“My neighbors always want to park under my tree,” said the longtime Cicero resident and executive director of the town’s Department of Housing.

Tomschin and other town officials expect more locals will have coveted and much-needed access to shade in the coming year as a new project aims to plant 500 trees and develop an urban forestry management plan for the west suburb of Chicago.

Cicero is one of 22 Illinois communities that will collectively receive nearly $6.9 million in federal funding to plant and care for more than 1,800 trees in disadvantaged communities across the state, the Morton Arboretum announced Monday. A tree canopy is crucial to public and environmental health by cooling high urban temperatures, supporting biodiverse ecosystems, reducing flooding and cleaning dirty air.

The arboretum, which received 61 applications for more than $14 million, will administer the almost $7 million through their Chicago Region Trees Initiative, or CRTI, using U.S. Forest Service Inflation Reduction Act funds and under the direction of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Awarded communities, which include the city of Chicago and the Chicago Park District, will also use these funds over the next four years to complete tree inventories, collectively prune over 500 trees, remove hundreds of dead or high-risk trees and clear several acres of woody invasive species, as well as provide educational and multilingual resident outreach.

“Doing an inventory of the entire community,” said Zach Wirtz, director of CRTI, “can really help us understand the priorities and then better provide resources to those areas that are considered disadvantaged. … I’m really excited that these grant opportunities have such a strong focus on community engagement because really, what we’re hoping for, are positives for both trees and for people.”

Clean air, cool temps and less flooding

Almost 88% of Cicero’s residents are Hispanic or Latino, according to the most recent census data. The town’s census tracts all score medium-high to high on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Social Vulnerability Index — which refers to demographic and socioeconomic factors like poverty, lack of transportation access and crowded housing that adversely affect communities when they encounter human-made stressors such as pollution.

Part of the $511,200 awarded to the town will be used, Tomschin said, to share with vulnerable residents how the benefits they can reap from a bigger tree canopy “far outweigh” any concerns over perceived drawbacks, such as roots finding their way into the sewer system or gutters being clogged by leaves in the fall.

“Cicero historically has been a lower-middle class, blue-collar community. We once had a huge industrial base here,” Tomschin said. “So we’re surrounded by these industrial sites, landlocked in a highly urban community. And we’re now starting to feel those effects of heat islands and tree discrepancies. … We look to our neighbor to the north, Oak Park. They have an ancestral tree canopy. Why not us?”

In extreme heat, trees can help cool neighborhoods. But a Tribune investigation found the city has planted more trees in wealthier, whiter areas

Using the White House’s Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, the Department of Housing and Urban Development Opportunity Zones Map and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Justice Screening and Mapping Tool, the arboretum created a map that indicates which census tracts in Illinois are considered overburdened or underserved and therefore disadvantaged by one or more of those standards, making them priorities for funding.

“There are some blocks in town that have no trees,” Tomschin said of Cicero. “And it’s going to take a lot of work — not only taking the data from that inventory and maintenance plan, but to get buy-in from the community to once we plant the tree in front of their house.”

Besides helping purify dirty air, which became a concern for many city folks and suburbanites since Canadian wildfires blew smoke into the Midwest and other parts of the United States last summer, tree canopies can alleviate extremely high temperatures that are worsened by concrete and gray infrastructure absorbing and retaining heat.

Trees also absorb rainwater into their roots and allow it to more easily infiltrate the soil, which can prevent flooding — a salient issue for Cicero residents, whose streets and basements flooded multiple times during heavy rains last summer. In a July 2 storm that swept through the area, the town recorded 8.6 inches of precipitation.

“The more trees you have, the more roots that are taking that water out of the ground. If we can make room for more water, the better,” Tomschin said. “I’ve lived here my entire life, and we’ve had at least four horrendous flooding events. … Climate change is real. They used to happen every 20 years. Now, they happen, it seems like, every three or four (years).”

After more flooding in Chicago, how to combat intensity of storms fueled by climate change is top of mind

After those floods in early July, a Cicero resident told the Tribune she lost furniture, appliances and family mementos when water in her basement reached waist-high in just one hour.

“The devastation around the neighborhood — it was just unbelievable,” Shapearl Wells said back then. “Until we have investment in (green) infrastructure, this is going to continue to happen and we’re going to continue to get flooded out.”

Green infrastructure in urban planning entails making space for parks, rain gardens and trees that can withstand torrential precipitation and more frequent storms.

Next steps

Taking stock of what’s out there will allow officials from different communities — from suburban to inner-city Chicago and other parts of Illinois — to understand where the strategic placement of trees or the maintenance of existing ones can yield the best results.

Tomschin said the next step for Cicero will be to perform a tree inventory or census and a management plan, for which the town will seek a certified arborist.

“We’re hoping to have a contractor consultant selected and the inventory done by the fall,” Tomschin said. “So that way, come spring when it’s the perfect time to start planting, we can start getting out there with the community to get trees in the ground.”

“Good things are on our horizon,” he added.

In the city, the Chicago Park District will receive almost $1.5 million to support an inventory across its parks that will inform future plantings in identified priority areas.

“If you can imagine, the Park District’s tree canopy is made up of 250,000 trees,” said General Superintendent and CEO Rosa Escareño. “What’s interesting about this is that we’ve been using this number for a long time, and I think for us, it’s so important to understand what our tree canopy is truly made up of. We want more data on how we can not only continue to nurture and maintain the canopy that we have but, data on the condition of our trees, the type of trees, the life of our trees.”

Escareño said this updated knowledge will become instrumental to policy- and decision-making in the future. Almost 9,000 acres of parkland make the Chicago Park District one of the biggest municipal park districts in the country, she said, a fact that demands investment in pressing climate issues.

“We have a responsibility to do this,” she said.

Receiving $3 million, the city of Chicago was the biggest awardee for the current round of grants.

“We know that in large cities like Chicago, we often overlook the benefits of green space despite these natural resources being the best ally we have in the fight to address climate change,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a news release Monday.

The other communities selected by the Morton Arboretum for awards include the city of Belvidere and the Belvidere Park District, Blue Island, Bolingbrook Park District, Burbank, Effingham, Elgin, Franklin Park, Hazel Crest, Hillside, Normal, Peoria, Roselle Park District, Round Lake Area Park District, Skokie Park District, the village of Streamwood and the Forest Preserves of Winnebago County.

“Every community is going to be a little bit different, with their schedule,” Wirtz said. “And some communities will move faster than others, depending on what their current capacity looks like. Each community did turn in a proposed timeline with their application. … Our staff members are going to meet with every one of these awardees on a quarterly basis.”

The Arboretum will continue awarding funds to nonprofits and government entities, from municipalities, townships and county governments to conservation districts, park districts, schools and other community-based organizations. Applications for a total of $7.9 million in their Tree Equity Grants for Disadvantaged Communities through additional IRA funding are now open until Sept. 13. Those awards will be available for a minimum of $25,000 and a maximum of $500,000.

Urban forestry grants for community-based organizations within t Chicago — including its tree ambassador program partnership with the arboretum, Our Roots Chicago — will also be announced in the coming weeks, Wirtz said.

