The Quebec-based electric school bus maker found eager customers in Illinois school districts, which wanted to take advantage of generous federal grants, reduce pollution and give kids a cleaner, quieter ride to school.

But the bad news about Lion, which has been building for months, got worse Monday, with a court-appointed monitor saying there is a “very high” likelihood that the company will be liquidated, according to the Globe and Mail and other outlets.

“It’s a bit of a sad story, because it’s the right company with an interesting product,” said Yan Cimon, a professor of business strategy at the Université Laval in Québec City. He said Lion followed an ambitious path — including a bold expansion into the United States — and ultimately the company’s sales didn’t keep up.

“Had Lion been a bit more conservative, maybe they wouldn’t be where they are,” he said.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a strong proponent of clean energy, attended the opening of Lion’s now-shuttered Illinois plant in 2023, along with both Illinois senators.

“Illinois has made tremendous strides turning the state into a manufacturing hub for electric vehicles,” the governor’s press secretary, Alex Gough, said Monday in a written statement.

“Governor Pritzker remains committed to maintaining an ecosystem where EV companies and their employees are able to thrive,” the statement said. “Just this morning, (electric vehicle-maker) Rivian made a major commitment to their growth in Illinois by bringing a supplier park to Normal.”

Rivian is constructing a new 1.2 million-square-foot supplier park in Normal, according to a news release from the company. As part of that, Rivian will invest nearly $120 million, which will enable the company to develop the supplier park and create nearly 100 new direct jobs.

Lion announced in December that it was suspending operations at its Illinois plant and temporarily laying off approximately 400 workers in Canada and the United States.

Then last week the company suffered another major setback when Quebec announced it would not invest $24 million in an effort to relaunch the company, according to the Globe and Mail.

“It does not bode well for Lion,” Cimon said. “It may be worth more if it’s dismembered and its assets are sold individually than if the company is kept whole.”

Workingman Capital, a company that helps sell or liquidate manufacturing assets, is listing an equipment auction at its website for a “Lion-Electric Chicago Facility,” at the address of Lion’s Illinois plant.

Susan Mudd, a senior policy advocate at the Environmental Law and Policy Center, said Lion’s apparent failure is very unfortunate, but she sees it as a small step back rather than a reflection of broader trends.

“It doesn’t mean that electric school buses themselves are the problem. A particular company expanded in too many ways, too fast,” she said.

She pointed to new players in the electric school bus business, such as GreenPower in West Virginia, and she noted that big legacy school bus companies such as Bluebird, which sell both electric and diesel buses, have a “huge advantage” over newer, electric-only companies like Lion.

Electric buses are still “where the future is going,” Cimon said.

“The long-term trends are there,” he said. “The whole world is moving toward electric. You see it in China. You see it in Europe. Europeans are really interested in electric. There are other North American companies that look toward electric. So in that sense, it will come.”

nschoenberg@chicagotribune.com

On Sunday, the president announced in a social media post that he would direct the Bureau of Prisons and the FBI to rebuild and reopen Alcatraz to “house America’s most ruthless and violent Offenders.”

But if Trump is to get his prison, the bureau will have to first pass a number of environmental reviews, including the National Environmental Protection Act, and the California Environmental Quality Act, also known as CEQA.

President Donald Trump says he’s going to reopen Alcatraz prison. Doing so would be difficult and costly

CEQA requires developers to measure how a proposed project might hurt the environment — from wildlife to impacting water resources — and show how it will mitigate those impacts. Often, groups looking to block a project will sue under CEQA, claiming that an agency’s environmental report hasn’t met the mark.

There are a few major environmental hurdles any prison on Alcatraz would have to clear.

First, the birds.

Several species of waterfowl nest on Alcatraz throughout the year. These include the Western gull, cormorants, and the pigeon guillemot, which are legally protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act. Parts of the island are closed during seabird breeding season.

Contractors doing rehab work to the historic Alcatraz prison regularly have to pause construction or work around breeding season for these birds, historian John Martini said. Some parts of the island are closed much of the year to the public so the birds can roost. (Even the Escape from Alcatraz triathalon organizers are required to note in their permit that the swim won’t have a significant impact on birds.)

Alcatraz also has historic status. The island was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976 and was designated a National Historic Landmark — an even more elusive status — in 1986. The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to minimize harm to National Historic Landmarks when taking on projects that would impact them. Historic resources are also recognized as part of the environment under CEQA.

If the project does receive its environmental clearance, it might not be until Trump is out of office.

