Chicago Explainer

Ignore the “NO PARKING” signage posted down your block at your own peril – every street in every ward is scheduled for cleaning this summer, and now the $50 ticket is photo enforced. Even while some Chicagoans have begun questioning the effectiveness of the city’s fleet of street sweepers, the Department of Streets and Sanitation has maintained that it is not revenue, but clean streets, that are the motive for leveling the costly fines.

What do street cleaners actually clean up?

Today’s modern street sweeper machines have been shown to reduce water pollution and improve air quality in the metropolitan area.

The humble street sweeper has been a fixture of the city environment since the 1800s reform movements in urban aesthetics and sanitation. He was primarily concerned with cleaning up the mounds of horse manure that would accumulate on the cobblestone thoroughfares in the days before the automobile. His tools were a push broom and a dust bin.

But in 1914, John Murphy invented a motorized street sweeper in the northwest suburbs of Chicago. He started the Elgin Sweeper Corporation, which currently supplies Streets and Sanitation with its fleet of nimble, 3-wheeled Pelican model street sweepers.

The Elgin Pelicans have a distinctive look.

And a distinctive personality.

Elgin markets itself as an environmentally conscious company. On May 6, 2009, it reported that Canada’s Environmental Technology Verification Program vindicated the results of a test showing that Elgin’s Crosswind NX “regenerative air” street sweeper and the Waterless Eagle FW model were efficient at removing dust particles of 10 microns or less from the air.

They also offer a model of the Pelican that runs on natural gas to reduce harmful emissions into the atmosphere.

Regardless of the fuel source or fancy new air-filtration gimmicks, the very simple rotating broom and suction system employed by most street sweepers is all that is needed to clean up the garbage and litter that tends to pile up on the curb, which is a necessary part of our urban hygiene.

Remember the Pride Parade?

Refuse from the street can block storm drains, or be washed down into them. On January 30th, 2008, Elgin commissioned a study by Pacific Water Resources, Inc. that measured the performance of four of its Elgin Street Sweeper models under simulated conditions. According to the results of the study, the machines removed between 81% and 97.5% of pollutants from storm water runoff.

All storm water flows into Chicago’s old combined sewer system, where runoff from the streets and wastewater from our drains travels through the same set of pipes to the nearest sewage treatment plant. In ideal conditions, the water goes through a physical, chemical and biological treatment process so it can be safely returned to the rivers and canals connecting the Great Lakes basin to the Des Plaines River valley.

However, even recent experience has shown us that heavy rains can overwhelm the system, flushing untreated sewage into the surrounding water supply.

There is no amount of street sweeping that can keep sanitary wastewater from contaminating our fresh water supply in extreme weather conditions. But large infrastructure projects, like the ambitious Tunnel and Reservoir Plan, are already underway making the fundamental improvements to Chicago’s sewer system so that overflow events are becoming an ever rarer occurrence.

In the meantime, though, a little less filth down the drain is, on the whole, a pretty good thing.

Try not passing by a bank during your daily routine tomorrow. Chances are you’d have to drastically change your plans. We have more banks here, 650, than any other state in the country. Georgia is a distant second with about half as many as Illinois. But, as we learned this week, we also have more failed banks than anywhere else in the country. Why are there so many banks here?

Legislation.

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Illinois was one of the last states to allow branch banking. And for many decades Illinois was one of the most restrictive branch banking states in the U.S. These restrictions existed to limit banks’ size and prevent them from exerting too much political or economic influence. No branch banking meant smaller banks were popping up all over the place.

After a few revisions to the law, the state finally allowed unrestricted interstate branching in 1993. “For the first time Illinois banks were allowed to branch freely within the state,” according a May 2007 Chicago Fed letter.

“Illinois is one of the states that was a unit banking state,” said Ed Paules, 64, of Greer, S.C., who works for the FDIC and lived in Wheaton, Ill. from 1989-1997. “That is, banks were not allowed to have branches.”

“While I think this is now no longer true, the results of the past suggest there are more smaller banks and fewer larger banks,” said Paules. Paules has four decades of experience as a banking executive and corporate treasury officer and is also a certified financial risk manager.

Paules is right. Restrictive branch banking provided a safe environment for smaller banks in Illinois. According to the Chicago Fed letter, as of June 2006, Illinois had 650 banks (0.54 banks per 10,000 residents) and other states had on average 145 banks (0.43 banks per 10,000 residents). And even though there are fewer banks nationwide today, Illinois still has more small banks than other state on average, according to the Fed letter.

