Persistence pays off in Springfield. Take the effort to foist a new “clean coal” plant on Illinois ratepayers that has been percolating in the General Assembly after being repeatedly voted down in the Senate. more ›

In honor of Earth Day, over 50 Chicagoans journeyed to the northside on an unforeseen sunny Saturday to clean the Sierra Club’s adopted Montrose beach. The efforts of the green-minded beachcombers resulted in a successful spring cleaning. The Chicago Group of the Sierra Club will be hosting monthly nature tours and bird walks from 7:30-10:00am starting Saturday, May 21, 2011. The designated Illinois natural area is home to migrant and nesting birds, foxes, coyote, beavers, and indigenous plants. To learn more about the Sierra Club outings, visit their website. more ›

New documents have emerged that show the damage caused by a sewage pollution stream in the Chicago River that extends all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Did that information come from a brave whistleblower? Or a Wikileaks sleuthing of secret files? Nope. Turns out it comes from testimony by the authority itself and its allies aimed at proving that they had already trashed the River with pollution too thoroughly to make it worth saving. more ›

Sandblasting the inside of a pipeline seems like a pretty bad idea. But a a new kind of petroleum tied to last summer’s oil spills in Romeoville and the Kalamazoo River may be doing just that. Those claims come from a report making waves all over the U.S. and Canada detailing “DilBit” a kind of oil that is flowing with growing frequency under communities in suburban Chicago and Northwest Indiana on its way to area refineries. more ›

It’s been a rough week for Mark Kirk. He lost his green group support and more military misremember-ments surfaced, elevating his national profile in a way he might not prefer. In recent elections, Kirk had been one of the few Republican candidates who could claim strong support from environmentalists. But that ended this week as the Sierra Club and League of Conservation Voters announced that they would not support him in the race to fill Illinois’ empty Senate seat. Oil policy and a flip-flop on his energy bill vote earlier in the year are at the heart of the groups’ decision to pull their support. Tony Massaro of the League of Conservation Voters told Lynn Sweet at the Sun-Times, "He was one of the people down on the floor of the House chanting 'Drill, Baby, Drill!' in August, 2008." more ›

Music festivals are lots of things to lots of people: to the City, they represent quality of life and revenue draws from tourism; to music fans, they can be a great way to see many of your favorite bands all at once, while checking out new music; to some, they're like a vacation in your own town. But to activists and social movement groups, they're also an opportunity to reach out to people that might... more ›