“The arboretum has been doing urban and community forestry grants like this for a number of years, so we’re familiar with the process and we’re definitely ready to take this on,” he said. “But this is a large project. The IRA (Inflation Reduction Act) has brought this great influx of funding to urban forestry across the U.S., and we’re really happy to be a part of that. … And we’re ready to take on this adventure with these communities.”

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Despite mid-afternoon high temperatures and sunny skies to close out the weekend, a fast-approaching cold front can change beach conditions quickly.

“We are going to see waves increase really fast behind the front and that is why we are concerned about beachgoers, because they can be caught unprepared,” said Brett Borchardt, a senior meteorologist with the Chicago office of the National Weather Service.

Waves of 5 to 8 feet and life-threatening currents persisting into Monday evening will create a high swim risk on southern Lake Michigan beaches from Illinois to Indiana, which account for half of all drownings in the lake. The weather service also cautions people against venturing out onto piers, jetties, break walls and other shoreline structures.

In keeping with a beach hazards statement, in effect from 9 p.m. Sunday until 1 a.m. Tuesday, the Chicago Park District has asked visitors to keep an eye out on the flag color warning system, which is updated on their website at chicagoparkdistrict.com/parks-facilities/beaches and each beach throughout the day. A green flag indicates swimming is permitted, a yellow one urges caution and a red flag means a swim ban is in place due to unsafe swimming standards.

Cool, breezy conditions will continue throughout Monday too.

“(It) will be the coolest day of the week and potentially one of the coolest days of the summer, if I go as far as to say that, with high temperatures along the lakeshore struggling to climb out of the low to mid-60s,” Borchardt said.

“But it is going to be a short-lived cold snap — if I may call it a cold snap — with temperatures quickly rebounding,” he said.

Temperatures will climb back to seasonably summer standards Tuesday through the second half of the work week, as they reach the mid- to upper-80s Wednesday. But the mild, pleasant weather could be interrupted by chances for thunderstorms and showers later in the week.

“We’re getting to the time of year where some of those storms could be strong to severe just given the amount of heat and moisture available in the atmosphere,” Borchardt said. “So it’s that Thursday to Friday timeframe we have our eye on right now for the highest chances.”

The meteorologist added that locals should keep in mind June and July are typically the hottest months of the year.

“Heat can sneak up on us, especially when we’re not acclimated,” he said. “So just keep an eye on friends and family.”

Last summer, the city was hit by waves of boiling-hot temperatures. In late July, heat indexes ranged from 95 to 105 degrees — a measure of relative humidity and air temperature that indicates how it really feels outside.

On Aug. 24, 2023, temperatures at O’Hare International Airport, the city’s official recording site, reached 100 degrees, the first time since the deadly heat wave of July 1995. Heat indexes then reached over 115 degrees.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

They’re crawling up from the ground and will soon be singing from the treetops all over Illinois as the life cycles of two broods coincide for the first time in more than two centuries. But they’re also on stickers, wall art and graphic novels, on witty Tees and Taylor Swift shirts, on sculptures and even dinner plates.

Going from bug to fad, cicadas have been embraced by artists and entrepreneurs showcasing products that celebrate this rare, shared event.

“It’s more than just an item,” said Nina Salem, founder of The Insect Asylum, an Avondale-based museum of zoology leading a citywide effort for amateur and expert artists to buy or sponsor over 1,000 giant plaster cicada sculptures to be decorated and placed around Chicago. “It’s an experience, and it’s an opportunity to join a community.”

Some entrepreneurs, including Salem, are longtime insect enthusiasts who love cicadas in their rough, natural beauty and want to share that love. Others, trying to overcome their own aversions, are making less realistic, more appealing merchandise.

“I took the Chicago flag and desecrated it with cute little happy cicadas,” said Trayce Zimmermann, a Chicago PR specialist who started the website Cicadapalooza. “And I added the music twist (referring to the site’s takeoff on Lollapalooza) because a trillion of them are coming out to sing. There you have ‘cicada chic’ — something that is fun to wear for people who don’t like the ick factor.”

Local artists and entrepreneurs say they hope to encourage the public to embrace the insects as part of community building.

“In terms of fostering collective identity and the desire for people to make art and buy things related to it, there are parallels with any unusual events,” said Ginger Pennington, a Northwestern University professor specializing in consumer psychology and human motivation. “I mean, there’s the eclipse, there’s COVID, of course, or when the Chicago Cubs won the World Series in 2016. We’ve seen merch just explode, partly because we all feel like we’re part of the special, unusual thing that happened and it binds us all together.”

Invoking curiosity

In the gift shop at the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County, a stand is brimming with cicada-inspired items: books, wall art, postcards, keychains, pins, stickers, even gold dangly earrings and necklaces with stone pendants shaped like the insect. Walking into the new exhibit — “Celebrating Cicadas” open through Aug. 4 — visitors are greeted by an inquisitive cicada nymph with bulging red eyes.

The insect is on a mural illustrated by Samantha Gallagher from Gurnee, who has combined her passions and studies in art and entomology into a career of drawing scientific illustrations of insects. It is one of 11 illustrations she was commissioned to draw for the exhibit.

“The biggest compliment I can get with my art, especially with my subject matter being insects, is when somebody says like, ‘Well, I don’t usually like bugs, but I like yours, yours look friendly, or yours are beautiful,'” she said. “That’s exactly what I’m trying to do: Instead of invoking feelings of fear, or disgust, which is really common. … I try to invoke more curiosity, and maybe even compassion.”

Some of Gallagher’s art prints are being sold in the museum gift shop, but she’s also selling other items online, including tote bags and phone cases.

“Some people want that souvenir, they want to feel like they’re part of something bigger, especially something temporary and fleeting like that,” Gallagher said. “If you’re here, you can participate in it. And maybe you will, whether you want to or not. So, when in Rome, right?”

The large-scale collaborative sculpture project led by The Insect Asylum locally was originally conceived in Baltimore for a 17-year periodical cicada emergence there in 2021. Salem said she wanted to bring this “Cicada Parade-a” home to celebrate this year’s double emergence.

“This has been a really beautiful moment in history, so we’re really happy to celebrate it,” Salem said. “The whole spirit of this project was to help gain some perspective for the cicada emergence. Because we know so many were having anxiety about it, we wanted to bring something beautiful to it, that encourages education.”

Love them or hate them, one thing is evident: Cicadas bring out strong emotions, according to Pennington. But relating to them through art and merchandise can help humans channel and cope with these emotions, whether they’re positive or negative.

“Some people like the really detailed, scientific illustrations. Those people see the art and the wonder in it,” she said. “For some people, it’s fear and disgust, so some of the information and the art and the merch kind of helps them overcome that. After seeing a stuffed animal, the cicada T-shirts — that’s kind of a coping mechanism. You can see it in this abstract way, and the cuteness of it instead of the gross, realistic aspects of it that people find scary.”

Good publicity

Others who are less enthused by the noisy visitors are trying to embrace cicadas on their terms. When Zimmermann first learned of this year’s cicada emergence, she said she scrolled online through pages and pages of “uninspired” and “gross-looking” cicada products. She couldn’t fathom using or wearing any of it.

She decided to make “cute” designs to put on T-shirts for friends and family. But she didn’t expect the popularity her side hustle has since amassed.

“Everyone loves it. And I’m not a T-shirt salesperson,” she said. “I’m a publicist, but I gave it a little PR magic, and now I’m up to my eyeballs.”