Consider how long other Alcatraz projects have taken.

The National Park Service started planning for a new ferry landing on Alcatraz for visitors in 2015. It took nearly two years for NPS to get environmental clearance — in part because the city of Sausalito appealed the project under CEQA, holding the appeal over NPS as leverage to ensure the agency designed it such that new ferries wouldn’t increase traffic around downtown Sausalito. It took another few years to get approvals from the city and Port of San Francisco. The project is finally set to be complete this winter — a decade later.

Even if the project were to pass environmental clearances, a new prison on Alcatraz would be extraordinarily difficult to build, Martini said.

“It’s a rock,” he said of the island. “There’s no soil out there. There’s no source of fresh water. When they built the prison back in the 1910s, they had to bring out everything — huge amounts of water for mixing concrete, let alone what was needed to support the people living on the island.”

The anaerobic digester represents the culmination of a combined effort by the Auburn Gresham community, politicians and scientists to change Chicago’s approach to keeping food waste out of landfills, which are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the country.

The operation is “the first facility in the U.S. dedicated exclusively to processing inedible food waste in packaging,” according to a news release from Green Era Campus, which is run by a partnership of community groups and is home to the digester. By accepting still-packaged food, such as chopped salad kits, pizzas in takeout boxes and produce in mesh bags that are separated before composting begins, the operation can reduce disposal costs for businesses and municipalities.

While anaerobic digestion is not a new technology and has long been used in agricultural settings, the campus is pioneering a closed-loop, zero-waste system that returns municipal food waste to the soil in the form of nutrient-rich compost and to the power grid in the form of renewable energy.

“In other words, food waste is not waste — it’s a resource,” said Jason Feldman, CEO of the sustainability nonprofit Green Era, during a recent public unveiling. “The Green Era anaerobic digester is more than infrastructure, it’s a community-powered climate solution.”

Since operations began in April 2023, the digester has recycled over 40,000 tons of food waste from residents and businesses, according to Green Era leaders.

Two Mariano’s grocery stores in Evergreen Park and Oak Lawn have since 2023 diverted 500 tons of unsold or inedible food from landfills by sending it to the South Side digester — an operation that will soon expand to eight more stores in West Loop, South Loop, Bridgeport, Edgewater, Ukrainian Village, New City and Lakeshore East.

“Anything and everything, whether it’s in packages, whether it’s in cans — doesn’t matter,” said Michael Marx, division president of Mariano’s. “What we saw was this phenomenal opportunity to be industry-leading in the way that we would dispose of food.”

The food industry will always produce waste, he added. But an outlet like this, he said, is “game-changing.”

This could be especially true for cities trying to ramp up their composting efforts. In Chicago, the city’s first composting initiative, launched in late 2023 with 20 drop-off sites, has collected 400 tons of food scraps from 6,700 households as of this March. The scraps are processed at the Harbor View Composting Facility in South Deering, operated by Whole Earth Compost. However, the program doesn’t accept any kinds of packaging — even certified compostable or paper bags.

A spokesperson from the Chicago Department of Streets and Sanitation said the city is considering all options and will continue to explore “innovative ways” to build on its food waste program.

“Although we do not currently plan to send food scrap material to the Green Era, we are excited and encouraged by its potential development for the future of waste diversion in Chicago,” the spokesperson said.

Closing the loop

After the former International Harvester site was approved for a government remediation program to rid it of industrial contaminants, the Auburn Gresham lot on 83rd Street was turned into the Green Era Campus — which includes a 35,000-square-foot facility for the digester system and soon an urban farm, education center and community green space.

Different phases of the campus development have been funded through charitable donations, investors, the city’s Climate Infrastructure Fund and federal funding secured by U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth.

Besides accepting still-packaged food, the facility, like other composters, takes expired or spoiled products that food banks can’t distribute and would otherwise end up in landfills. Northern Illinois Food Bank sent 1.2 million pounds of food over the last year, reducing its carbon footprint by more than half, said Chris Gillette, the food bank’s director of operations.

Recycling unsellable, still-packaged goods is part of what Green Era hopes will make its waste management solution attractive to big retailers, rather than opting for open-air composters that produce and release carbon dioxide and other harmful gases into the atmosphere.

“It shortens food miles” — the measurement of the environmental impact of transporting food — “so it’s more convenient” for waste haulers and their clients, said Erika Allen, co-founder of the campus and CEO of Urban Growers Collective, a nonprofit of community farms and gardens in underprivileged areas in the West and South sides.