And the boom in the number of banking offices can be attributed to small Illinois banks and large out-of-state banks competing for market share, according to the letter. In 2006, Illinois had 3.39 banking offices per 10,000 residents compared to the national average of 3.21 per 10,000 residents, the Fed letter says.

But Paules thinks the title of most failed banks might not belong to Illinois for very long.

“If you check the statistics, I suspect Georgia, Florida, Arizona and California will surpass Illinois in the number of failed banks,” he said.

So, no, you’re not going crazy. There are a ton of banks here. Now if all of them could work on not charging ATM fees, then we’d be getting somewhere.

There has been controversy over possible gunshots at the Independence Eve fireworks at the Taste of Chicago this past weekend. Amidst the explosions and movements of cops, some spectators say they heard gunfire.

Can police tell the difference between the BANG! of gunshots and fireworks?

It is very difficult for most police officers to make a judgment based on the sound alone, but there are other observable differences between gunfire and fireworks in a crowded setting, and there is improving technology designed to assist police as well.

A Riverside police officer who has heard many gunshots said he “can't tell the difference, especially with lower caliber guns.” Here are two videos, one of gunfire and the other of a large firework, could you tell the difference?

The blogger and Chicago police officer, Second City Cop, said that some veterans who have become used to the sounds of both gunfire and fireworks have developed certain techniques. A gunshot has a flatter sound with fewer echoes, also, the pattern of multiple gunshots really sets it off from the more random explosions of fireworks.

The police at the Taste fireworks display did likely act with a purpose, but not only because of suspicious sounds. The Riverside officer said watching the crowd is the best way to spot a disturbance. “Somebody sees a pistol and starts a stampede,” he said. That sort of panic doesn't normally happen when a firework goes off.

The SkyWatch tower in their surveillance arsenal, too. From 50 feet in the air, a single officer can watch the entire crowd and use infrared technology to see in the dark. Infrared can also pick up muzzle flashes from guns. The officer perched in Sky Watch is able to radio down to ground troops, relay pertinent information to them and direct them. And if necessary, he can use a loudspeaker to give directions to the crowd.

SkyWatch

Chicago also has technology in high crime areas of the city that can reportedly detect and distinguish gun shots from other, similar noises, like fireworks. Although, it is unlikely that these “gunshot detectors” were used at the Taste of Chicago this year. And, according to the Second City Cop, it really wouldn't have mattered since the current gunfire detection system still has bugs in it and dispatchers no longer relay the information it sends in to officers in the area.

Perhaps next year an improved gunshot location detection technology will be used to curb the apparently annual problem of shootings at the Taste of Chicago and during the lake front Independence Eve fireworks display.

Chicago’s beaches were open Sunday, June 21st, for locals to enjoy the official first day of summer even if sewage being dumped into the lake may have prompted caution in some areas. The Chicago Park District flew yellow flags over the Oak Street and Montrose beaches as part of its notification system to alert swimmers of the "low to moderate" traces of E. coli bacteria found in the water.

Wait ... there's E. coli floating in the waters of two Chicago beaches? Isn't that bad?

In fact, most strains of the Escherichia coli bacteria are harmless — high counts of bacterial colonies in Lake Michigan can be indicative of other hazards though.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency warns that the presence of E. coli in water is a strong indication of recent sewage or animal waste contamination. This is because strains of completely benign E. coli bacteria live in the gut of nearly all warm blooded animals, including humans. It is among the invisible menagerie of human flora residing in our bodies that play a role in beneficial, even necessary biological functions.

The E. coli bacteria in your lower intestine provides you with vitamin K₂ and prevents infection from harmful bacteria.

Serotype O157:H7 is the kind of E. coli that you hear about on the news. It causes food poisoning, bloody diarrhea and can even lead to complete kidney failure and death. Young children and the elderly are the most vulnerable to the worst of its effects. It is contracted by ingesting food or water that has been contaminated by the disease.

So, the presence of E. coli bacteria is not necessarily a threat to the swimmers on Chicago’s beaches.  More dangerous and disturbing is what the occasionally high levels of E. coli bacteria imply — there’s poo in Lake Michigan, and it’s probably human.

