Springfield’s power plant is the biggest user of water. This month, City Water, Light and Power announced it would ask the city council to approve updating the water demand analysis done for the department in 1991, the better to assess how best to meet the city’s future water needs. The proposed study will try to […]
City Water
Posted inOpinion
Lousy socialists
“The word ‘socialism,’” said Illinois governor John Peter Altgeld in a speech 115 years ago, “is used as a term of derision only by the ignorant or the servile.” Springfield has been the scene of an experiment in the public ownership and management of the means of production of a vital product since the days […]
Posted inNews
Arsenic, lots of it, found around CWLP%u2008ash ponds
Groundwater surrounding City Water, Light and Power’s coal ash ponds, located across the street from Lake Springfield, contains as much as nine times the amount of arsenic considered safe in drinking water, according to environmental testing performed in spring of 2010. Arsenic is a semi-metal that’s been linked to cancer of the bladder, lungs and […]
Posted inOpinion
Greener than thou
The world continues to surprise me, and never more than the day in 2008 I read that Springfield had been named one of the top 50 greenest cities in America by Popular Science magazine. Surprise gave way to dumbfoundedness in August, when the National Resources Defense Council recognized Springfield as one of its 22 “Smarter […]
Posted inOpinion
‘Great Refrigerator Roundup’ is a bad bargain
Until Springfield develops a taste for warm beer, refrigerators will continue to account (with air conditioners) for the major part of every household’s electricity bill. That’s especially true if the fridge is old. City Water, Light & Power estimates that there are 40,000 ice boxes built B.C. — Before Clinton — that are still running […]