It has drawn participation from all corners of the city.

Block Bins — a crowdfunded curbside compost program with residential and commercial clients — has brought all of its food waste to the Auburn Gresham campus in the past year, including the hundreds of tons of food waste from Mariano’s.

Since 2018, the small hauling company has deployed over 1,000 receptacles to city blocks across Chicago to reduce barriers to organic waste recycling through shared community bins. Fees start at $10 per month for 5 gallons.

“We’ve obviously diversified now, because everybody is wasting food all over the place, in a lot of different ways,” said Kyle Preuss, chief marketing officer of Block Bins. Besides grocery stores, commercial clients include food pantries, cafes, restaurants and condo associations.

Being able to pick up food scraps in Wicker Park, drive them down to Auburn Gresham to be converted into natural gas for local use and compost for urban farms means that the food’s life cycle begins, ends and begins again in Chicago instead of being sent out to a suburb — which Preuss says is rare when it comes to managing waste in a big city.

“So, your food waste is from Chicago, for Chicago,” he said. “That is the Block Bins mindset: first, inclusivity — ensure that as many people that want to participate can — and closing the loop.”

Resilient future

When haulers drop off food waste at the Green Era Campus warehouse, a machine sorts it and removes any packaging. Packaging materials that can be salvaged like pallets, cardboard, glass and cans are also recycled, said Feldman, the Green Era CEO.

“Then what we’re left with is a big, food-waste sort of milkshake,” he said, which gets pumped into the digester tank outside to be mixed and broken down.

The product coming out of the digester, called digestate, gets mixed in with soil and other compost to be used across Urban Growers Collective’s community gardens around the city; the Green Era Campus will also use it in its future urban farm and greenhouse.

In contrast to open-air composters, anaerobic digesters provide an oxygen-free environment for microorganisms to break down organic waste. It’s similar to the decomposition that happens in a landfill, but the digester system captures the methane that would normally be released. Methane has over 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide during its first 20 years in the atmosphere.

The methane is then processed to meet purity standards and separated from other chemical compounds to become renewable natural gas.

“So we’re decarbonizing the local gas,” Feldman said, “because we’re taking it from a waste product that would otherwise go to a landfill.”

The carbon-negative renewable natural gas the Green Era Campus has been providing to the Peoples Gas system since June can power thousands of single-family homes, said Polly Eldringhoff, the company’s vice president of operational performance and compliance.

“This initiative marks a significant step towards a cleaner, more resilient and inclusive energy future for our city,” Eldringhoff said.

Because the renewable natural gas is mixed in with the overall gas supply, customers who want to purchase it don’t need to install special equipment. For more information, residents can fill out the website contact form at greenerachicago.org/contact.

After food waste is recycled, composting programs often send it back to the soil by selling it to landscaping companies — the city, for instance, does so at $18 per cubic yard with a minimum of 1 cubic yard. Block Bins recently gave about 3 cubic yards of compost back to 75 of its residential clients.

Through a distribution cooperative, the Green Era Campus is returning finished compost to workers from the community to use in home gardens and commercial landscape projects in a city where clean, healthy soil is in short supply.

The natural fertilizing product will also be used on-site to grow affordable, fresh produce and plants — including 10,000 collard bunches, 3,500 pints of strawberries, 4,000 tomatoes and over 70 kinds of medicinal and culinary herbs — for Auburn Gresham residents, who experience some of the highest rates of food insecurity in Chicago and almost half of which live below the federal poverty line.

“I stand here … with deep pride — not just on this campus, but in what it represents: the South Side that is leading and healing, that’s innovating, building and growing,” Allen said.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

And now it’s up to the Indiana Natural Resources Commission to figure out which of the lines matters most as it weighs the town’s desire to protect homes and infrastructure and Save the Dunes’ interest in protecting public access to the beach.

In 2020, when the lake level was high, the tiny town of 1,167 people declared an emergency and reinforced the shoreline with boulders weighing one to five tons each. Waves were washing away the steel wall that had been installed to protect the town.

“It was overtopping the pilings at this point right here,” Town Council President Scott Kingan said as he stood on the 20-foot easement between the homes and the lake at the northeast corner of the town.

He gestured toward a multimillion-dollar house visible from Indiana Dunes National Park. “They had contractors coming out and giving estimates on demoing homes,” Kingan said. The owners were days away from making a painful decision when the town acted to reinforce the shoreline.

