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Environmental justice activists in Chicago scored a major victory last week when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled that the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency must overhaul its process for allowing polluting industries into neighborhoods.
The announcement comes four years after the Illinois EPA approved the relocation of General Iron, a scrap metal operation, to the city’s Southeast Side, an already heavily polluted neighborhood. The approval set off months of protests, a hunger strike and the civil rights complaint filed with the federal EPA.
While the resolution does not say the agency violated any anti-discrimination laws, the agreement forces the Illinois EPA to make sweeping changes to its air permitting process. It’s a rare victory for community groups that allege race-based discrimination when it comes to pollution, especially when working through the federal government.
“I think it’s very important,” said Catherine Coleman Flowers, a member of the Biden administration’s White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.
“It also proves, you know, that the process does work and it puts something in the toolbox for [environmental justice] communities to seek some kind of justice,” she said.
Óscar Sanchez is co-executive director of Southeast Environmental Task Force, a grassroots organization fighting polluting industries in the area. His organization is one of two community groups that originally filed the civil rights complaint. He called the agreement monumental
Miranda Zanca for YR Media and CatchLight Local
“This is something that should not be taken lightly,” Sanchez said. “But at the same time, we’re also looking forward to seeing this administration continue to do this kind of work to really improve public health.”
The settlement between the US EPA and the Illinois EPA includes the agency making extensive changes that center community input as well as the history of the company applying for the permit. That’s significant, according to Gina Ramirez, Midwest regional leader of the National Resources Defense Council.
“General Iron had a long history of being a very bad neighbor EPA violations,” Ramirez said. “I mean, it even blew up right before the state issued its permit. And the fact that they didn’t consider it at all was just like a huge red flag. So just the fact that it’s in this agreement is huge for me.”
Despite the company’s troubled history that included explosions and a 2015 firea temporary halt in 2016 after failing a building inspection, and an EPA citation in 2018, the IEPA still got a permit to move into the southeast side in 2020. The facility was eventually closed in 2021 after striking a deal with then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The $80 million metal shredding operation was completely rebuilt on the city’s South Side and renamed Southside Recycling.
Other aspects of the settlement include consideration of vulnerable groups and greater inclusion for non-English speakers, both of which were points of contention in this latest permit process for the metal scrapper. The proposed facility would have been located right next to a high school, something current regulations would not have allowed.
Jamie Kelter Davis / For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Sanchez has long said polluting industries and longstanding policies work against the interests and livelihoods of the city’s most vulnerable communities. Now he is cautiously optimistic that this is beginning to change.
“It means that we are heard, that we are listened to,” Sanchez said. “It means that people pay attention, it means that organizing works.”
Existing environmental laws that focus on trying to ensure clean air, water and land aren’t always effective in tackling pollution in communities of color, according to Debbie Chizewer, a managing attorney for Earthjustice’s Chicago office. That’s because there is no statute protecting people from the type of discrimination that ends up placing industrial facilities next to Black and Latino neighborhoods.
That’s why activists in Chicago and across the country are filing complaints below Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits states, city governments, and other recipients of taxpayer dollars from discriminating between other protected classes on the basis of race and national origin.
Under the provision, federal agencies are empowered to withhold funding from recipients, launch investigations and bring partners into compliance through a negotiated settlement.
While the Biden administration’s EPA made significant financial investments in pursuit of goals such as environmental justice, civil rights lawsuits like those filed by activists in Chicago have mostly not worked out as advocates had hoped. Only two civil rights complaints filed with the Environmental Protection Agency has been resolved since 2021.
“The Biden administration has made commitments to strengthen its civil rights enforcement,” Chizewer said, “but historically I think there have been one or two successful [US EPA] complaints that led to findings of discrimination.”
Last year the EPA abandon three high-profile civil rights investigations in Louisiana, where black communities are exposed to pollutants seven times the rate of white communities. The complaints dealt with the rights of people in “Cancer Alley” not to be discriminated against on the basis of race — including the right not to be disproportionately exposed to toxic and cancer-causing chemicals.
“It was a big blow,” Chizewer said. “The Louisiana case was a big blow.”
For Ramirez, she celebrates this moment with her colleagues, but it is not lost on her how rare this outcome is.
“It’s like a bittersweet moment for me,” says Ramirez. “Because I know that there are other civil rights complaints in red states that have had a very hard time getting settled or that have been thrown out.”
The metal scraper cited in the complaint was first announced to relocate in 2018 from Lincoln Park, a white, affluent neighborhood on the city’s North Side, to the Southeast Side, a low-income, Latino and Black neighborhood that has been home to industrial polluters for more than a century.
Activists used a variety of tactics to stop the proposed move, including filing a separate civil rights complaint against the city of Chicago with the Department of Housing and Urban Development that was completed last year just as former Mayor Lori Lightfoot left office. They also filed this civil rights complaint the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency with the US EPA, alleging that the state agency failed in its duty to protect this pollution-ridden community by issuing the permit.
The complaint to the US EPA was the result of organizers trying to use every tool in their arsenal to stop the metal scraper from opening.
“We were so laser-focused on the southeast side,” Ramirez said. “We know the industry is always looking at us with hungry eyes.”
Organizers have scheduled the fight in 2021 with a hunger strike and protests, including one at then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home. Finally, after years of community organizers pressuring elected officials, Mayor Lightfoot’s administration denied the permit. However, General Yster has not given up and is instead still fighting the city in court to reopen the relocated facility.
Ramirez hopes that the increased pressure on the IEPA from the federal government in the future will make them think twice about what types of industries they allow in certain communities. To her, many of the additions to the civil rights complaint, such as looking at a facility’s past history or including resources for non-English speakers, are things that should have already happened.
“It doesn’t have to be that hard to get these common sense rules in place,” she said.
Editor’s note: NRDC is an advertiser with Grist. Advertisers play no role in Grist’s editorial decisions.
