Chicago Tribune

TOWN OF PINES, Ind. — In the herb garden beside her home on Colorado Avenue, Cathi Murray digs through the soil and pulls out two glittering black rocks. They’re not ordinary stones, she said. They’re pieces of coal ash — waste from coal burned at the nearby Michigan City Generating …

As dawn broke over the Loop, Annette Prince patrolled the streets armed with a lime green net, racing to collect four colorful birds lying dead under glass skyscrapers before seagulls could snatch them up. It’s like an Easter egg hunt, she said — just not the fun kind. Every morning …

BRACEVILLE, Ill. — Inside Illinois’ largest nuclear power plant, massive turbines pull 100,000 gallons of water a minute from Braidwood Lake. On a recent tour of the Braidwood Nuclear Generating Station, a sprawling facility the size of two football fields and anchored by dual reactors, Constellation operators and technicians worked …

Hyde Park birding couple Pat and Steve Pearson have ventured out to Chicago’s Southeast Side once a week for over a year keeping their eyes and camera focused on two bald eagles soaring above South Deering. The couple watched the birds carry large twigs high into the treetops near Park …

Harold Wilken still remembers the moment nearly 30 years ago when he was sprayed with herbicides after a hose broke on his family farm in Danforth, Illinois. A decade later, Wilken was diagnosed with cancer. He said he believes years of herbicide exposure contributed to his health problems, including tonsil …

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Jason Bell has lived in Nunda Township for 27 years, long enough to have seen the Fox River flood multiple times. And this week, it’s flooding again. Along Beach Street in the Bayview Beach subdivision, where homes line a narrow channel off the river, docks and boats have been flooded …

Hundreds of protesters filled the streets of Pilsen on Sunday afternoon, chanting for justice and answers in a fatal hit-and-run that has remained unsolved for nine months. Dressed in black and pink, members of the crowd marched from Harrison Park to the Chicago Police Department’s 12th District precinct, calling out …

Homeowner Maha Amin moved three dozen sandbags from the trunk of her car to her driveway Thursday, bracing for more flooding in Des Plaines. After 16 years in her home without flooding incidents, she watched as a couple feet of stormwater poured into her basement during Sunday’s storm, destroying her …

Water began pouring into David Tahara’s North Park home Tuesday night around midnight, thanks to a late-breaking rainfall and a basement storm drain that smelled of sewage at certain points. By daylight, the water had receded, but Tahara couldn’t help but smell what he described as the lint-like residue as …

More than 200 Illinois residents gathered in Springfield on Wednesday for Environmental Lobby Day, joining lawmakers and advocates in the Illinois Capitol rotunda to push for a trio of environmental bills aimed at curbing pollution and protecting natural resources. “We’re facing some really, really big fights here,” said Cate Caldwell, …

After weeks of delays, four astronauts are preparing to launch Wednesday evening on a trip around the moon, the first such spaceflight to be undertaken in more than 50 years. “It’s really just a historic mission for the future Artemis missions, but also to prepare us for the human journey …

As energy bills climb across the state, lawmakers are exploring new ways to expand access to renewables. And one green option is outpacing the others: solar. Although Illinois is committed to achieving 100% renewable energy by 2050, a large group of state residents, including renters and condo owners, remain shut …

From sunrise to well past sundown, Rodney Bushmeyer has been driving his tractor over freshly turned soil on his western Illinois farm, planting soybean seeds. He has covered nearly 800 acres. But with another 2,200 acres to go, spring planting season is far from over. Bushmeyer has been cultivating fields …

A few hundred feet off the shoreline of Kenwood and Hyde Park lives an underwater marvel few Chicagoans ever see: the remnants of a 400 million-year-old coral reef scattered with ancient fossils and the wreckage of the Silver Spray, a steamship that sank after striking the shallow bedrock in 1914. …

Cook County Commissioner Donna Miller was declared the winner of the Democratic primary in Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District Tuesday, ending a comeback effort by former Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. Miller, who ran a health care-focused campaign, weathered criticism from opponents that her campaign was overly backed by a pro-Israel lobbying …

A recent pledge by President Donald Trump to protect the Great Lakes from invasive carp comes as his administration continues to withhold federal funding for a key Illinois project designed to stop the spread into Lake Michigan. Illinois officials say they welcome the president’s public support but are urging immediate …

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency denied Midwest Generation’s application to clean up more than 3 million tons of toxic coal ash in Joliet earlier this week, saying the company’s proposal was “insufficient.” The decision marks the first time the agency has rejected a coal ash cleanup permit since Illinois finalized …

Party in Aisle 8! Under the fluorescent lights and produce banners of Seafood City Supermarket, an unlikely dance floor opened for over a thousand Chicagoans Friday night. Inside this Filipino grocery store in the North Mayfair neighborhood, the aisles were packed with crowds waving Philippine flags, children perched on parents’ …

Sitting on the Mississippi River flood plains, Collinsville is among a handful of Illinois communities that draw drinking water from the American Bottoms aquifer. The Metro East town of 30,000 is also one of 21 communities, covering 47 water systems, that contain levels of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS …

Overlooking the shoreline of Lake Michigan and an aging coal plant, a packed conference room was filled with families, advocates and Illinois legislators celebrating the graduation of two dozen newly trained clean energy workers. “It’s not lost to me today that we’re sitting on the fifth floor of the College …

Residents of Chicago's North Shore neighborhoods respond to U.S. and Israel's coordinated attack on Iran, which killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

WHEATFIELD, Ind. — Surrounded by farmland and wetlands, three generations of the Hunter family have grown crops and raised cattle, chickens and horses in this quiet corner of northwest Indiana. When the Hunters first started farming the 20-acre plot “this was their dream property,” said granddaughter Carly Schroeder. But in …

The Evanston/Skokie District 65 School Board moved to dismiss an administrator Feb. 23 but did not identify the employee.

Bennison's Bakery in Evanston hosted its annual paczki eating contest on Feb. 14, 2026. Proceeds go to the Alzheimer's Association.

As sweeping changes to the federal Clean Water Act in recent years have weakened protections for wetlands, Illinois has become the first state in the nation to officially recognize a conservation tactic known as rewilding. The Illinois Rewilding Law, which took effect last month, empowers the Illinois Department of Natural …

On a brisk Wednesday morning, South Side residents gathered outside New Sullivan Elementary School to demand their voices be heard about a major development rising just across the street: Quantum Shore Chicago. “No quantum facility, invest in community,” demonstrators chanted. New Sullivan Elementary will serve as a polling site for …

On a brisk January day with wind chills plunging to minus 25 degrees, Paul “Blade” Bloedorn stood out on nearly 2 feet of ice on Lake Michigan’s Little Bay de Noc. Last weekend, more than 400 shacks speckled the frozen bay, Bloedorn recalled, as ice anglers flocked to the Upper …

Chicago residents are weathering a dangerous cold snap this week — but so are the trees. After a post on X warning of “exploding trees” went viral on social media ahead of this week’s polar vortex, many people are asking: What’s happening to our trees during this severe Arctic blast?

Polar vortexes are a year-round phenomenon. But Chicago-area residents only notice them when they collapse, experts say. That’s what’s happening starting Thursday when dangerously frigid air from Siberia and the North Pole is forecast to plunge the Great Lakes region into subzero territory for multiple days.