Fecal contamination of water sources spreads a host of dangerous pathogens like Salmonella, Shigella and the aforementioned E. coli O157:H7.

This begs the more disturbing and fundamental question; how does human fecal matter get into Lake Michigan? And perhaps equally as important; what’s being done to stop it?

The city of Chicago and some of its older suburbs have what is called a combined sewer system. It’s an antiquated system that combines sanitary sewage and storm water runoff.

Under normal conditions, the rain and sewage mixture is sent to one of the seven wastewater treatment plants throughout Cook County operated by the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD) where the physical, chemical and biological contaminants are removed and the treated water is returned to the Great Lakes Basin by way of the Chicago River.

However, during one of the heavy rainstorms that occasionally assault Chicagoland, the combined system can become overloaded. Excess wastewater is discharged into the river and its adjoining canals.

Perhaps the storms of Friday, June 16th, were responsible for combined sewer overflow that led to beach closings the following Sunday. There is no way to know for sure because the Water Reclamation District was given complete authority over storm water management in Cook County by the Illinois General Assembly in 2004. The MWRD is under no obligation to municipal agencies, like the Chicago Park District, to report instances of sewer overflow. It is the MWRD’s prerogative to decide all storm water management issues internally and to report overflow only if they are bound to by extreme circumstances.

But the MWRD has already initiated an ambitious plan to curb overflow, if not eliminate it completely. Begun in 1975 with a cost in the $4 billion range, the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan (TARP), is one of the greatest infrastructure projects ever undertaken in terms of scope, cost and time frame.

Though not yet functioning at full capacity, TARP is designed to divert excess wastewater through a 109 mile network of tunnels that are up to 33 feet in diameter. The deep tunnels were bored into the limestone rock 240 to 350 feet beneath Chicago.

The tunnels carry the excess wastewater to the nearest operational reservoir, currently Thornton Quarry, one of the largest aggregate quarries in the world with a 3.1 billion gallon storage capacity at present.

This is where the pathogen-laden sewage is safely retained to await the treatment process after the storm surge has subsided. A far better place for it, I think we can all agree, than the shores of our beautiful beaches.

On Friday, May 16th, the first reports came in of a commissioned Bridgeport mural that had been whitewashed by the city’s Graffiti Blasters at the order of 11th Ward Alderman James Balcer.  The mural featured featured three CPD surveillance cameras, a crucifix, and a skull.  Despite the fact that muralist Gabriel Villa had permission by the owner of Kaplan’s Liquors to create the work on an exterior wall of the store as part of a local arts festival, Alderman Balcer has insisted, until recently, that his actions were within the bounds of the laws concerning graffiti.  So what is the difference between a mural and graffiti? 

It depends on who's making the decision.  The state and local laws are quite clear on the distinction though they have been applied in a less than transparent fashion.

The legal definitions of mural and graffiti are very similar except that graffiti is an unauthorized, and hence, illegal, public art installation.   Murals, at their most legitimate, are street art sanctioned and funded by a governmental agency or community organization.  In the Illinois Criminal Code, defacement of property occurs “when the person knowingly damages the property of another by defacing, deforming, or otherwise damaging the property by the use of paint or any other similar substance…”  Chicago’s municipal ordinances employ similar terms when defining the crime of vandalism.     

Illinois law allows for consent by the property’s owner as an affirmative defense for those charged with criminal defacement of property, meaning that if Mr. Villa were arrested for painting the mural, he could possibly avoid a Class A misdemeanor conviction, a $500 minimum fine, and up 120 hours of community service. Provided he was able to prove convincingly in a court of law that he did, in fact, obtain the liquor store owner’s permission to create the public artwork.  However, an “affirmative defense” is slim legal cover for a muralist even if the work was commissioned by the property owner because the burden of proof is on the accused street artist.   

Chicago city ordinances are more aggressive.  They make no mention of a property owner’s consent when assessing a case of alleged vandalism.  All vandalism cases are filed as quasi-criminal actions subject to the Illinois Code of Civil Procedure, rather than the Criminal Code where the standards of proof are higher.  If you’re convicted, there’s a $750.00 fine plus the cost of repair, and you may be incarcerated for up to 30 days or required to perform up to 1,500 hours of community service. While Public art is exempted from fees, permits and restrictions, there are almost no guidelines describing exactly what “public art” is or how to distinguish it from vandalism.  

