Nov. 17--Three women and two men are facing misdemeanor trespassing charges after a protest outside a terminal yard where piles of petroleum coke are stored on the Southeast Side, according to police.
The demonstrators were arrested around 11 a.m. Monday outside KCBX Terminals in the 10700 block of South Burley Avenue near the Calumet River, police said. They were part of a larger group staging a protest of the open storage of the gritty refinery byproduct.
The arrests came after the group linked arms at an entrance, blocking trucks. Those taken into custody ranged in age from their 20s to their 60s, police said.
The five were charged with misdemeanor trespassing.
KCBX has handled petroleum coke in Chicago for more than 20 years and air quality near the KCBX terminals is consistent with federal clean air standards, an emailed statement from Jake Reint, a KCBX spokesman, said.
The EPA determined that blackened home air furnace filters, which were alleged to contain dust from our operations, do not contain petcoke, Reint said.
Independent laboratories also have conducted tests on more than 100 soil and surface samples from the neighborhoods near the terminals and found no evidence of coal or petcoke dust.
The EPA's own ambient air monitor located a couple blocks from our Burley Avenue terminal at Washington High School has never exceeded national air standards for dust that could be associated with coal or petcoke, Reint said in the statement.
Petroleum coke is an important product that has many uses, including energy generation and the production of cement, steel, aluminum and other specialty products, according to the statement.
It is not considered toxic, but even so, KCBX has adopted practices to manage the potential for dust, Reint said in the statement.