Zimmermann said she thinks the excitement of an event this widespread has shifted the majority of the public’s perception in the last few weeks; personally, she feels she can coexist with the insects now, though at a safe distance.

“Their reputation has improved, but they’re still icky!” she laughed. “I don’t want them in my hair.”

According to Pennington, that’s part of the power of social influence. “You’re seeing other people engaging with (cicadas), making merchandise and making art about them. And it does alter our perceptions and our behavior,” she said. “So we’re more likely to conform to that normative influence and we’re more likely to engage if we see other people engaging.”

Zimmermann said she has felt this shared engagement.

“It’s our emergence, and it’s a way to commemorate it,” she said. “And you’ll have this T-shirt in 10 years and say, you know, ‘I was there.'”

A sense of belonging

At The Insect Asylum — which has long had a cicada logo — there is a shelf with cicada creations from local artists and small businesses. From Ampersand Curiosities, there are ethically sourced cicadas that have been crystallized with blue, red, silver or purple shimmering minerals, selling for $95.

Other items include band T-shirts and posters for the “Summer ’24 Scream Emergence Tour” across Midwest and Southeast cities. Salem, the museum’s owner, said they’re running low on cicada merchandise because they’ve sold so much over the last few weeks.

Volunteers and friends have helped Salem cast over 1,200 cicada plaster sculptures to be decorated and distributed around the Chicago area for the art project. Even as they ramp up the public installations, the museum’s basement was still piled up with blank-slate statues ready to be embellished last week. Salem said the project’s reach has exceeded their expectations for 600 sculptures.

Pennington explained that shared events help break down barriers that typically divide people, especially in the contentious social environment of this day and age.

“We’re so often focused on differences and now, all of a sudden, we’re all going through a similar thing together,” she said.

Like the eclipse, such an event also helps put those differences, and one’s reality, into perspective.

“These long, 17-year-old cycles … make you realize all this time has gone by,” she said. “For all this chaos that’s been happening in the political world, and (cicadas have) just been down there, just hanging out. So it kind of lets you zoom out to this bigger perspective of, all this time has gone by and there’s this same cycle of nature that just keeps on plugging along, exactly the same every 13, every 17 years. It’s a little bit humbling.”

adperez@chicagotribune.com

The protesting coalition — which draws from many organizations across Chicago, from an antiwar committee to mothers who say their children have been wrongfully convicted — has a list of demands for politicians, but its main organizing principle is to stand in solidarity with Palestine and end U.S. aid to Israel.

“Our communities are diverse. Our strategies are diverse, but our goals are clear and we are steadfast,” said Amira Sohail, a recent graduate of the University of Chicago and co-chair of the Students for Justice in Palestine, which set up an encampment on the main quad of the campus. “We demand an end to the genocide. We demand an end to U.S. aid to Israel and we demand that the U.S. and Chicago stop investing in these systems that oppress us.”

Israel launched its bombardment of Gaza after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel, where the group killed some 1,200 people and took 250 hostages. Since then, more than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

Several speakers during the rally outside the on the Near North police station emphasized an interconnectedness between struggles, asking that politicians including Gov. J.B. Pritzker take action “from Chicago to Palestine.”

Nick Sous, a member of the U.S. Palestinian Community Network, called for the freedom of prisoners in Illinois and across the country who have been wrongfully convicted and for the freedom of prisoners in Palestine.

Darien Harris, whose murder conviction was overturned in December after spending 12 years behind bars for a fatal shooting at a South Side gas station — in which an eyewitness who identified him turned out to be legally blind — spoke of the frustrations he experienced during his trial and his time in prison.

“We just want to be treated equally as humans,” he said. “We got to start holding these lawmakers accountable for the things that we’ve gone through in jail, and in life as well. Because at the end of the day, the system should be put in place to help us but the system is against us.”

Organizers also played a voice message over the megaphone from Rico Clark, who is serving a 55-year prison sentence for a 2006 murder. Clark contends he did not commit the crime and has filed a post-conviction petition as witnesses have recanted their statements.

A member of the Anti-War Committee Chicago, Jae Franklin said the March on the DNC coalition is asking the Pritzker administration to stop “dragging their feet” and prioritize signing hundreds of pending clemency petitions.

“This system is unjust. It’s not for the people; it’s focused on profits,” Franklin said. “This city has spent billions — with a ‘B’ — billions on the Chicago Police Department so they can intimidate students, Black and brown communities, people without homes. (They) show up in riot gear in the middle of the night and arrest students who are peacefully protesting. Billions of dollars to arrest people on bogus charges, to enact violence upon the communities they pretend to care about. The state of Illinois has sent billions of dollars to Israel, paying for these atrocities.”

U. of C. police clear protest encampment early Tuesday, days after president announces intention to intervene

After hearing from the speakers, the group marched eastward on Division Street, flanked by police officers on bikes and squad cars who didn’t allow the group to go past North Orleans Street. The hundred or so protesters then headed south, where police cut them off at Oak Street, forcing them to return west to the police station.

Izet Duranovic, a Bosnian who has lived in Chicago for 27 years, waved a Palestinian flag and, under it, a blue and yellow flag — that of his homeland of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He has attended countless pro-Palestinian protests this year, he said, to show solidarity with the plight of those being persecuted like his fellow Bosnian Muslims, of which Serbian forces killed 8,000 in December 1995.

“Why do police come?” he said, shaking his fist in the air, emotion bubbling up. “People — Jewish, Palestinians — come together, sing.”

He shook his head. The rallies, protests and encampments he’s been to are peaceful havens, he said.

“I want to thank you all, and we’ll be seeing you all in August,” said April Ward, the mother of Micheail Ward, who was convicted of the 2013 murder of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton.

Last year, his case was overturned by an appeals court, which ordered a new trial, having found that Chicago police detectives violated his rights by continuing to question him after he invoked his right to remain silent. The case has made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court as prosecutors are asking that the last ruling be reversed.

“I have to say to these Democrats and these Republicans that your time is here,” his mother exclaimed. “We are going to get justice for all.”

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Released Thursday by the environmental nonprofit Industrious Labs, the study is the most recent of several reports that show landfill operators are likely understating their annual emissions to the federal government as major methane leaks go unnoticed. A Harvard study using satellite data released earlier this month found emissions at landfills across the country in 2019 were 51% higher than EPA estimates for that year. A study published in March in the journal Science used airborne surveys and found emissions between 2016 and 2022 to be even higher.

“The problem is worse than the numbers show or than what we thought,” said Katherine Blauvelt, circular economy director at Industrious Labs, which seeks to reinvent heavy industry in ways that reduce emissions and protect the climate. The nonprofit’s study relied on EPA and operator data.

Illinois ranked eighth in the country with the most methane emissions from landfills in 2022, the last reporting year available, according to the study.

Odorless and colorless, methane gas is released into the atmosphere when food waste breaks down in an airtight environment without oxygen, like landfills, which are the third-largest source of human-related methane emissions in the country behind fossil fuels and agriculture.

Methane has been likened to carbon dioxide “on steroids,” so reducing its emissions is critical to slowing short-term global warming. During its first 20 years in the atmosphere, methane has more than 80 times the warming power of CO2, effectively setting the pace for worldwide temperatures in the near future.