The law struggles with parsing murals from graffiti because, aesthetically speaking, they overlap in significant ways.

Modern graffiti was born out of the counterculture of the 60’s and 70’s, and it continued to be an outlet for the oppressed and marginalized during the proliferation of hip hop culture during the 80’s and 90’s.  Mexican muralism also comes from a politically charged tradition, the 1930’s, when Mexican artists where trumpeting the Marxist ideals of the Mexican Revolution while stylistically attempting to reconnect to their pre-Columbian roots. 

Both of these traditions thrive today on Chicago’s South Side.    

In the largely Hispanic neighborhood of Pilsen, for example, Mexican muralism is ubiquitous.  Though such public art is only tolerated under the law, it is celebrated by the community.  On nearly every wall one can find a full spectrum of artistic expression, from the sacred to the profane.  Only in Pilsen can twin cultural icons Betty Boop and Che Guevara occupy the same space in peoples’ daily lives. 

Meanwhile, activist graffiti artists are tagging up the town with biting political insight just as they did throughout urban America in the 1960’s and rural Mexico in the 1930’s.  Mexican muralist Gabriel Villa is only the latest Windy City iconoclast to set his sights on the Chicago Police and Mayor Daley’s South Side Irish stronghold of Bridgeport.  A local tweeter spotted this sticker art tagging the Red Line (which goes through Bridgeport) earlier this month.  It features the black and white mug shot of Bridgeport resident Detective Joseph Frugoli along side some strong words referencing an incident from the early morning hours of April 10th when Frugoli, driving drunk with a blood-alcohol level of .277, rear ended a disabled vehicle in the southbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway and killed the two young Hispanic men inside.  Be it large, complex murals or simple, homemade stickers, public art of all kinds is self-consciously site-specific.   

Alderman Balcer broke the law when he ordered the Graffiti Blasters to blast Villa’s mural without consulting the property owner first.  Mayor Daley has acknowledged the wrongdoing.  The irony of the whole episode is that if Villa had chosen to paint on a wall just a mile and a half away, on the north side of the South Branch of the Chicago River (map), his “anti-police graffiti” would have been just another mural in Pilsen.

Last week former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was in the news again, narrowly avoiding testifying in the case of a convicted murderer who says Burge’s underlings tortured him. Burge allegedly performed and oversaw the torture of dozens of individuals in Chicago police custody during the 1980’s and was arrested by U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald last October for obstruction of justice and perjury.  What’s all this cost the city of Chicago in settlements?

About $20 million, so far, to four of the more than 100 men who claim they were tortured.

Chicago Alderman approved settlements totaling $19.8 million in January of 2008 to four men who claimed they were tortured by Burge or his officers: Aaron Paterson received $5 million for being convicted of murder by a confession allegedly obtained by torture, Stanley Howard received $800,000 in restitution and another $1 million for attorney fees, Leroy Orange was paid $5.5 million for his 19 years in prison, and Madison Hobley received $1 million up front then another $6.5 million after being acquitted of his arson charge.     

With this gesture, Mayor Daley and the City Council hoped to close a “tragic chapter” in Chicago’s history.  And they did, as far as the Mayor is concerned.  The $19.8 million settlement came with some strings attached: the plaintiffs would not name Mayor Richard Daley as a defendant in a civil rights, obstruction of justice, and racketeering conspiracy case; they wouldn’t pursue Daley’s deposition; they wouldn’t criticize Daley in any public statements made in connection with the settlement; and the above terms would remain secret and would not be put in the written agreement.

But this money has only been paid out to 5 of the dozens of alleged torture victims.  The statute of limitations has expired on the most gruesome of Burge’s alleged crimes, making it increasingly unlikely that the remaining accusers will have their day in court.

Because Burge was never convicted, or even formally charged, in a criminal torture case, these alleged victims face what the Chicago Defender describes as an uphill legal battle in seeking their share of compensation from a civil suit.  Attorney General Lisa Madigan’s office took on 25 cases of alleged torture in 2003.  Since then, over 11 have been resolved.  Most alleged torture cases have resulted in pardons.

On Wednesday, April 29th, Kilmer Elementary School in Rogers Park was the first among several schools in the Chicago area to temporarily close its doors because of suspected cases of H1N1 Swine Flu.  Since the majority of kids in these schools are, in fact, perfectly healthy, Chicago area parents are stuck with them.  How can you keep your kid busy during the day?