It cost $10 million to protect the homes, with homeowners kicking up to $500,000 each to pay for it, Kingan said. The current project is $2 million, much cheaper because it’s not being done in crisis mode.

Now, with the lake level low, the town wants to continue the project, to resume for a second phase. Contractor G.E. Marshall of Valparaiso had just begun placing rocks when Save the Dunes and the Conservation Law Center obtained a preliminary injunction to stop the work.

“This is a very difficult, intractable problem,” said environmental attorney Kim Ferraro, representing Save the Dunes in this case.

“The Department of Natural Resources approved the permit without delineating the boundary between private property and the public beach,” she said.

For people along Indiana’s Lake Michigan shoreline, it’s a familiar battle.

In the Gunderson v. State case, some homeowners in Long Beach argued that their property extended to the water’s edge. Not so, said Save the Dunes. In 2018, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled beaches below the ordinary high-water mark are public beaches.

But where is that mark? That’s the line in the sand that is the source of the current battle between Ogden Dunes and Save the Dunes.

After the Supreme Court ruling, the Indiana General Assembly tasked the DNR with protecting the public’s access to the beach.

“The public trust doctrine goes back to the nation’s founding,” Ferraro said. When Indiana became a state in 1816, the federal government ceded waters and more for Indiana to protect the public trust for boating, swimming, fishing and other uses.

Ferraro accused the DNR of failing to delineate the ordinary high water mark. “Why did we spend six years fighting Gunderson for DNR not to protect the land that belongs to the public?”

Nerd alert: The number 581.5 is at issue here. That’s the number of feet the International Great Lakes Datum of 1985 used to measure water levels in the Great Lakes and the St. Lawrence River basin. In Indiana’s case, that’s the ordinary high-water mark to show the highest Lake Michigan water level expected in the area.

Kingan said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the state came out to place flags along the shoreline. It appeared the ordinary high-water mark was about where gentle waves now caress the beach or maybe even further north into the lake, he was told.

“From the town’s perspective, we didn’t do anything wrong,” Kingan said.

In 2020, when Ogden Dunes received an emergency DNR permit for the first phase of revetment on the east end of town, where the erosion was worst, lake levels were extremely high. “The water levels are low so there’s no emergency right now,” Save the Dunes Executive Director Betsy Maher said.

Understanding the cause of the erosion requires knowledge of Lake Michigan’s mechanics. Sand travels from east to west along the southern edge of the lake. That’s how beaches are replenished.

Even as Save the Dunes and Ogden Dunes tussle over the revetment issue and protecting public access to the beach, they both point to the cause of the erosion – large manmade structures that extend north into the lake, blocking the natural flow of sand. In Ogden Dunes’ case, it’s the Port of Indiana in Portage.

A manmade structure traps flow on the east side of the structure and starves the west side.

At Indiana Dunes National Park’s Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk along Burns Waterway, a foredune was washed away by Lake Michigan when the lake level was high, causing the National Park Service and Portage Street Department to cooperate in placing large rocks at the shoreline to protect the pavilion and other infrastructure at that unit of the national park.

The federal government, like Ogden Dunes, needed to harden the shoreline to protect important infrastructure, Kingan said.

He’s concerned about what will happen if the state expands the port to accommodate more ship traffic. Kingan, who runs a sailing school in Michigan City, understands the benefits of additional business that comes from expanding ship access to Northwest Indiana. But he also wonders what the environmental impact could be.

Dredging could provide the sand for what’s called beach nourishment. Sand dredged from the bottom of the lake is dumped offshore so it can feed beaches to the west. That’s a process by which Mount Baldy, at the national park’s eastern edge, is fed.

The pier at Michigan City, like the one at the Port of Indiana, blocks the flow of sand. The Sheridan Beach area and Washington Park east of the lighthouse have grown over the decades since the pier was built.

The Port of Indiana was developed in the 1960s, part of the compromise that ultimately led to the creation of Indiana Dunes National Park, then Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, in 1966.

Back then, engineers understood what would happen to the flow of sand when the port was built. “There’s documented evidence that they knew there would be a disruption to the sand, which would cause erosion,” Maher said.

Ogden Dunes has a long history of lawsuits over this. When the town was developed 100 years ago, erosion wasn’t an issue. For the last half a century or more, erosion has been a major concern.

Kingan predicted that five years ago, if the town hadn’t hardened the shoreline, it could have lost two rows of homes, Shore Drive, septic tanks and more. “If we hadn’t done anything, we probably would have had a pretty major environmental disaster,” he said.