“No one is disputing that methane coming from landfills is impacting human beings, impacting the environment, our climate,” Blauvelt said. “I think there is a lot of consensus around: We need better tools and better ways to capture that methane, to find that methane. And the tools and standards that landfill operators are following today are not setting them up for success.”

The study found “disturbing” inconsistencies nationwide among 29 landfills, where operators documented few to no methane leaks, and federal inspectors later discovered several. During inspections at several Illinois landfills, the EPA found anywhere from 20 to 60 notable methane leaks at different facilities.

Methane leaks are considered a significant source of pollution when they exceed the EPA’s methane concentration limit of 500 parts per million.

There are 96 landfills in Illinois; 54 of them are required to report annual estimates to the federal government because of how much greenhouse gases they emit. According to documents obtained from the EPA and its state counterpart through Freedom of Information Act requests, these were some of the discrepancies found between 2021 and 2023:

• In a quarterly report, the Winnebago County Landfill in Rockford reported five leaks. The EPA inspection of the same section of the landfill a month later found 59 leaks that exceeded 500 ppm.
• At Prairie Hill Landfill in Morrison, a well technician who was present during an EPA visit said the facility’s quarterly monitoring had found few to no exceedances, but federal inspectors found 51.
• In Grayslake, the Countryside Landfill operator told the EPA during an interview that an average of two to three hits of exceedances are found per year during routine monitoring. During the inspection, the EPA found 33 exceedances.
• At the LandComp Landfill in Ottawa, the operator told federal inspectors a few years had passed since they detected exceedances. During that inspection, the EPA found 23 exceedances on the site.
• A contractor reported zero leaks in the last four quarterly inspections at the Roxana Landfill in Edwardsville, while the EPA identified 42 exceedances.

Neighbors of the Winnebago landfill have complained about the odors for years. Since the issue first arose in 2019, more than 530 residents have sued the company that operates the facility, Waste Connections, and many of them hope their concerns about the stench can launch a larger discussion about landfill management.

“If we could solve the methane thing, we would go a long way towards dealing with greenhouse gases,” said Brad Roos, president of Sustain Rockford, a nonprofit helping Winnebago County develop a sustainability plan. “And because their potency is so high, it would have a great impact. You know, it may be a smaller percentage than the overall carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions, but it’s powerful … Let’s deal with it.”

Waste Connections, which operates the Winnebago landfill, Waste Management, which operates the Prairie Hill and Countryside landfills, and Republic Services, the company that owns the Roxana and LandComp landfills and over two dozen other facilities across Illinois, disagreed with the EPA findings.

“The monitoring of emissions from landfills sparks considerable debate and has been the source of misconceptions,” according to a statement from Republic Services. “Landfill emissions vary throughout the day due to factors like weather, composition, and age of waste. Current measurement and reporting techniques do not take these dynamic factors into account but are critical to ensure a representative assessment of landfill emissions.”

Inconsistent monitoring for leaks was only one of the shortcomings identified in the study. The material used to cover landfills, when gas collection systems are installed, and which landfills are required to install these collection systems also contribute to underreported emissions, the study says.

“I think what we’re saying is that the system isn’t working very well. It’s not that it’s not working at all,” said John Coequyt, director of U.S. government affairs at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a sustainability nonprofit. “It’s just that there’s a mismatch, sometimes, between what the operators find and what inspections or flyovers or satellites find.”

Landfills emit methane equivalent to 287 million metric tons of carbon dioxide per year, which is the same as 74 coal-fired power plants or more than 68 million gasoline-powered cars on the road for a year.

“This is becoming a five-alarm fire for the climate, for communities,” Blauvelt said.

Gaps in monitoring

On a weekday afternoon in March, Mark Furman walked on a green hill in the Winnebago landfill. Hidden under the grass were layers upon layers of trash; the inconspicuous knoll sits atop an expansion unit that operated from the 1990s until 2009. Even after being sealed, inactive units can still release methane.

Furman held a pipe outfitted with a GPS unit and a probe at its end, hovering the patent-pending device a few inches above the ground. He was monitoring the closed unit for methane emissions as part of the landfill’s quarterly inspection, which he said could take him up to two hours. If leaks are found, the landfill is expected to fix them.

Operators in the industry contend the EPA catches more leaks during its inspection than they do for their quarterly reports because of differences in testing procedures, such as the distance at which the probe is held from the cover.

During the June 2021 site inspection at the Winnebago site, the EPA recorded 59 exceedances “distinctly above historic rates,” some of which were “at locations that were supposed to have been recently corrected,” according to the EPA report.

“The EPA map is like a Christmas tree of red dots of exceedances,” Blauvelt said, looking at satellite images in the appendix of the federal report from that inspection.

According to Kurt Shaner, vice president of engineering and sustainability at Waste Connections, surface emissions at the Winnebago landfill are scanned by someone like Furman who walks across the site with a probe, its nozzle 10 cm above the ground.

“We’re at issue with how the U.S. EPA did some of their surface scans when they came to our sites,” he said. “They were going up to gas wells and sticking it down on the side of the well … down in the cracks along the ground. So we have a difference of opinion with exactly how that test was done and is being done.”

An EPA spokesperson said the agency cannot comment on the specifics of the inspection.

“The landfill regulations contain standards of how surface emission monitoring must be performed,” its statement read. “These regulations require that the monitoring probe be held 5 to 10 centimeters from the surface of the landfill. EPA inspectors follow this methodology when performing surface emission monitoring inspections at landfills.”

Blauvelt said leaks might be missed and go unreported if a landfill operator walks the property in a 100-foot grid pattern — the length of a basketball court.

“They’re not monitoring every inch. We can’t do this needle-in-a-haystack approach,” she said, where a single person is tasked to find small cracks on the cover, animal burrows or gaskets that have come loose. “Those things are hard to see across a landfill that’s acres and acres and acres.”

‘An easy fix’

A gurgling sound punctuated bird songs as bubbles fizzed from a hole half-covered with dried grass on the ground. In the video, filmed by federal inspectors at the Prairie Hill Landfill in Morrison in August 2021, a monitoring device showed a methane exceedance of over 2% — 20,000 parts per million, or 2 out of every 100 air molecules, were methane. The gas is flammable when its presence in the air reaches 5.3%. 

“If it’s over 500 parts per million, that’s an exceedance,” Blauvelt said. “And if it goes into percentages, then you know it’s really bad — you’re way past parts per million.”

“There is a great deal of context involved in those matters, and thus WM is not inclined to provide detailed comments beyond the fact that those inspections took place several years ago just as new regulations were coming into effect,” Waste Management said in a statement.

“Consequently, a lack of complete alignment or agreement with respect to the findings at the time would not be unexpected or unwarranted. Regardless, WM undertook timely and appropriate corrective actions to resolve the identified concerns,” the company said.

Every day, landfills release methane into the atmosphere. In some cases, these emissions leak from cracks or erosion in the soil cover. Regulations include minimal requirements about the maintenance, repair and monitoring of landfill cover, according to experts.

The lack of gas collection and control systems or flaws in the equipment can also allow methane to escape. These systems include extraction wells to capture landfill gas — mostly methane and carbon dioxide — as bacteria break down waste. Pipes then transport the gas to dispose of it through combustion with a flare or to transform it into energy.

