, from personal projects to advocacy.
JK: The well water quality is so poor that NIPSCO is mandated to deliver bottled water to several Town of Pines households. Town of Pines Resident and Environmental Advocate Paul Kysel built his own reverse osmosis system when he initially moved, not wanting to risk any side effects of the well water.
[Paul Kysel] I didn’t hesitate to install a system like that. It’s a very simple system that just, you know, works on a membrane that forces water through the membrane, dropping off any contaminants, and just flushes those down the, the drain. (5:15)
GS: Though the Town of Pines receives this bottled water, it is merely for drinking. Residents are still using this well water to bathe and wash their clothes. While some have accepted their fate, Kysel believes that more can still be done.
[Kysel] Ultimately, the only way this is going to be resolved anywhere in the country where coal ash has been dumped, placed, or used as top as fill, as clean fill is to eliminate it. To dig it up, to remove it wherever it is, to find every little trace of it, and to preserve water, fresh water for drinking purposes, that it has to be removed from wherever it is, and placed into appropriately lined, protected, specially designated waste facilities (34:05)
GS: The mass amounts of industry in Northwest Indiana also pose concerns toward cultural land use. The industry pollutants pose risks to native species and cultural practices stretching back thousands of years. The Pokagan Band of Potawatomi Indians have worked on a cultural trail at the Indiana Dunes Site. As part of their work on this site, they hope to re-establish traditional gathering practices for wild rice in the area. But currently, they are concerned that the soil health may pose a threat to safe consumption.
[Jennifer Kanine] One of the grants that I just received is for me to look at some of those plants that are going to be able to be harvested and gathered by tribal citizens. We’re going to take samples of them to try to determine, how? Are they healthy enough to eat? Are they safe enough to eat? Because of all the heavy industry that’s there, you know, heavy metals or chemicals that might be analytes of chemical that might be getting into these plants and these plant tissues. (30:15)
GS: That’s Jennifer Kanine, the director of the Kowabdanawa odë kė team of Potawatomi Indians. This group works toward improving Environmental Quality, Natural Resources, Conservation, and Agriculture. Not only will this potential cultivation of wild rice rekindle Indigenous land use practices, but it may also attract more biodiversity to Michigan City.
[Kanine] So, wild rice is a plant that everybody wants to eat and everybody wants to be around. So it’s kind of one of those things that if it’s in the area, it will, it will draw things in. So, you know, the birds will come to the area, and not just like geese, but also lots of blackbirds, lots of other waterfowl come into the area, and not just that, but there are different birds that use it for nesting. (33:00)
JK: Visitors can walk along the cultural trail and take educational classes at the Indiana Dunes.
JK: With the impending shutdown of the Michigan City Generating Station comes the opportunity for new projects. With the vast Indiana Dunes National Park just to its right, how will the land that the plant currently operates on be used in the future?
[Kevin Corrigan] Securing the edge of the site because as we tackled about the, the leaking of the groundwater, which is contaminated with all that residual coal ash moving into Lake Michigan, once that is taken care of in a serious way, that’s not collapsing steel sheet pile walls, there’s opportunity there. To then have a secure site and a slower cleanup process that can really allow that to be a more long-term thing that makes the site immediately accessible and usable for Michigan City residents. (5:38)
JK: That’s Kevin Corrigan, a landscape architect who grew up in nearby Beverly Shores, Indiana. He is currently working in Colorado, drafting a plan for the site as a friend to JTNWI. He calls it Choreographing Closure, and he sees the future of the site as a gateway to the beauty that the area has to offer.
[Corrigan] So Susan used the term gateway and that’s really what this site is. It’s a cultural gateway, it’s a temporal gateway, and it’s a physical gateway. And by physical gateway, I mean that, that golden triangle, that connection between the Indiana Dunes National Park, which is… ‘Why do people come here? Why do people come and visit?’ It’s not to go to the power plant, it’s to go to the lake, it’s to go sailing, it’s go to the beach, it’s to visit friends and family. It’s to walk in the dunes and see the wetlands and the birds. And so no, the NIPSCO site is never going to be part of the national park, but what it can be is a gateway that connects that national park to the harbor to Washington Park. (44:27)
GS: Corrigan was one of many local artists at an event hosted by Just Transition Northwest Indiana. They asked local artists to envision a future for the site, and while many came with artistic renderings, Corrigan looked toward a more formal plan as part of his graduate school studies. While several plans have been proposed for the site’s future use, from an entertainment center to an arcade, Thomas believes that the site can be used to tell a local story about the region.
[Thomas] Is that going to stand the test of time or could we put in something art-based, history-based, and really draw upon and make something. (15:35)
GS: While there are certainly proposals and ideas in the works for what we will see become of the plant after its 2028 retirement, nothing is official. According to NIPSCO’s statement to WNUR News,
GS: “NIPSCO’s generation transition is well underway, with the predominance of its future energy mix to be comprised of renewable energy sources. NIPSCO has not announced plans regarding the potential use of NIPSCO’s Michigan City Generating Station property.”
JK: The concerns don’t start and end with the site, however, as alternatives have already begun. In response to the pollution and the opportunity for work among residents, Scully launched the Soul Power Program.
[Scully] That program is 6 months long, and so they have to do solar design, they learn about energy usage and how much solar will need to be racked in order to accommodate a building, whether it be residential or commercial.” – 40 individuals have completed the program with 30 more on the wait list (10:42)
JK: This free training program sets up opportunities for residents to receive certifications to work toward a future built around solar energy. The program was designed especially for those who are affected by environmental pollution, as well as returnees from prison, those living in poverty and veterans.
[Scully] So it is a way to help those individuals who’ve been most impacted by solar pollution. To sort of equal the playing field to help give them individuals in our community the tools and skills to compete in the 21st century. (11:39)
JK: Through this process, these local leaders have been working toward the betterment of their surrounding communities. In doing so, they’re trying to combat complacency with environmental harms and create a brighter future for Northwest Indiana residents.
JK: Just Transition Northwest Indiana also partnered with Earthjustice and over 20 other organizations to file a lawsuit against the EPA. The lawsuit looked to close loopholes from the 2015 Coal Combustion Residuals Rule, which excluded coal ash in landfills under certain timeframes. They were successful in doing so, allowing for more accountability in the cleanup process.
GS: Looking toward the future of this site, there are fears about complacency among residents. In a city where so many people are working multiple jobs, starting families, and dealing with the same water quality issues for years, Williams hopes to reframe the narrative.
[Williams] We just wanted to be able to set forth this framework and get people thinking about how they can reshape, right, this sort of forced reality we live in today because folks only see that it has to continue to be the status quo. (8:30)
For WNUR News, I’m John Kowalski
And I’m Gabe Shumway.