The state and Corps of Engineers worked together to build the port, but the federal government didn’t want any liability for the environmental consequences, Maher said, and left that to the state to deal with.

“We all know exactly what the solution is, and it’s more sand,” Kingan said – to the tune of 200,000 cubic yards of sand each year. “These solutions are just in the tens of millions of dollars,” plus annual maintenance, which is why the town continues to fight for a long-term solution, he said.

In one settlement with the port, the town received money to buy a dredge but used the money to file another lawsuit instead, Maher said. “They haven’t had clean hands, but hindsight is 20/20,” she said.

“It’s an unfortunate situation in Ogden Dunes, where they suffered so much erosion,” but it’s a living shoreline, Maher said. “Our greatest state resource,” she said, is Lake Michigan’s shoreline. It’s why Northwest Indiana is so populous and a major portion of Indiana’s economy.

Hardening the shoreline makes beaches go away, Maher said.

Kingan pointed to sand piling up in front of the rocks placed in the first phase of the revetment effort as evidence that sand will return.

The town plans to place more sand and plant native grasses to help keep it in place as part of the second phase, he said.

In addition, the town is adding access points and stairs to improve public access to the beach, Kingan said. “Public access has not gone away. I would argue we have increased public access.”

In just a few weeks, the Indiana Natural Resources Council will take up the issue, drawing its own line in the sand to determine whether the revetment project will continue and under what conditions.

Doug Ross is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.

In the Pacific Palisades neighborhood, construction workers recently began placing wooden beams to frame a house on a lot where only a charred fireplace remains standing. In the seaside city of Malibu and foothills neighborhood of Altadena, many land parcels where homes once stood are being cleared of debris.

Hundreds of homeowners have sought city or county approval for new home designs and other permits to eventually rebuild or repair damaged homes, though few have gotten the green light to break ground.

Some 17,000 homes, businesses and other structures burned to the ground in the Jan. 7 fires. It’s uncertain how much will be rebuilt.

Many homeowners will not be able to afford it, even those with insurance. Some are still trying to figure out whether it’s safe to return to their properties, given limited data on the degree to which toxins from the fires, including lead and asbestos, may have permeated their land. Roughly 400 land parcels are already for sale in the fire-ravaged areas.

Facing overwhelming loss and the chaos that comes with sudden displacement, those looking to rebuild must navigate an often confusing and time-consuming process. In most cases, it will take years for them to rebuild.

LA issued its first building permit nearly two months after the fires started. It took more than seven months before the first building permit was issued following the Woolsey Fire in 2018.

“Putting this in context of other disasters, the speed is actually probably faster than expected,” said Sara McTarnaghan, a researcher at the Urban Institute who studied the aftermath of urban wildfires in recent years in Colorado, Hawaii and California.

Resolving to rebuild in Altadena

Kathryn Frazier, a music publicist and life coach, had lived in her four-bedroom, three-bath house in Altadena for 10 years and raised her two children there. After her home burned to the ground, she was in shock and questioned whether it made sense to come back.

But after conversations with neighbors, she became determined to rebuild.

“I’m not leaving,” Frazier said. “That’s what kept coming up for everybody, and the more we all talked to each other the more we were all like ‘hell yes.’”

She is making progress. Frazier hired a crew to clear the property of debris and she is nearly through the first phase of permitting, which involves getting county review and approval for her new home’s design. The next phase before receiving approval to begin construction includes reviews of electrical, plumbing and other aspects of the design.

Frazier, 55, is rebuilding her home without major changes to its size or location in order to qualify for an expedited building permit approval process.

“We are hoping to be building by June or July, latest,” she said. “I’ve been told that maybe by February or March of 2026 we could be back in our home.”

For now, Frazier is getting quotes on windows, skylights and other home fixtures in hopes of locking in prices before they go up as more construction projects ramp up, or in response to the Trump administration’s ongoing trade war.

“I’m doing things like scouring Home Depot, finding slate tiles that look modern and beautiful, but they’re actually really cheap,” she said.

Recreating a home in the Palisades

DeAnn Heline, a TV showrunner, knows what it’s like to build her dream house from the ground up.

She waited more than two years for construction to be completed on the five-bedroom, eight-bath home with ocean views. Once the project was done, her husband vowed to never build another house. The family lived there for six years before it was destroyed in the Palisades Fire.

“It was ash. There was nothing,” Heline said.