But only landfills of a certain size are required to install a collection and control system, a threshold advocates say is too high. Current standards also allow large landfills five years before they have to install a collection system in a unit actively receiving waste. 

Yet half of the carbon in food waste degrades into methane in 3.6 years, which means a lot of methane likely escapes the landfill before it can be captured — the EPA estimates that number is 61%.

“What an easy fix: Let’s update and just ensure that that gas collection happens in time,” Blauvelt said. “None of that is rocket science. It’s doable … You solve the problem by putting the pipes in the ground before the food waste decays and actually finding the methane leaks as they happen.”

Because there’s no technology to actually measure total annual emissions, the federal government requires landfills to use a model to estimate what they’re releasing into the atmosphere.

“When companies do their inventory to report to the Greenhouse Gas Reporting (federal program), they don’t actually measure emissions at all. They just do an estimate of what’s going in the landfill,” said Coequyt, of the Rocky Mountain Institute. “So what they’re reporting is just some modeled emission potential from the landfill. And what we’re finding in these reports is that that model isn’t very accurate, and it misses a lot of operational issues.”

The Winnebago landfill, the biggest landfill methane emitter in Illinois, reported to the federal government that its methane emissions in 2022 were equivalent to 229,513 metric tons of carbon dioxide. Using a different methodology, which Shaner said offers a “more accurate representation” of their emissions, the landfill operators estimated the facility generated a methane equivalent to 131,775 metric tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. Both methods are based on models.

The EPA acknowledged its model needed improvement and last month revised the methodology to account for operational differences across facilities. In landfills, these variations can include how much downtime occurs when gas collection systems need to be fixed, the efficiency of land cover material and how much waste on the site is organic.

Advocates are pushing for the federal agency to take this updated rule further in the coming months, since estimates will still be based on models and don’t provide physical, direct measurements of what’s happening on the ground. Though estimates will be more accurate, the update still doesn’t solve the core issue of methane being released at a rate likely more alarming than is known.

By August, the EPA will review its standards and emissions guidelines under the Clean Air Act and decide whether to update them. Advocates say the agency can choose to implement sweeping regulations that require landfill operators to start using available best practices and technologies to identify and fix major sources of methane emissions and leaks.

“What we’re hoping EPA will do is establish a new standard for the operating landfills that requires the use of modern technology,” Coequyt said. “And that modern technology includes drones, but there’s other systems that could be put in place at landfills that would make a huge difference.”

Monitoring on the ground, from the air

On-the-ground technology for landfills can be small but mighty, such as an autotuning a system that automatically and continuously checks wellheads for leaks — which the EPA only requires a person do on a quarterly basis.

“We’re talking about, instead of doing an onerous system of walking on the landfill, you hire a drone operator, and then they find the leaks and you go fix them,” Coequyt said. “You maybe have to install a slightly more expensive production system. Maybe you hire a company to do the autotune on that collection system … These are not huge changes in landfill operations. This is just paying a lot more attention.”

Stronger regulations could also require operators to find and correct larger methane leaks identified by remote sensing instruments like satellites from space.

“While more work needs to be done for new monitoring technologies to be used to evaluate emissions, we remain encouraged that these technologies are improving over time,” said the statement from Republic Services.

In the meantime, some companies are implementing game-changing, near-ground technology like drones in hopes of improving their ability to detect and fix small methane leaks and large plumes.

In its statement, Waste Management said its landfills use satellite, aerial and ground measurement technologies, in some cases simultaneously, to compare data and evaluate emission measurements.

Shaner said Waste Connections is also interested in implementing such technologies on their sites, including the Winnebago landfill.

“I have heard the satellite methods are very powerful and that they can cover large areas quickly,” he said. “And I think all of them give very good concentration data.”

But, he said, drones close to the ground and satellites that are higher up often don’t account for weather data, especially wind speed, so they wouldn’t necessarily offer a complete picture of overall emissions and might be better suited to pinpoint leaks.

“It’s tough to take satellite data and convert it into mass,” Shaner said. “Satellite data is really good. We saw one satellite provider that could see a leaking gas valve in somebody’s house, to that level of detail. And you can send somebody out to fix the leak and then troubleshoot. I just don’t view it, for our application, as being a good way to measure flux, a quantity.”

To address these shortcomings of the new technological approaches, he said Waste Connections is working alongside an environmental services provider that has developed a drone outfitted with a wind meter.

“In combining the very, very location-specific wind data with concentration, you now know if the plume is right along the ground or higher in the air,” Shaner said. “It takes all the crazy math out of it … Anytime the math gets fancy, you introduce potential error.”

Advocates say ensuring effective monitoring and capture of landfill methane is a matter of prioritization and political will, and some lawmakers have joined them in urging state and federal agencies to implement stronger landfill regulations.

In early 2023, state Sen. Laura Fine, 9th District, introduced a bill to strengthen reporting methods and monitoring requirements in Illinois. It hasn’t moved forward, but her office is still working on it, according to staff. In January, U.S. Rep. Sean Casten joined 24 other members of Congress in signing a letter asking that the EPA update emissions standards for municipal solid waste landfills.

At the source

A recent analysis of 2023 EPA data by IT Asset Management Group, a company that assists in safe electronics disposal, found Illinois ranks third in the country after Michigan and Indiana for the most trash in landfills per resident, at 56.6 tons of landfill waste per capita — that’s 42.7% more than the national average. Overall, the state has over 712 million tons of waste in its landfills.

Improving and expanding municipal composting programs would reduce the amount of organic waste headed to landfills. Since more than half of landfill methane comes from food waste, addressing that would significantly reduce emissions of the powerful greenhouse gas.

In helping Winnebago County develop a sustainability plan, Sustain Rockford is starting with what Roos, its president, also calls “low-hanging fruit” — the easiest, quickest wins that can generate public interest.

One of these solutions is food waste reduction, which can be done by composting food scraps, at home in a yard or at processing centers in oxygen-rich environments. The final product can be used as a rich soil amendment to improve soil health with its mineral nutrients and beneficial microorganisms.

Besides becoming the first line of defense against greenhouse gases, reducing food waste can also alleviate stress on a landfill’s lifespan. For instance, at its current growth rate, the Winnebago County Landfill’s east expansion unit — which opened in 2019 and is being developed to up to 225 acres — will be able to accept waste for only 10 to 15 more years.

“Take my garbage, keep my taxes low, keep my streets plowed and stay out of my way — that’s the average citizen’s approach,” Roos said. “But are they aware that the landfill has a projected lifespan of another 16 years? Almost no one knows that … People have busy lives, but if you’re going to have the luxury of living that life, you’re going to have to learn what that involves.”

Like other landfill operators, Shaner said, Waste Connections is open to exploring new ways to divert waste from entering the Winnebago County Landfill.

“That decision is really made by society in general, right? If society wants to put in anaerobic digester (for) food waste, we’ll do that,” he said. “We kind of do what people want us to do with their garbage … We’re not a popular industry. Nobody likes the landfill guy, but everybody wants their trash picked up.”

Advocates hope for a cultural shift that includes better habits as well as demands for improved, more sustainable waste management.

“It’s not as simple as, ‘My takeout food from last night that I put in the trash just goes away.’ We all live with the consequences of that food, paper and yard waste,” Blauvelt said. “At the end of the day, this is about people. We all deserve healthy and clean places to live and work and play.”

