In one form or another, tiny Braidwood always has derived its identity from energy.
From the 1870s to the turn of the century, this now-worn community in southwestern Will County was a booming coal mining town, a melting pot of Irish, Welsh, Scots, Poles, Italians and Bohemians, many of whose descendents stayed behind even after the coal seams began playing out.
It even took its name from that of an early coal-mine engineer.
In later years, the shaft mines gave way to strip mines. These strip mines, abandoned, bulldozed and replanted, literally shaped the contours of Braidwood, leaving it and the surrounding countryside with a profusion of small hills and lakes that over the last quarter-century have become a mecca for campers, fishermen and other outdoorsmen.
Indeed, the existence of the strip mines led directly to the construction of Braidwood`s present energy connection and the symbol for which it is best- known to the outside world today: Commonwealth Edison Co.`s Braidwood nuclear power station.
The strip mines, now filled with the water that lies in abundance only 12 feet below the surface here (meaning that Braidwood homes cannot have basements), serve as excellent ”cooling lakes,” replacing the large, costly, chimneylike cooling towers that characterize a number of nuclear power plants around the nation.
Braidwood residents look upon the facility that has been generating electricity in their midst for a little over two years now with some regret, but for the most part, little fear.
”I wouldn`t say we`re scared,” said librarian Joan Senko, in a typical comment.
”I guess you would call what we feel `cautious acceptance.`
”There`s not much choice, so you live with it. You just hope they are responsible people who know what they are doing.”
In truth, the regrets have more to do with the fact that the power plant does not lie within Braidwood proper but just outside the city limits, where it does not put a single cent of tax revenue into the coffers of the local government.
Mayor Russ Swearingen is candid in his assessment that the city desperately could use the money to address a host of serious problems that confront it, including an inadequate sewer system (60 percent of the homes are still on septic) and an irradiated water supply that effectively has barred most new construction.
”Our taxes are about the lowest there are in Will County, but this isn`t a rich community, and the taxes are one of the things that makes us attractive,” Swearingen said.
Residential property in Braidwood is taxed at a bargain rate. On the newer, most expensive homes in town, that means an annual tax bill of slightly more than $1,000. But tax bills of $500 are not uncommon.
”I`ve got an 1,800-square-foot trilevel that I`d pay $2,000 on in Joliet,” noted Jack Bunting, who owns the local hardware store. ”Here I pay $500. They could triple our taxes, and they`d still be cheap.”
The precise siting of the nuclear plant was no accident.
”We talked to them (Com Ed) at the time about us annexing the property, but they said if we did they would put it a few miles away over the Kankakee County line,” recalled Bobby Beaver, a local developer and businessman, who sat on the city council at the time. ”We decided to take what we could get.” What Braidwood got-or more precisely, what its township school, library and fire districts got-was a potful of Com Ed tax money, enough to build spanking new facilities the envy of communities many times the size of Braidwood (population 3,400), all without having to ask taxpayers to ante up. ”The schools are really improving-that`s why I`ve stayed,” said Fran Witchek, whose 11-year-old daughter attends Braidwood Elementary School in Reed-Custer Consolidated District 255. ”I think you`ll find a lot of the people around here are really high on the schools.”
”Service-wise we`re way above the average Will County school district,” boasted Supt. A. Donald Hendricks, citing a student-teacher ratio of approximately 15-to-1, computer laboratories in all the district`s four school buildings and the offering of a number of advanced and specialized courses usually found only in much larger districts.
In addition, construction of a 12-room, $4-million industrial arts addition at the high school will be finished in July; a new auditorium there will be ready in 18 months; and a new swimming pool and field house, which will be available for use to the community at large, are on the drawing boards.
”Our long-term goal is to get our students more interested in pursuing advanced education,” Hendricks said.
Currently, only 35 percent of graduating seniors go on to college.
That pretty much reflects Braidwood`s no-nonsense, blue-collar background. In addition to the coal mines, Braidwood at one time had a thriving pants factory and a macaroni plant. But since their demise by the early 1970s, there has been no local source of jobs to speak of.
So Braidwood has evolved into a bedroom community. Its housing stock is a hodgepodge of turn-of-the-century wood frames, trailer courts, manufactured ranch homes and relatively upscale four-bedroomers. But with only one grocery, one drug store and a small variety store, most shopping for big-ticket items has to be done in nearby Wilmington, Coal City or even Joliet.
Understandably, Braidwood is a tight-knit place, where most people know each other at least by sight and where newcomers say they are made to feel welcome, unlike other rural communities they have known.