The couple, who have two daughters, have lived in the neighborhood for more than 30 years. They couldn’t imagine giving up and not rebuilding.

“Not only are we building another house, we’re building the exact same house again,” Heline said, noting the new home will have some upgrades including fire-resistant materials and sprinklers for the exterior of the house.

Recently, they cleared debris from the land where the house once stood, a particularly onerous task because the home featured a large basement into which much of the structure collapsed as it burned.

Heline isn’t sure when construction will begin, but figures it could be two or three years. She wonders, however, what the neighborhood will look like by then.

“What are you going back to? You’re going back to a moonscape? Are you there and no one else is on your block, or are you going back to a construction zone for many more years?” she said.

Banding together as a community

The Eaton wildfire destroyed many of the more than 270 historic Janes Cottages in Altadena, including the three-bedroom home Tim Vordtriede shared with his wife and two young children.

The family had only lived in the roughly 100-year-old house for three years.

“We just loved the storybook cottage and the vibe, and of course the grander vibe of Altadena,” he said. “It was perfect.”

Vordtriede, 44, has decided to rebuild, but not just yet. For now, he is using his experience as a construction project manager to help others who also lost their homes.

He co-founded Altadena Collective, a group providing assistance with home designs and guidance on how to navigate the complex and lengthy approval process for rebuilding permits. Of the roughly two dozen clients that the group is serving, at reduced cost, three are in the early stages of the permitting process.

Even after projects reach shovel-ready status, homeowners will have to wait perhaps more than a year before they can move in, he said.

“My first statement when anyone walks in the door is: We’re not here to help you design your dream home,” Vordtriede said. “This isn’t a dream time. This is a nightmare, and our job is to get you out of the nightmare as soon as possible.”

Chilean authorities issued an evacuation alert for the entire coastal section of the Strait of Magellan, in the far south of the country.

Due to a “tsunami alert, evacuation to a safe zone is being ordered for the coastal sectors of the Magallanes region,” Chile’s National Service for Disaster Prevention and Response said in a message sent to the public.

It also requested that all beach areas in the Chilean Antarctic territory be abandoned.

Chilean President Gabriel Boric wrote on X that “all resources are available” to respond to potential emergencies.

“We are calling for the evacuation of the coastline throughout the Magallanes region,” Boric wrote. “Right now, our duty is to be prepared and heed the authorities.”

In the Argentine city of Ushuaia, considered the world’s southernmost, local authorities suspended all types of water activities and navigation in the Beagle Channel for at least three hours. No material damage or evacuations were reported.

“The earthquake was felt primarily in the city of Ushuaia and, to a lesser extent, in towns across the province,” the local government reported. “In the face of these types of events, it is important to remain calm.”

The USGS said the quake’s epicenter was under the ocean 219 kilometers (173 miles) south of the Argentinian city of Ushuaia.

Summit Carbon Solutions already will likely have to readjust plansfor their estimated $8.9 billion, 2,500-mile (4,023-kilometer) project after South Dakota’s governor signed a ban on the use of eminent domain — the government seizure of private property with compensation — to acquire land for carbon dioxide pipelines.

Now, after several proposals advanced through the Republican-controlled Iowa House, 12 GOP state senators have told their Republican leaders that they will not vote on any budget, which the Legislature is constitutionally required to approve, until they bring a pipeline bill to the floor.

“The people of South Dakota emphatically stated that eminent domain will never be granted for this pipeline to cross South Dakota, and it is past time for lowa to do the same,” the senators wrote in a joint letter, saying they believe “addressing eminent domain is more important than the budget or any other priority for the 2025 session.”

It’s unclear if the demands will be met or what a measure that passes the full chamber would look like, given the wide range of views on the issue among the 34 Senate Republicans, who hold a supermajority in the chamber.

The proposed 2,500-mile pipeline would carry carbon emissions from ethanol plants in Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota and South Dakota to be stored underground permanently in North Dakota.

By lowering carbon emissions from the plants, the pipeline would lower their carbon intensity scores and make them more competitive in the renewable fuels market. The project would also allow ethanol producers and Summit to tap into federal tax credits.

The project received permit approvals in Iowa, Minnesota and North Dakota, but it does face various court challenges, and its application was rejected in South Dakota last month.

“Summit Carbon Solutions has invested four years and nearly $175 million on voluntary agreements in Iowa, signing agreements with more than 1,300 landowners and securing 75% of the Phase One route,” Summit spokesperson Sabrina Zenor said in a statement. “We are committed to building this project, committed to Iowa, and remain focused on working with legislators — including those with concerns.”

