Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Byron, IL

Byron is a small city in Ogle County in northern Illinois, sitting along the Rock River at the junction of Illinois Route 2 and Illinois Route 72, about 17 miles southwest of Rockford.

Byron traces its founding to July 1835, when settler Jared Sanford stopped in the area while traveling from Galena to Midway and decided to stay; the town was incorporated in 1878.

Byron is best known as the home of the Byron Nuclear Generating Station just south of the city, one of the last nuclear power plants commissioned in the United States.

Construction on the Byron nuclear station began in 1975 on a roughly 1,782-acre site, and after ten years of construction the plant began operations in 1985, supplying a large share of the electricity used in northern Illinois.

The nuclear station is Byron's economic anchor, employing around 730 people, and the local Byron Community Unit School District 226 has relied on the plant for about three-fourths of its property tax revenue.

Exelon announced in August 2020 that it would close the Byron station in September 2021, but the plant was saved at the last minute when Illinois passed the Climate and Equitable Jobs Act in September 2021, which provided nearly $700 million in subsidies to keep Byron and other nuclear plants running.

The 2020 census counted 3,784 people in Byron, up from 2,917 in 2000, and a special census in 2006 had already counted 3,779 residents as the nuclear plant era reshaped the town.

Byron households average about 2.6 people per household according to Census Bureau survey estimates, typical of a small family-oriented farming and plant-worker community.

Before the nuclear plant arrived, Byron was a quiet Rock River farming town that counted only 698 residents in 1890 and did not pass 2,000 people until the 1980 census.

Byron's downtown and schools serve a community where the twin cooling towers of the generating station are visible for miles across the Ogle County farmland.