Updates from the Grant Recipients of the Edwards Coal-Fired Plant Settlement

Hollis is the K–8 public school district that includes the E.D. Edwards coal-fired power plant, whose illegal and harmful air pollution NRDC and its partners sued to stop. Our visit featured a ride with Hollis Superintendent Byron Sondgeroth on the all-electric bus that the district purchased with settlement funds, replacing a leased diesel bus. Our tour took us close to the plant, which closed pursuant to the settlement at the end of 2022. It was a beautiful clear day; the sun shone on the Illinois River and birds climbed in the sky as we stared at the now-quiet smokestacks. It felt like a monumental win to know that Hollis’s students and staff, as well as communities across greater Peoria, are now breathing cleaner air. 

We joined CityLink staff for a ride on ElBae, the electric transit bus purchased with settlement funds, and a tour of CityLink’s new bus garage, dispatch annex, and offices. ElBae, which replaced an old diesel bus, has been in service since February 2021, on routes serving Peoria’s poorest neighborhoods. Thanks to its custom wrap, the bus also serves as a clean energy ambassador and makes special trips to local schools. ElBae averages 4,500 miles a year and can travel for six to seven hours on a full charge; as of our visit, it was one of five all-electric buses in CityLink’s fleet.

Principal and former math teacher Arnold Spiker was our guide when we visited the Peoria Public School’s Woodruff Career & Technical Center, which used settlement funds to install a large solar array and develop a new Renewable Energy Training curriculum. The array supplies most of the massive old school building’s power and serves as a teaching tool for Renewable Energy students. As Principal Spiker led us through the back rooms that house the school’s electrical panels and heating and cooling equipment, we heard the quiet hum and buzz of the massive systems that control and convert the solar energy into electricity. We also visited the Renewable Energy classroom, which overlooks part of the solar array and was littered with drone kits, tools, and Solar Pathfinder devices. We were delighted to hear that, as of summer 2024, more than half the students who finished the curriculum had found internships or permanent jobs in clean energy and related technical fields, including HVAC and solar installation. 

A highlight of our trip was visiting three Peoria households that had received free home weatherization and safety upgrades through an Edwards settlement grant to Chicago-based Elevate Energy, which works in partnership with co-grantee METEC and local contractor Green Homes. 

Homeowner Keith Skaggs, a retired worker, suffers from COPD and is caring for a spouse who’s hospitalized with cancer. Elevate Energy and Green Homes improved the energy efficiency, safety, comfort, and value of his home by adding air sealing, insulation, and ventilation; upgrading his furnace and central air conditioning unit; and adding a whole-house air purifier and water filtration system to improve water quality and safety. Skaggs was effusive about these improvements and said Green Homes’ husband-and-wife team Kevin and Kathy Johnston treated him “like gold.”

Homeowner Elaine Walker, a retired great-grandmother, received a new furnace, heat pump air conditioner, and water heater, along with HVAC and electrical upgrades to support the new equipment and improve the safety of her home. Walker said the Johnstons “explained everything step-by-step, and it went smooth as glass. There were no issues; every question was answered, and they educated you on everything.” 

Homeowners Larry and Joyce Cooper live on a fixed income in a high-crime neighborhood. Before Elevate upgraded them to a modern heat pump air conditioner, Joyce Cooper had trouble sleeping because she was so worried about people breaking in by removing one of the couple’s window-mounted units. Elevate also replaced the Coopers’ water heater, which was releasing hazardous carbon monoxide into their home, with a new energy-efficient model.

We felt honored to meet these proud members of the Peoria community and see firsthand how investing in healthy homes uplifts people, nurtures health, and helps alleviate poverty.

METEC Executive Director Julie Hudelson Schmidgall gave us a tour of the home energy efficiency grantee’s building, which sits in one of Peoria’s poorest neighborhoods and across the street from homes developed by fellow energy efficiency grantee Peoria Housing Authority. METEC’s space is open to the community and offers free tax preparation, credit and budget literacy, and home-buying prep classes. METEC’s settlement grant helped the organization expand its services to include weatherization and other healthy-homes work, in partnership with Chicago-based home weatherization specialist Elevate Energy and local contractor Green Homes.