Some Midwest farmers, despite loyalty to the ethanol industry, have voiced strong opposition to the pipeline since its inception, objecting to its presence on or near their land and questioning the safety of having the pipeline in their backyards.

Then, a slew of eminent domain legal actions in South Dakota to obtain land provoked a groundswell of opposition in the state, sending the issue to the governor’s desk. Lee Enterprises and The Associated Press reviewed hundreds of cases, revealing the great legal lengths the company went to get the project built.

Iowa state Sen. Kevin Alons said the senators who are forcing the issue want an amendment to the bill that mimics South Dakota’s new law, but it remains to be seen what provisions, if any, would be included in a final version or whether Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds would give it her signature.

“A number of Republican Senators are working on policy surrounding eminent domain and pipeline issues and I am optimistic we will find a legislative solution,” Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver said in a statement.

The Iowa House has sent several proposals to the Senate. During debate on the House floor, state Rep. Steven Holt expressed plenty of disappointment that the Senate had not taken up the issue in the past.

“Regardless of whether the Senate’s gonna pass it or not, we’re going to fight for it here because it’s the right thing to do,” Holt said.

“You chose to try to trample on the rights of citizens of Iowa and South Dakota,” he added of Summit, “and now the chickens are coming home to roost.”

Associated Press reporters Jack Dura in Bismarck, North Dakota, and Sarah Raza in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, contributed to this report.

The temporary lifeline for the Soybean Innovation Lab at the university’s flagship Urbana-Champaign campus came just as the center, which works to establish soybean markets in sub-Saharan Africa and other regions, was scheduled to close in mid-April, triggering layoffs for its 30-person staff.

The “very generous” donation, which came from a private enterprise in Europe that had seen coverage of the lab’s predicament, will allow the lab to retain about eight employees to continue its work helping the nascent soybean industry in the Lower Shire Valley region in southern Malawi, said Peter Goldsmith, the lab’s director.

That work was supposed to be funded by the federal government through a $1.4 million contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development. But the plug was pulled on that and the rest of the lab’s USAID funding when the Trump administration and adviser Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency moved to shut down the aid agency and terminate most of its contracts.

The new funding will allow the soybean lab to finish its current project in southern Malawi, culminating in an industry tour for investors, importers, exporters and others in late August, Goldsmith said. The money also will be used to demonstrate the impact of the lab’s efforts and will buy Goldsmith time to continue his search for additional funding to keep the lab going beyond the next year.

“We’ve got some ideas, and other people have reached out as well, not just this donor, so that allows us to explore those options,” Goldsmith said Monday. But “it’s still … bleak.”

When it comes to the kind of high-risk, low-return research conducted by land-grant universities like U. of I., “the public sector is critical,” Goldsmith said. “The federal government is critical for putting the U.S. in a technological leadership position, and removing that is a big loss, and filling that in may not happen.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week unveiled the Trump administration’s plan to “make the State Department Great Again” — a riff on Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan — which includes a diminished role for foreign assistance programs.

Goldsmith said he has not received any indication from the State Department that it is considering renewed funding for his lab and more than a dozen others at land-grant universities across the country.

While a federal court in Washington, D.C., has ruled that the moves to shut down USAID likely violated the Constitution, an appeals court allowed the dismantling to continue.

Just three years ago, the soybean lab was awarded a $30 million grant from USAID to continue its work in sub-Saharan Africa.

The lab has worked in more than 30 African countries, helping spread expertise and technology to continue growing the industry, from the plants in the ground to the manufacturing processes needed to unlock the soybean’s versatile protein and oil.

In Malawi, for example, the lab’s experts “essentially worked ourselves out of a job” in the northern part of the country by successfully spurring soybean production, Goldsmith, who’s led the lab for more than a decade, told the Tribune earlier this year. The focus shifted two years ago to the Lower Shire Valley, the country’s hotter, drier southern region, where the agriculture sector is looking to diversify from crops like sugarcane and tropical fruits.

By shutting down the lab, the federal government is doing away with an effective tool for fighting poverty and malnutrition in sub-Saharan Africa and hampering the growth of a potential export market for soybeans grown in Illinois and across the U.S., Goldsmith said.

That lost opportunity in Africa may not be apparent to farmers yet because “it’s still young; it’s still a new market; it’s still abstract,” Goldsmith said.

