FeedLocal: Today’s news links
September 7, 2008 in Local Tags: crime, lead paint, murder, Teddy Jackson, traffic, West Main
Links via the Peoria Journal Star:
- Here’s some discussion of traffic along West Main Street in the West Bluff. Hopefully, all these traffic studies will provide details that will replace all the anecdotal evidence that the street needs to be narrowed. I’m 45 years old and I can’t recall a time when West Main wasn’t congested. It’s certainly not as congested on Friday and Saturday nights as it was in my youth, when teens from four different counties converged to “cruise Main.” As someone who lives in the area, I don’t want to see traffic diverted onto the side streets, rather than onto Interstate 74. Frankly, I don’t buy into the contention that folks will naturally start using the interstate to avoid driving on West Main. There are instances in which it’s quicker, but easier? Interstate driving is different than driving on city streets, and I am one of those people who would rather spend 15 minutes on city roads than 7 or ten on an interstate.
- You know all these wonderful old houses that everyone wants to preserve? Well, their wonderful old lead pipes and wonderful old lead paint chips are poisoning Peoria’s children. Scientists are concluding that there is no safe level of lead. But don’t worry. Peoria’s powers-that-be for decades successfully ignored the disease-causing human feces the city was pumping into the Illinois River. No doubt everyone in a position to try to fix this problem will explain this away as a statistical fluke.
- The city has identified who is responsible for the shooting death of former Manual track star Teddy Jackson. Apparently, it was the building. The structure exerted a form of mind control on a yet-unidentified person, forcing him to obtain two handguns and fire them into a crowd. The wise and all-knowing Peoria City Hall bureaucracy, knowing full well the powers this evil structure possesses, denied it a dance hall license. But this evil building would not be denied, and it used it’s powers to find a loophole that allowed it to be rented out for events.
September 7th, 2008 at 1:14 pm
My thoughts on Lead.
1) It is partly a statistical fluke. It is a fluke because I think Peoria is just doing a much better job of identifying the problem. There are much larger urban centers with many more older homes than Peoria who should be higher on the list than Peoria.
2) If you keep the lead painted you are fine. But as more n more of these old homes pass into impoverished families and scummy landlords, the basic maintenance of the home fails to protect.
3) Watch the vinyl siding… its a huge problem in the making. You almost never… and I mean NEVER see homes, who are getting vinyl installed, remove the old deteriorating wood siding. They just cover it up. That wood will continue to deteriorate, the paint will peel, and there is a good chance all that will accelerate for being wrapped in ‘plastic’. So… when the house is set to get a new installation of vinyl to replace the old vinyl, you will see all those paint chips come pouring out.
4) It is my opinion that those in the business of mitigating lead and asbestos engage in predatory pricing. I was quoted once that to abate the asbestos on our boiler (just the boiler not the pipes too) would cost $20-25,000 !!! I have heard similarly insane numbers for lead mitigation. After doing some research, I found that the homeowner can do their own abatement.
5) Looking at the supplies and further inquiry, I am under the impression that lot of the mitigation/abatement supplies are overpriced and that those doing the work charge a premium to for something that is otherwise mundane.
6) You will be hard pressed to find anyone to mitigate/abate a home. Most of these ‘professionals’ stick to commercial/educational/government work. Maybe cause you can hide the gouging easier?
My suggestion… beef up code enforcement. Provide tax break incentives to homeowners to get it done. Begin comprehensive education for homeowners so that they can do it themselves and know what to expect when hiring someone.
September 7th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Actually, Mahkno, and trust me on this having lived in the east as a child - Peoria REALLY does have some of the highest lead levels in children in the country.
I grew up in NY state, and they watched for lead paint and all of that. I had my own children in Florida, again - read further east with older homes - and they test kids for lead there too. It’s NOT that they test more in Peoria, trust me.
Boston, I’ve never lived there, but do you think they don’t test for lead levels? those are some of the oldest (still existing) homes in the country. And even if you do live in an old house, how many times do you think the windows and molding has been painted over with non-lead paint. Probably a bunch, as it was outlawed almost 40 years ago. But yet, Peoria’s children are still being poisoned? It’s not just deterioration, I suspect. You can live in a house with a crappy slumlord and still keep it clean. Not everyone who is poor is a slob.
And IMHO, it is NOT simply lead paint that is giving our children lead poisoning. I suspect it’s particulate pollution from Keystone - which emits one heck of a lot of stuff into the air and it all blows over Peoria.
It doesn’t effect adults so much because our brains are already developed. It’s screwing up our kids though.
One friend who lives here in peoria used to live in the Uplands. She had to go through the required lead testing for her children, and their levels were on the high end. Her family moved to a home nearer the river, and further north, and her children’s lead levels have since gone down.
I’ve seen the pollution reports for this area. They are higher than in any other place I’ve lived. It’s not just the paint.
September 8th, 2008 at 10:15 am
Re: traffic study.
Thanks for the link, Billy. I’ll be checking that out.
As one who lives in the University East neighborhood, I’m keeping an eye on this one. Personally, I’m just glad that the city is doing trial runs and traffic studies *before* starting to make the changes. So long as we’re all willing to take a look at the data honestly, instead of having already made our decisions.
Yeah…maybe I am being idealistic about that.
Because, on the one hand, I’d like it to work. On the other hand, you already get trapped in Downtown because of the I-74 redesign, which makes it really difficult to go north on Knoxville. If we lock down Main Street, where will all that traffic go? I’m with you; I’m not persuaded that I-74 will save us. I’ll use the interstate to scoot around the edge of town when I’m heading off to work on the north end of town. But, if I’m downtown, I’m not inclined to try to locate an on-ramp to be able to get home.