We visited doctors and other medical providers at a neighborhood clinic run by Heartland Health Services, which received settlement funds to support lung health at the Peoria City/County Public Health Department. Heartland, which focuses on serving people with financial and transportation barriers to care, has used the grant funds to purchase pulmonary spirometry machines, an important lung health screening tool, and simple take-home treatment devices for people suffering from asthma. More than 350 people have received free screenings since Heartland began its grant-funded work in fall 2021. 

We climbed fire ladders to the roof of the city of Peoria’s new Edward B. Gaines Jr. Fire Station 4 to visit and celebrate the completion of its settlement-funded solar array. The station, named after Peoria’s first Black firefighter, is located at the corner of West Howett Street and South Western Avenue in an old neighborhood with a tremendous feeling of growth and renewal. Jason Meeks, the supervisor of the city’s facilities operations and maintenance, who oversaw the station construction and array installation, told us that the project has prompted several other city fire stations to consider installing arrays to incorporate renewable energy and reduce operating costs. 

We visited Jubilee Ministries, a local charity that focuses on serving people with justice system history and other individuals with barriers to employment, to catch up with Office Manager Angela Smith and President Bob Kaiser and watch them welcome clients. Jubilee received settlement funds to help new job recipients with uniform and supply expenses and connect them with counseling and training services. Every client who receives financial support is asked to spend five hours giving back to a charity of their choice. 

Smith, a former Jubilee client, spoke about her own struggles with poverty and unemployment and her aspiration to be “Mom” to everyone who comes through Jubilee’s door. Among her many other responsibilities, Smith gives rides and moral support to clients who need help getting to or staying in training programs (which, for relatively lucrative jobs like commercial truck driving, may be out of state). She and Kaiser spoke at length about the combined effects of mass incarceration, crime, poverty, and racism on the communities that Jubilee serves, and the importance of giving young people a sense of purpose and momentum by helping them find paid work beyond entry-level food service. One recent success story is of someone they helped get a job working on a local factory line. After just a few days, the gentleman volunteered to train for and was able to move into a more skilled, higher-paying forklift job.

Entering Soulside Healing Arts, a not-for-profit yoga studio that received settlement funds to offer teacher training scholarships, was an immediate elixir. Housed in a warehouse in the industrial district, the space is warm, tranquil, and welcoming. We sat on the studio floor with founder Hannah Ramlo and scholarship recipients April Foster, Latanya Moore, and Epiphany Moon Vanna, who explained how they help Soulside bring yoga practice to community members who lack the funds or mobility to take traditional classes. One of the instructors who received a scholarship provides chair yoga to a mothers group at a local community center, and another leads classes at a senior center. Ramlo and her fellow instructors described how the movement and breathing they teach can help restore strength and peace to those who struggle with poor health and degraded environments. 

At Illinois Central College, which used settlement funds to offer scholarships to its Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) training program, we toured the clinical lab and met with Theresa Dibuono, program manager, and Karissa London, a program graduate. London explained how ICC’s program helped her balance her educational goals with the demands of being a single parent and her household’s sole earner, including coaching her through the program and helping her line up a local hospital job. London is a living example of how the CNA credential can lead to both immediate job opportunities and an evolving career in medicine; she has since gained a licensed practical nursing credential and, when we spoke with her, was preparing to become a registered nurse. 

In the clinical lab, which is stocked with hospital beds, dummies, and medical devices, London and Dibuono explained how students learn basics like taking vital signs, problem-solving, and helping patients feel at ease. Dibuono expressed that she is often reminded of the privilege of being a nurse when students are in the field, building on their foundational training and knowledge and making a difference: “When you are working with a patient, you have the privilege to see them at their worst and their best.”