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Chavez tapped the bin three times to release the contents into a trash bag. At first glance, it looked like a brownish, wet pile of leaves and twigs.

“Once you start sifting through it, it’s a lot easier to see the trash,” he said.

While large trash is not as big of a threat, plastic debris from food and product packaging and the smaller bits from when it breaks down has emerged as a persistent problem that affects wildlife, water quality and public health.

“It’s no longer the dumping ground it was — it’s more of this incidental, wind-blown picnic, restaurant, parking lot pollution,” said Margaret Frisbie, executive director of the nonprofit Friends of the Chicago River. “What we used to find was shopping carts and sofas and tires and old pipes. … It was big and messy, but not the way that we see litter today. Today, the litter is smaller, it’s food-related. It’s breaking down because it’s plastic, and so it’s never really going away.”

In 2023, the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District collected 675 tons of debris from the river using skimmer boats; on average they pick up 745 tons annually, according to a spokesperson. City of Chicago skimmer boats also remove trash regularly along the Riverwalk downtown.

Between 75% and 95% of debris collected in the river is plastic, and 58% of identifiable, non-fragmented trash is food-related, according to research led by Tim Hoellein, an aquatic ecologist at Loyola University Chicago, and undergraduate student Caitlin Hyatt.

Shortly after the trap’s deployment last summer, Mike McElroy, director of marine operations at Wendella Tours and Cruises, discovered a plastic toy dinosaur when he emptied the trap one day. Now the trap’s official mascot, Trappy the Dinosaur has become an emblem for all the different kinds of things that pollute the river.

The Trash Trap is the first technology of its kind used in the Chicago River to remove litter and learn where it’s coming from and what it’s made of. Contraptions like this are typically used in marinas where tides rise slowly, but this one was modified to withstand rapid changes in river levels from heavy rainfall.

It works by drawing in water and debris from the surface using a submersible pump, trapping litter inside a catch bin and pumping the water back out.

“From day one, it was pulling trash out of the river, even things that we couldn’t see readily with (our) eyes,” McElroy said. “The things we’ve pulled out have been very interesting. We’ve had a shoe, Dorito bags, Styrofoam in numbers and quantities that are just astounding.”

A common thread

Flowing from the Great Lakes and into the Mississippi River, the Chicago River connects the region to the rest of the country and the world. And plastic litter is a common thread that runs through these diverse water systems.

“That’s happening in our rivers too, it’s just not happening in the oceans,” Frisbie said. “It’s just not happening far away, it’s happening here too.”

Unsurprisingly, the composition of litter in the Chicago River mirrors that of the region’s lakes. In a recent report using data from over 14,000 beach cleanups over 20 years, the regional nonprofit Alliance for the Great Lakes found that 86% of trash entering the Great Lakes in a given year is either partially or fully composed of plastic.

86% of Great Lakes litter is plastic, a 20-year study shows. And the plastic is ‘just getting smaller and smaller.’

“The other day I saw someone throw a bag of their leftover lunch over the wall from Wacker Drive,” Frisbie said.

Large plastic products such as single-use bags, straws, wrappers, takeout containers and utensils eventually break down into smaller plastic particles. The tiniest of these particles — less than 5 millimeters long or the size of a pencil eraser — are called microplastics and have been found in Great Lakes bony fish and drinking water, as well as human blood, organs and breast milk.

“A lot of what we find is fragments,” Hoellein said of river litter collected by the Trash Trap, which students at Loyola help sort and characterize.

Most of these fragments are generally smaller than an inch. Lentil-sized pellets used in plastic production called “nurdles” account for 5% to 20% of their weekly findings. Bits of Styrofoam broken down from food containers also present a ubiquitous problem.

“Sometimes there’s too many to count and we have to estimate,” Hoellein said.

“We also find a lot of these things,” Hoellein said, holding up a green dental floss pick. “I hate tooth flossers.” He soon found another green one, its color markedly faded.

In his research, he said, almost every fish he has looked at in the Chicago-Calumet River system has some form of microplastics inside them.

Despite these findings, advocates say that in an “amazing renaissance,” the Chicago-Calumet River system is healthier now than in the past 150 years. The river is home to all kinds of animals, including migratory birds, beavers and turtles, as well as 80 species of fish — up from less than 10 in the 1970s.

“That’s telling us that Mother Nature is healing herself,” said McElroy, who will lead a Saturday cleanup at Lucas Berg Nature Preserve in Palos Hills. “I think, through the efforts of the Friends of the Chicago River and others, that’s how we got to this point, as well as (through) the Clean Water Act. What would we do without that?”

When he started working with another boat tour company in 1988, McElroy said he couldn’t even see the bottom of the river on a sunny day. Now, he can.

“It’s incredible,” he said. “The water has become so much clearer.”

Restoring the health of the river has required a multipronged approach, Frisbie said, starting with the enforcement of a 2029 deadline to complete the Tunnel and Reservoir Plan — a system of deep tunnels and wide reservoirs for flood control — that will reduce combined sewer overflows, which occur when city pipes for stormwater runoff and sewage are overwhelmed with rains, pouring untreated human waste into the river.

The second step entails improving the disinfecting process of sewage effluent, or treated water, using chlorination or ultraviolet light to remove pathogens and bacteria. The nonprofit has also focused on championing nature-based solutions such as planting trees and creating parks that absorb stormwater and reduce runoff into waterways.

In April, the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency issued a new National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to the city which will govern 184 city-owned outfalls that discharge into the Chicago-Calumet River system and the Des Plaines River. The new permit is more stringent and requires additional strategies to reduce pollution from sewage and litter.

“The last piece is this litter piece,” Frisbie said, which is where river cleanups come in.

Frisbie said the new permit issued to the city also includes the expansion of litter-control technologies such as skimmer boats and trash traps to remove plastic pollution along the 156-mile stretch of the river.

Researchers, organizations and companies are also looking to deploy more trash traps along the river. McElroy said Wendella plans to install one at the Chinatown water taxi stop in Ping Tom Memorial Park, and Hoellein is hoping to expand the scope of the research by partnering with other companies with riverfront locations.

Chicago River Day

Since 1992, volunteers with Friends of the Chicago River have picked up nearly 2 million pounds of trash from the river and its banks to help restore its aquatic ecosystems.

At the organization’s 32nd signature annual event Saturday, over 2,000 citizens, politicians and corporate teams will fan out across 87 locations in the city and suburbs, up from 80 sites last year and 77 the year before.

“People are starting to really understand the problem,” Frisbie said. “They are demanding that the places they live (in) are healthy and cared for.”

Registration for Saturday cleanups is required online at chicagoriver.org and will remain open for each site until it is full. Walk-up volunteers might be able to participate, though the organization cautions that space is limited.

Volunteers will also remove invasive plants such as garlic mustard, buckthorn and honeysuckle from Chicago Park District and the Forest Preserves locations as needed.

But river restoration efforts should not be a one-and-done thing, advocates say. Saturday will kick off a new season of the nonprofit’s Litter Free Chicago-Calumet River initiative.

Individuals and organizations can host community cleanups through the nonprofit’s Litter Free Supply Stations network, of which there are 13 across the watershed. Each station has tools such as litter grabbers, buckets, bags and gloves, as well as toolkit guidance in English and Spanish.

