Reasons To Be Cheerful · 28 days ago

How Community Solar Turned a Superfund Site Into Savings in Illinois

A former workers' rights organizer in Waukegan, Illinois-a city scarred by five Superfund sites and decades of industrial pollution-now evangelizes for community solar with the zeal of someone who knows what it means to stretch a dollar and breathe dirty air. The 9.1-megawatt array rises from land once too toxic for a high school, too contaminated for homes, transformed into something that delivers modest but real relief: about $300 a year in savings for subscribers like Fredy Amador, who notes that "with how bad this economy is, it's an important impact." It's a story of pragmatic resurrection rather than redemption-the polluters who fouled the earth aren't absolved, but the earth itself gets a second use, held carefully in place by grass that mustn't be mowed too aggressively lest the toxins beneath stir. What emerges is neither utopia nor mere utility, but something rarer: a policy-driven proof that communities long treated as sacrifice zones can become beneficiaries of their own ruined ground. The solar panels don't erase history; they generate something new atop it-kilowatts and dignity both.