- Chicago’s Southeast Side has dealt with heavy industry pollution for generations.
- Neighborhood groups hope that zoning and land-use rule changes will curb some polluters.
- “If you take away our health, you take away our wealth,” one activist told Insider.
- This story is part of “Advancing Cities,” a series that focuses on urban centers across the United States that are committed to improving the lives of their residents.
As a child, Oscar Sanchez remembers his brother wearing a special mask to help him breathe at night. He was one of many residents of Chicago’s Southeast Side who suffered from asthma and other respiratory ailments.
This community is home to Chicago. largest industrial corridor A legacy of landfills, chemical incineration plants, scrap yards, now-closed steel mills and other environmental hazards, it is one of the most polluted neighborhoods in the city. There are also many blacks and Latinos here.
Sanchez, 26, became a local organizer encouraging young people to improve the Southeast Side. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this included distributing test kits, setting up vaccination sites, and educating people about the link between air pollution and respiratory diseases that make people more susceptible to illness.
“If you take away our health, you take away our wealth,” Sanchez said. Southeast Environmental Measures Committeetold an insider. “Just because you’re poor doesn’t mean you should be treated badly.”
Sanchez soon found himself at the center of an environmental justice movement that was making big changes in Chicago. historic settlement In May, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development directed the city to overhaul land-use and zoning policies that have pushed polluters to the southeast for decades. He and other supporters hope that by reshaping some of the intricate but powerful scaffoldings that shaped Chicago’s development, the pollution that hurts poor neighborhoods can be curbed.
Pursuant to a settlement with federal officials, city presidential decreeBy September, the City of Chicago must identify the neighborhoods with the greatest health impacts from pollution and use the findings to inform changes in land use, permitting, and environmental enforcement policies.
The first-of-its-kind settlement with HUD could serve as a model for environmental justice advocates in other cities. Robert Weinstock, an attorney for two environmental justice groups and director of the Center for Environmental Advocacy at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law, said systemic racism exists everywhere in the United States, but it’s embedded in policy in different ways.
“What really sets the precedent for this deal is its focus on process. Many of the clauses required the city to improve its community-driven processes to understand the impact of current policies and legislation to produce structural reforms,” he said.
Trying to prevent a scrap metal company from opening near the school
The settlement comes after years of fighting by groups such as the Southeastern Environment Council to block scrap metal recyclers. have a history of environmental violations From the beginning of the opening across from the high school. Opposition included a 30-day hunger strike led by Sanchez and other organizers, as well as a 2020 federal complaint challenging the city’s role in relocating metal crushing operations from Lincoln Park, Chicago’s wealthy, predominantly white neighborhood.
cheryl johnson
Courtesy of Cheryl Johnson
The complaint sparked an investigation by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development last July. accused Chicago of violations It protects the civil rights of residents by moving industrial land to black and Latinx neighborhoods already overburdened with pollution and health problems. If the city did not agree to address the environmental damage, it risked losing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal housing funds.
“This is a historic time for us,” Cheryl Johnson, executive director of People for Community Recovery, told Insider. “Now, city governments at all levels need to listen to us and develop policies that protect public health.”
Johnson grew up in a community on the far south side of Chicago In the 1970s her mother called them ‘toxic donuts’ More than 40 years later, after surveying the miles of treacherous sites that surround it, Ms. Johnson leads the organization her mother founded.
The Calumet River is lined with factories, sorting facilities and recycling plants. Chicago’s southeast side is home to the city’s largest industrial corridor.
Jamie Kelter Davis/Washington Post via Getty Images
“Women have always been in the majority in this fight,” Johnson said. “We understand that we have to protect our babies. Please don’t let them get sick.”
Change the company that can operate next door
In the Calumet Industrial Corridor through the Southeast Side, hazardous waste businesses do not require city permits. Weinstock said they can act on their rights. Communities also have no legal authority to challenge land-use approvals, he said.
Weinstock said those policies could change with the settlement with HUD.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast
Environmental justice advocates are optimistic because they have allies at the highest levels of city government, including Mayor Brandon Johnson, who took office in May. make this issue an important part of his campaign. The government in June Released 52-page draft action plan.
Chicago’s Chief Sustainability Officer, Angela Tovar, grew up on the Southeast Side. She told the insider that it was “refreshing” to have a mayor who understands that environmental justice initiatives must reflect the overlapping factors that create inequalities and must be designed in partnership with communities experiencing inequalities.
“We have to put race, class and gender at the center of how we can mitigate these disparities,” she says. “What we’ve seen so far is zoning policies that don’t take real estate into account. Housing around industrial zones is often cheaper and more accessible to low-income communities of color, so we need to think about its negative impacts, both historically and today.”
Things seem to be changing in Chicago, but scrap metal sites could still open on the Southeast Side. A judge restored its license to operate earlier this year, overturning a refusal issued by the city’s health department. in February 2022 The project was found to pose an “unacceptable risk” to local residents most vulnerable to air pollution, with a higher prevalence of chronic diseases than the overall Chicago population.
The judge said the health check was an additional measure and the city had not followed its own permitting rules.Johnson is appealed against the judgment.
Sanchez said the incident highlighted the importance of updating the city’s policies as governments come and go.
“We consider Mayor Johnson a friend, but we are responsible for our friends,” Sanchez said. “Unless we take life-saving policies, things will go back to business as usual.”