“It’s understandable that the (U.S.) growers would not be aggravated at the loss of the African opportunity because they don’t really see it yet,” he said. “That’s our job is to help them see it. But that’s still — it takes time.”

The rabbit infected with tularemia was found in Tuscola, a small community south of Champaign, following weeks of reports of ill and dead squirrels in nearby Urbana. One of the rodents had also tested positive for the disease, which is rare but serious and can affect animals and humans.

“The presence of infected wildlife may indicate an increased risk of exposure in the area,” the Douglas County Health Department said in a Thursday statement, echoing an announcement made by the Champaign-Urbana Public Health District three days earlier about local squirrel deaths.

According to the Illinois Department of Public Health, tularemia is caused by Francisella tularensis, bacteria that are mostly found in rodents, rabbits and hares. About 100 to 200 cases are reported every year in the country, and it naturally occurs in all states except Hawaii. Illinois reported nine cases in 2023, behind seven other states: Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Arkansas, Colorado and Kentucky.

Pets can become infected if they come into contact with or eat an infected animal, or breathe in or ingest contaminated food or water. They can also be exposed to the disease through tick and flea bites. Pet owners should watch for signs of illness and consult a veterinarian with concerns, according to Douglas County health officials. The department also urges that cats and dogs not be allowed to roam outdoors unsupervised and be protected from tick bites.

While tularemia has not been found to spread between people, humans can catch it by being bitten by an infected tick, deerfly or other insect; skin contact with infected animals; eating or drinking contaminated food or water; or breathing in the bacteria during farming or landscaping activities if a tractor or mower runs over an infected animal’s carcass.

Health officials recommend wearing EPA-registered insect repellent and long clothing outdoors, not drinking untreated surface water, and not handling sick or dead wild animals unless wearing gloves.

Symptoms in humans include fever, chills, muscle pain or tenderness, and lack of energy. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, tularemia manifests in six main types with different signs and symptoms depending on how the bacteria enter the body — through the skin, eyes, mouth or lungs.

Up to 80% of cases lead to skin ulcers and swollen, tender glands. Effects from the other types include painful, red eyes with yellow discharge, a sore throat, stomach pain, nausea and vomiting, diarrhea, a dry cough, difficulty breathing, sharp chest pain and weight loss.

Because it is rare and its symptoms can be mistaken for other common illnesses, tularemia can be difficult to diagnose. The CDC recommends sharing any likely exposures with health-care providers to help with the diagnosis.

If untreated, tularemia has a human mortality rate of 5% to 15%, which can be lowered to about 1% by antibiotic treatment, according to state health officials.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

“We’re an old city,” said Jaime Prieto, deputy chief executive operator of Hammond Water Works. “There’s a lot of things that we need to repair and maintain.”

The city of Hammond has received $5 million through the Indiana Finance Authority’s State Revolving Fund program to help replace its lead service lines.

“The City of Hammond’s drinking water project will replace aging lead service lines in older areas of the distribution system,” said an IFA news release. “The project will ensure the City of Hammond is able to provide consistent quality water and help protect public health within its service area.”

According to the news release, Hammond will save about $5.5 million in principal and interest costs because of the program. SRF loans are administered by the IFA with joint funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the State of Indiana.

Prieto expects that the $5 million from the IFA will help replace lead service lines for about 400 Hammond homes.

In October 2024, the Biden administration issued a final rule requiring drinking water systems nationwide to identify and replace lead pipes within 10 years, according to the EPA. The EPA also planned to provide $2.6 billion in drinking water infrastructure funding, according to Post-Tribune archives.

The agency’s website does not say if the Trump administration has overturned that rule.

Hammond Mayor Tom McDermott previously told the Post-Tribune that he was concerned about funding to replace the city’s lead pipes, even with EPA funds.

The IFA program is the first time Hammond has teamed up with state and federal agencies to replace service lines, Prieto said.

“(This money) for lead pipe replacement is great,” he added. “We’re taking full advantage. Whatever the government wants to give us, we’ll take.”

In 2024, Hammond received $2.5 million to change lead lines for 150 homes in the city, Prieto said. Hammond and other surrounding communities are “underserved,” Prieto said, so receiving assistance is a great help for the city.

“We have water mains that are about 100 years old, but we also have the lowest water rate in the state of Indiana, so we don’t want to raise our rates,” he said. “But, at the same time, we do have improvements we have to make in our distribution and in our plan.”

mwilkins@chicagotribune.com