KCBX to build $120 million petcoke enclosure

Photo courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency

KCBX plans to build a huge $120 million indoor enclosure – roughly as large as Navy Pier’s Exhibition Hall – where it would consolidate its area coal and petcoke operations.

Chicago is requiring the company to enclose the petroleum coke that’s produced during the oil refining process at BP Whiting Refinery and stored in piles on the Southeast Side before being shipped on the Calumet River. Petcoke storage has been a point of controversy since a windstorm blew clouds of it through nearby neighborhoods in August 2013.

The company says the proposed enclosure would be one of the largest private-sectors investments on the Southeast Side since Ford pumped $400 million into modernizing the Chicago Assembly Plant in 2010…Please click here to read Joseph S. Pete’s story in the Times.