”Still,” said Swearingen, ”you almost don`t dare criticize someone in front of somebody else. You`re likely to find the person you`re talking to is a relative.”
With so few businesses in Braidwood, most residents look elsewhere for their livelihood. Many have found it to the north at one of several chemical plants along Interstate Highway 55, which cuts across Braidwood, the Caterpillar manufacturing plant in Joliet and a few even as far away as Chicago, a nonrush-hour`s drive away.
Keeping Braidwood almost completely residential appears to please a number, maybe even the majority, of long-time residents, who say they like the rustic, country atmosphere. One indication of the reluctance to change was a recent decision by the city council not to annex a burgeoning resort area that seemingly would have brought in substantial property-tax dollars with virtually no added expense to the city.
When Braidwood said no, neighboring Wilmington, which knew a good thing when it saw it, quickly snapped it up.
”This town has a history of being anti-business, although as newcomers and younger folks come in that appears to be changing a bit,” said developer Beaver. ”Still, things are cliquish.”
In an effort to attract business, however, within the last two years the city council has created a tax-increment financing district (TIF) that Swearingen said covers about 90 percent of Braidwood`s area and which was used to foster the city`s small commercial strip, which contains the hardware and drug store.
The problem for Braidwood is that there still are few developers around with enough upfront cash to take advantage of the TIF, which would use future tax payments on the developments partially to reimburse development costs.
But a greater hindrance to Braidwood`s development is a mandate by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency that prevents Braidwood from extending its water lines until it properly treats its radium-contaminated deep municipal wells or pipes in a completely new source of water.
Under federal EPA regulations, the maximum allowable radium contaminant level is 5 picocuries. Braidwood`s is 12.8. Radium contamination is indigenous to large sections of northeastern Illinois, whose water comes up through sandstone formations more than 1,000 feet deep, and Braidwood`s problem has nothing to do with the presence of the nuclear power plant.
Oak Brook, Elmhurst, Vernon Hills, Bensonville and Batavia are among more than 100 Illinois communities with similar radium problems, according to the Illinois EPA.
”The health risk is bone cancer,” said Dorothy Bennett, a manager in the Illinois EPA`s division of public water supply. ”It`s estimated that at 5 picocuries it would effect from less than 1 to as many 3 people per million population per year. The chances (of getting cancer) are very small.”
Bennett said the EPA allows people already hooked up to these water supplies to go on using them.
”The problem can be solved by using a water softener, which adds salt to the water, which removes the radium,” Bennett said. ”But salt can also be bad for people with high blood pressure and other conditions.”
Swearingen said that it is Braidwood`s ”goal” to bring water in from the Kankakee River and is hopeful of doing so in the next two years, although it has no specific plans at the moment. In the meantime, any new homes not on existing water lines have to drill their own wells, which tap water at a shallower level than that at which the radium contamination exists.
The water problems, however, have not appeared to deter what real estate salesmen describe as a steady influx of newcomers, who are attracted by the low taxes, low home prices (a 10-year-old, three-bedroom, one-bath house sells for $55,000 to $60,000), the schools and the country atmosphere.
Recent arrivals have come from Blue Island, Cicero, Orland Park, Romeoville and Joliet.
”Right now, there`s a shortage of houses for sale versus the demand,”
said Marvin Underwood, a Wilmington real estate broker.
”When a home in Braidwood goes on the market, it generally moves pretty fast, about 60 days on average.”
”I`ve lived in the rat race, and I don`t like it,” said George Cunningham, a former Will County health department official who retired to Braidwood.
”I wouldn`t trade you my hootenanny fishing shack for three of the best houses in Joliet, if I had to live there. A lot of people don`t realize what we have around here.”
What is around Braidwood, within an eight-mile radius, are 20 or so private, wooded recreation clubs that offer fishing, swimming, boating and camping. Each has from 1,500 to 3,000 members.
In addition, there are the nuclear plant`s fenced-in cooling lakes, whose warm waters are said to spawn some rather hefty representatives of the fish family, although fishing for them is highly illegal. That could change, however, if plans go through for the utility to turn the lakes over to the Illinois Department of Conservation.
Braidwood has its own recreation club, named, appropriately enough, the Braidwood Recreation Club. The club`s grounds cover 1,100 acres of an old strip mine and include facilities for swimming, camping, picnicking, hiking and even a nine-hole golf course, which was built for free by a one-time earthmoving equipment training school that needed a place for its students to practice.