Environmental organizations use data gathered by volunteer citizens and research scientists to inform their advocacy, which then could become the foundation for policies that curb overproduction and overreliance on plastic products.

“The increase in individual use of disposable items in the last 20 to 30 years has skyrocketed. Everyone’s got a to-go cup of coffee every day, and sometimes three. … I think our relationship with plastic is forced upon us,” Frisbie said. “We can fight back. We turned the river around again, metaphorically. We can turn single-use plastic around as well, I believe.”

adperez@chicagotribune.com

Severe weather hazards include damaging hail as big as tennis balls and gusty winds up to 70 mph as the storms move west to east, according to meteorologists.

The city of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management and Communications said it will monitor conditions to keep the public informed about any related warnings that might be issued.

City officials urged area residents to keep an eye on local media and weather updates, suggesting that people use the Chicago OEMC mobile application or sign up for emergency alerts at NotifyChicago.org.

Second tornado in 5 weeks damages Oklahoma town and causes 1 death as powerful storms hit central US

After heavy rains Tuesday morning, scattered storms were expected to redevelop in the afternoon.

Conditions at O’Hare International Airport in the early afternoon before the second round of storms included cloudy skies and 75-degree temperatures, which were forecast to drop to 55 by the evening.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

The Chicago Fire Department responded to Cermak Road and Washtenaw Avenue but did not transport anyone from the scene, officials said. The Chicago Police Department announced at 1:30 p.m. that the parade had been canceled.

Officials had first planned to reroute the parade down Damen Avenue but later said the parade was canceled out of an “abundance of caution.”

“The Cinco de Mayo Parade has been canceled to protect the safety of all in attendance, including families and children,” police said.

In a statement, police said the decision was made by the department’s Ogden District (10th), elected officials and parade organizers. Gang violence in the area Sunday led to multiple arrests, including gun arrests, according to police.

Later in the afternoon, two “Road closed” signs flanked Damen Avenue by Cermak Road. Farther down Cermak, blue police barricades had been moved to rest against walls on the sidewalk near the intersection with Wolcott Avenue.

Outside a Walgreens, Mexican native and longtime Little Village resident Francisco Gonzalez manned an elote stand. A woman approached to buy watermelon-flavored shaved ice. Four Mexican flags fluttered in the wind; he had hoped to sell them during the parade.

“No one could buy them because everyone got scared,” he said in Spanish. “Next year, who knows what will happen?”

The parade wasn’t held from 2018 to 2021 because of disagreements between organizers and the 12th Ward alderman. It was also canceled in 2022 because of a COVID-19 outbreak in the organizer’s office.

After a short wait, he took the device out to look at the temperature. “That was 52 (degrees), so that’s great.”

The hole was, presumably, a periodical cicada’s tunnel dug ahead of this summer’s emergence of billions of others that will come out simultaneously across the United States. They belong to Brood XIX, four species that appear every 13 years in the Southeast, and Brood XIII, three species that appear every 17 years in northern Illinois.

Since earlier in the week, Menke has been monitoring soil temperatures which, once reaching 64 degrees at 8 inches, should signal the cicadas that they can come out to mate.

“With the weather we’ve been having, there’s some concern that they’re going to be emerging earlier,” Menke said. “And we’re hearing reports from people that they’re finding the tunnel(s) that they dig in the Chicago suburbs.”

Yet despite recent reports of cicadas coming out, experts say the insects probably won’t do so en masse in Illinois for another few weeks, as early as mid-May, but more likely toward the end of the month. Reports of sightings are likely individual “stragglers” that have come out too early or from people who have taken a shovel to the ground.

“It looks like people have been kind of digging them up instead of finding them actually coming out on their own,” said Christopher Dietrich, the Illinois State entomologist.

That still indicates cicadas are readying themselves and close to the ground’s surface. Menke has seen it with his own eyes: He was recently gardening in his yard when his wife accidentally dug one up.

The historic occurrence has generated much excitement among experts, bug enthusiasts and the general public.

Illinois will soon be cicada central when 2 broods converge on state in historic emergence

It will be the first time in 221 years that these two specific broods come above ground at the same time and in such proximity. The last time this happened was in 1803 when Thomas Jefferson was president, and Illinois had yet to become a state. The broods will not necessarily overlap but emerge adjacent to each other in the Springfield and Urbana-Champaign areas.

In the United States, there are 15 broods of periodical cicadas, each of which dig their way out from underground on different 13-year or 17-year cycles. Other broods have emerged at the same time in the past decade but not in the same place. Experts consider this year unusual because two broods are co-emerging in neighboring areas in Illinois for the first time in more than two centuries.

Simultaneous emergence

After a relatively warm winter, there’s been a lot of talk about whether this year’s periodical cicadas might come out earlier than in the past. In Illinois, they have usually emerged around the last week of May or the first week of June.

“It’s hard to predict exactly,” Dietrich said. “Because not only have we had relatively warm temperatures through the winter, but there’s also been a lot of fluctuations in the temperature extremes: from extremely warm days to very cold days.”

Historically, very cold winter and spring seasons have pushed some cicada emergences to happen a few weeks later. But it has rarely happened significantly earlier in a given year.

“It’ll be early, but not super early,” said Mark Hurley, an environmental educator with the Lake County Forest Preserves. “What’s going to pull them out of the ground is soil temp, but also they need the leaves to be out on the trees because it’s that nutrient source going up to the leaves that triggers them to emerge.”

Biologists believe cicadas keep track of the passage of time and years as they feed from a tree’s sap, using a molecular mechanism that allows them to sense patterns from the seasonal flow of water through the tree.

Once ready to mate after their long periods of development, billions of mature periodical cicadas use soil temperature as their main cue to time their simultaneous emergence, ensuring that their sheer numbers overwhelm possible predators and that their species survives.

“There’s a lot of research that shows that you don’t want to be somebody, from a cicada’s perspective, that emerges too early,” Menke said. “Because if you emerge too early, you’re just going to get eaten.”

Two researchers interviewed by the Tribune earlier this year, John Lill and Martha Weiss, have studied how large numbers of periodical cicadas in emergence years can disturb food chains by providing birds more food than usual; the numerous noisy insects distract avian predators from their usual caterpillar prey, which then feed on oak trees unchecked.

Smaller, unlikely predators might also feast on periodical cicadas.

An ant expert and the college’s chair of biology, Menke will be joined by Lill and Weiss this summer in studying ant feeding patterns during a cicada emergence. Menke said he expects the small insects will feed on the adult cicadas that aren’t able to successfully molt or shed their shells — becoming a “juicy smorgasbord” for the ants — or on the tiny nymphs or young cicadas that will hatch a few weeks later, which will be “like popcorn falling from the sky — but really nutritious popcorn for ants.”

In any case, because their strength is derived from their numbers, cicadas are very particular about coming out when they’re all ready.

According to Hurley, the mature cicada nymphs that people have been finding in the Chicago area are not yet ready. In a new summer exhibit to celebrate cicadas at the Bess Bower Dunn Museum of Lake County, Hurley pointed to a mural of a ghostly white cicada shedding its exoskeleton with two black spots on its thorax.

