It is time to take environmental justice seriously. It is just too bad that RMG didn't care about the well-being of the people. The reason RMG put a scrap yard shredder in Southeast Chicago is that it is the only place in the city where no one usually cares about pollution, particulates, and cancer.
STOP CAUSING DEATHS TO PEOPLE!
By Michael Hawthorne
Chicago - Under pressure from the Biden administration, (click here) Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Friday indefinitely delayed making a final decision about a proposed scrap shredder in one of the nation’s most polluted areas.
Lightfoot directed the Chicago Department of Public Health to conduct a more thorough investigation of environmental health risks in low-income, largely Latino and Black neighborhoods on the Southeast Side, where Ohio-based Reserve Management Group wants to shred cars and other metallic waste after closing a similar facility on the wealthy, predominantly white North Side.
The mayor stepped in after Michael Regan, the new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, reminded Lightfoot the Southeast Side already ranks among the nation’s worst areas in various pollution categories the EPA relies on to determine where it should focus its attention.
Heavily industrialized neighborhoods along the Calumet River are scarred by 250 polluted sites actively monitored by federal and state authorities, Regan noted Friday in a letter to Lightfoot. More than 75 companies on the Southeast Side have been investigated for Clean Air Act violations since 2014 alone.
RMG has largely completed construction of its new shredder and scrap yard on the ruins of the former Republic Steel mill, within sight of George Washington High School near Avenue O and 116th Street. But RMG needs a city permit before it can begin shredding flattened cars, used appliances and other metallic junk — a valuable commodity for companies that make steel from recycled scrap...
The bottom line is no longer profit over people, it is an end to the dangers of living in a capitalist country where politicians grovel for any kind of jobs just to say they improved the economy. Who cares if there is a scrapyard on the Southeast side of Chicago so long as it makes the election look good!
By Casey Bukro
Chicago - A new look at a survey of the Chicago (click here) area`s industrial Southeast Side disclosed an unusually high death rate among white men and women for three types of cancer, the Illinois Public Health Department reported Friday.
Dr. Robert Spengler, epidemiology chief for the department, said ''What we`re looking at here is not an epidemic (of cancer) as of today,'' but the latest study does indicate ''excess deaths'' for lung, bladder and prostate cancers compared with the rest of the City of Chicago.
Environmental activists who have been clamoring for more attention to environmental hazards on the Southeast Side say they will push for follow-up action to the report.
''This supports the concerns the community has been raising for the last several years,'' said Dr. Robert Ginsburg, research director for Citizens for a Better Environment in Chicago. ''There are health problems out there. This is another piece of evidence that supports our concerns.''
The new study is a re-analysis of a 1983 study, which found cancer ''hot spots'' in six Southeast Side area communities: Pullman, South Deering, East Side, West Pullman, Hegewisch and the suburb of Riverdale.
Both studies were done at the request of the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency, which has been criticized for failing to protect residents from dangerous environmental exposures in air, water and soil....
One national park does not make all the environmental problems right. One national park is only the beginning.
By Lori Rotenberk
The historic Pullman neighborhood, (click here) perched on the southeast side of Chicago, is a textural patchwork of industry and humanity. Take a walk through the community and you’ll find shuttered steel mills and railroad tracks intertwined with small, brick rowhouses. On warmer days, there are garden walks and alley parties. The residents here — Hispanics, blacks, and whites, both poor and middle class — are among the most diverse in the city.
Although Pullman has ridden many waves of change, it breeds resilience. Its 4,000 residents, less than half than in its heyday, have cobbled together lives amid the neighborhood’s rough-hewn beauty. Bent on busting crime, they watch each other’s backs.
“It’s quiet,” says artist Ian Lantz, 38, who moved to the neighborhood two years ago from Los Angeles. “It lacks pretension. I [first] saw it in the wintertime and found it gorgeous — it looks like a Hollywood back lot.”...