Check for programming from neighborhood groups or look into daycare.  

Check the parents groups.  In Rogers Park, where Chicago’s first cases of swine flu first started appearing, there is an association called Rogers Park Parents that, according to their website, “exists to help parents exchange information, ideas, and insights about life in the neighborhood.”  Many neighborhoods have similar organizations.  Check their web sites for programming that you can drop junior off at during the day.  

Check the youth groups.  The Rogers Park Community Council, for example, has a Youth Intervention Program that creates “educational, recreational and social growth opportunities for youth” through after school programs and other functions. 

Check the parks.  The Chicago Park District has programs running all year round for kids. 

If all of these fail, consider daycare.  Yellowpages.com lists 1215 day care services in the Chicago area.  Many of these services are intended for children of specific age groups. Some are strict about accepting children on short notice.  Do you homework before showing up with junior in tow.

As the Swine Flu scare is winding down the U.S. Centers for Disease Control changed their recommendations for school closings - parents are encouraged to keep their sick kids home for two weeks, and Chicago Public Schools will be sending all students exhibiting flu-like symptoms home for the recommended period of time.  If your school hasn’t closed yet, it probably won’t.  

Editor's Note: Welcome to a new feature on the Windy Citizen - The Chicago Explainer.  Each week we will pick a story you posted to the site and dig into a question the original piece didn't address and post it to the site blog.  Heading this up is our new editorial intern, Len Kody, who you might have seen commenting last week.  He'll be penning an Explainer each week for the next few months and helping to keep our discussion threads interesting.  Welcome him and enjoy his first piece here.

Original Post: "Is your drinking water contaminated?" submitted by user jkaufman

Residents of southwest suburban Crestwood recently learned that from 1986 to 2007 their municipal tap water had been tainted with toxic chemicals.  Village officials had long claimed they bought their municipal water through the City of Chicago’s Lake Michigan intake cribs., but they were actually supplementing that supply with water from a local well state regulators deemed contaminated 22 years ago.  One of the chemicals found in Crestwood's well, vinyl chloride, is so toxic that the U.S. EPA says there is no safe level of exposure.  How can you make sure your drinking water is safe?

Test your tap water with a home test kit.  You have options.  There are a number of models available at drug stores or over the Internet.

For a general solution, Watersafe All-In-One might be the ticket.  With this $20 kit you can test for common contaminants like lead, pesticides, nitrates, nitrites, chlorine, pH level, hardness, iron, and bacteria.  To use the Watersafe kit you dip one of the testing strips into a sample of drinking water collected and wait a few minutes to see how the color changes.  To test for bacteria you add a special powder to your sample and set it aside for 24 hours.  Even a general test like this one might have caught the carcinogenic chemicals in Crestwood’s water.

There are also tests that look for specific containimants.  Watersafe makes a $10 lead test kit and PurTest has a bacteria and nitrate test kit.

And there are options for people who want to go all out, like the $40 SenSafe Water Quality test kit  which looks for sufate, copper, and alkalinity in addition to the chemicals tested for in the Watersafe kit.

It’s worth noting that while these kits will test for a wide variety of contaminants, there are substances thought to be seeping into water supplies that have only just recently become detectable due to advancements in technology. These include prescription and over-the-counter drugs as well as chemicals from personal-care products, food packaging, clothing and household goods.  It is currently not clear what the effects of long term exposure to these chemicals might be.  And testing for them is not practical for the average citizen because it can only be done in a laboratory.

Once you’ve tested your water, if you turn up anything unusual, don’t forget to notify your authorities.  The people of Crestwood would possibly still be drinking contaminated water were it not for one particularly persistent and outspoken mother.  One of her children had leukemia at a young age and her personal investigation is credited with prompting state officials to investigate.

You can also learn more about where your water comes from.  The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Source Water Protection Program (SWAP) posts fact sheets online where you can search for your area by county and community to find out where your water comes from and get a general rundown of its overall safety.

Additionally, all cities and towns in Illinois of at least 25 year round residents are required by the state EPA to produce a “Consumer Confidence Report” on its drinking water.  As of March 15th, 2009, the Illinois EPA has provided access to these reports online through their “Drinking Water Watch” website.

Got a Chicago question that's vexing you? Ask the Chicago Explainer here on the Windy Citizen at editor@windycitizen.com