“All of our nymphs right now don’t have those patches yet,” Hurley said.

The black spots are crucial for emerging cicadas to have as they allow them to simulate a bigger size and, like a football player’s face paint, create a threatening presence that protects them in this vulnerable phase from predators above ground.

That’s not to say individual cicadas can’t come out by themselves.

“You may start to see a few here and there, over the next couple weeks, coming out locally,” Dietrich said. “But the real mass emergence probably isn’t going to happen until closer to the end of the month.”

Plants and animals

At the museum in Lake County, Hurley pressed a button to play the recording of a cicada call.

“That’s the one you hear the most, the ‘pha-ra-oh,'” he said enunciating the syllables to match the pace of the insect’s song. It’s from the so-called Pharaoh cicada, a species of periodical cicada from Brood XIII in northern Illinois.

This cicada species and its unique call — no doubt echoing Biblical accounts of ancient Egypt — became known among early European colonists as the 17-year locusts, further perpetuating the misconception that, like the grasshopper plagues in the Mediterranean and North Africa, cicadas in North America can be devastating to crops and cause famine.

Cicadas are harmless to crops and the vast majority of plants. They are also not dangerous to humans: They don’t bite or sting, and they won’t try to lay eggs on a person. “People aren’t at risk unless they look like an oak tree,” according to the Ohio State University Extension.

The Bureau of Forestry from the city of Chicago’s Department of Streets and Sanitation said in a news release earlier this month that small, brown leaves appear on tree branches that are damaged by cicadas.

This damage is caused by the female insects laying their eggs inside tree branches. Saplings or trees with a diameter smaller than 2 inches in areas with big cicada populations might be harmed, stunting their future growth. But most trees easily bounce back.

To protect small saplings, gardeners can cover the plants with netting for a couple of weeks; the Morton Arboretum recommends postponing the spring planting of young trees.

Experts also suggest that gardeners don’t use pesticides because they often have no effect on cicadas and might poison birds and other animals that feed on dead cicadas.

“There’s a lot of people that want to make money off of fear,” said Menke’s research colleague Lill, a biology professor at George Washington University, in a previous conversation with the Tribune. “They’re trying to sell pesticides, and the worst thing you could do is spray a bunch of chemicals on your yard because you’re scared of cicadas. You’re doing way more harm than good, and you’re not going to really affect the cicadas, to be totally honest.”

Cicadas are not toxic to pets, but problems can occur when a cat or dog snacks on them “like popcorn at a movie,” according to local veterinary clinic BLVD Vet. Those who consume too many may have difficulty digesting the insects, causing stomach pain and vomiting.

In addition, eating “pesticide-laden cicadas” can introduce harmful toxins to a pet’s system and the hard, crunchy shells can be a choking hazard.

And while humans with more adventurous palates might be tempted by a chocolate-covered or otherwise prepared cicada, the Food and Drug Administration has cautioned foodies who are allergic to shellfish not to consume the insects as they are related to shrimp and lobsters.

Where cicadas will emerge

Periodical cicadas spend 90% of their lives underground, for 13 or 17 years, feeding from a tree’s sap off its roots. This means they’ll likely emerge in large numbers around trees that have been around as long — or for longer — than their broods have; trees that are old and sturdy enough to withstand any damage.

Cicadas will also likely come out in communities with older homes where the soil, and the cicada larvae in it, have been undisturbed by new construction, utility work or soil excavation, according to city officials. Outside the city, Dietrich said, cicadas won’t be in areas dominated by prairie or row crops but rather along rivers and other locations with natural, mature forests.

Experts and cicada lovers are spreading the word about the harmlessness of cicadas so that Illinoisans embrace these fascinating insects once they do arrive.

Dietrich said that Illinois is unique in that it has five periodical cicada broods, more than any other state in the country, though they all tend to come out in different years and different areas.

“It’s a really amazing phenomenon, to be able to see these mass emergences, to think about how that happened, what evolutionary processes might have given rise to that,” he said.

adperez@chicagotribune.com

As cars drove down the busy street, they slowed ​when passing a U.S. flag fluttering from a firetruck ladder. Drivers and passengers rolled their windows down to look at a sign ​bearing a photo of a smiling Huesca, his name, badge number and last watch: April 21, 2024.

Huesca, 30, was shot and fatally wounded driving home from work in Gage Park while in uniform. Late Friday night, the Chicago Police Department announced a suspect in the case, and a judge signed off on a warrant for the arrest of Xavier Tate Jr.

Huesca’s family spoke Saturday in a video conversation with Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police.

“April 23 was his birthday, and it was so hard for me,” Edith Huesca said in the video. “For me as a mother, I’m asking for justice. It won’t give us a lot, but it’ll just give us a little relief in our pain.”

Throughout the day, ​hundreds of mourners pa​id their respects at a visitation for the fallen officer. As people streamed into the building early Sunday afternoon, two police officers sat outside the doors on police horses.

Bernice Granado said she was a police officer in Chicago for 10 years and came to Huesca’s visitation Sunday to support his family. “It hurts right here,” Granado said, gesturing to her heart. “I never knew him, but he still feels like family. It hurts.”

Gene Roy, ​a former ​police chief of detectives​ who was with the department for 35 years, said he’s tired of going to funerals and visitations​ and hopes this is the last visitation he’ll have to attend.

“Our hearts go out today to the family, the friends, the coworkers, and ultimately, the entire city,” Roy said. “Because when an officer falls in the line of duty, is murdered senselessly, it’s not just an attack on the officer, but an attack on the entire community we live in.”

Maria Okninski, a medical professional and a Chicago-area resident, also attended Sunday’s services. She said she came because she thinks support for police officers has fallen.

According to Tribune reports, Huesca is the third Chicago police officer to be shot — and the first fatally — this year, a figure Okninski said is “unacceptable and tragic.”

Both Huesca and Officer Aréanah Preston, who was shot and killed as she returned from a late-night shift last May, served in the Calumet (5th) District. Just over a year ago, Huesca eulogized his friend Officer Andrés Vásquez Lasso in a video after Vásquez Lasso was killed in the line of duty.

“This is becoming too frequent, and it’s upsetting,” Okninski said. “The lack of respect nowadays for police officers is just horrible. I just feel so sorry for all the officers for what they’re going through.”

Dan Beazley, a Detroit native, walked up and down the line outside the visitation holding a 10-foot cross. Beazley said he was there hoping to help the family start the healing process.

“These officers put their life on the line every day. I would travel across the country to just about anywhere to support them,” Beazley said. “I hope seeing this cross helps them heal.”

The Chicago Police Memorial Foundation provides support to the families of officers killed or gravely injured while on duty.

Sandra Wortham, the president of the foundation’s executive board, lost her brother, Thomas Wortham, in 2010. She said showing up for events like these can be painful, but she wants people to remember that officers are part of the community​, too.

“The way we’ve lost officers in the past couple of years to me shows us that despite what some people try to say, our officers are part of our community,” Wortham said. “They are falling victim to the same violence that our communities are.”

Thomas Wortham died in front of his home after three people tried to steal his motorcycle. Huesca died close to his home, and his car was missing when police arrived.

Funeral services for Huesca are set to take place at 10 a.m. Monday at St. Rita of Cascia Shrine Chapel in Chicago’s Ashburn neighborhood.