Chicago announces plans to curb environmental racism

Last year, the federal government determined that Chicago violated residents’ civil rights by consistently placing polluting businesses in Black and brown communities.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson has devised a strategy to combat environmental racism in the wake of last year’s federal government decision that the city violated residents’ civil rights by putting businesses that pollute in Black and brown communities.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, his recommendations include new procedures for city departments, such as quicker responses to environmental complaints, air monitoring and pollution control measures, public involvement in planning and development, and investments in neighborhoods disproportionately affected by pollution, known as environmental justice communities.

The Johnson administration will also petition the City Council to adopt new planning and zoning regulations that would make it more challenging to continue putting polluting industries in the same South Side and West Side areas.

“In the greatest city in the world, no neighborhood should have to suffer the burdens of pollution more so than any other neighborhood,” Johnson said during a City Hall news conference full of community activists. “The time to act on environmental justice is now.”

In addition, the proposal calls for enacting the terms of a legally enforceable agreement with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development that guarantees to stop discriminatory practices. 

The strategy also asks for readily available information on various environmental aspects, such as community-level pollution levels, the historical sites of polluting industries and the prevalence of chronic diseases in kids.

Following a citywide study of the cumulative impact of pollution and other social stresses that started in the spring of 2022, Chicago’s definition of environmental justice communities now includes Austin, East Garfield Park and West Garfield Park, Englewood, Humboldt Park, Roseland and other South Side and West Side communities.

The city already had classified Little Village, McKinley Park, Pilsen, East Side and South Deering as having too much pollution from industry and heavy roadway traffic.

Megan Cunningham, the deputy director of Chicago’s Department of Public Health, who conducted the cumulative burden research, noted that these neighborhoods have “the greatest combined environmental health and social burdens.”

The city’s study last year took into account the level of pollution, as well as social pressures that are typical in primarily low-income neighborhoods of color.

HUD concluded its more than 18-month investigation of Chicago after Southeast Side neighborhood organizations claimed that the proposed move of the General Iron scrap metal firm from Lincoln Park to the East Side was discriminatory. 

Cheryl Johnson, whose organization People for Community Recovery assisted in bringing the HUD complaint, described the partnership with City Hall as “a commitment that our lived experience will inform the changes to a racist system of zoning in Chicago.”

The investigators concurred that it was a civil rights violation to relocate the company, which was considered a nuisance in the white, affluent community, to a Latino district surrounded by Black residential neighborhoods. 

While the company’s owner wants a judge to reverse Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s decision to deny the permit, the federal government ruled that Chicago must still alter its methods. 

Angela Tovar, the city’s chief environmental officer whom Lightfoot hired, began discussing city legislation to reduce the cumulative pollution load in 2020. She said the process took years “because to think about what we’re doing requires systemic change.”

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