‘EPA has made tremendous environmental progress’

Through cooperation and collaboration with our partners — states, tribes, industry — we are working toward innovative and efficient ways to solve challenges we face.

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Environmental groups and neighborhood residents have fought for nearly a decade to better monitor the chemicals coming from this Veolia incinerator in downstate Sauget. Odell Mitchell Jr. / BGA

Some recent local news stories and a Chicago Sun-Times editorial have questioned whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is vigilant in its approach to enforcing environmental law.

Allow me to emphatically reassure your readers that EPA’s dedication to protecting human health and the environment continues to be strong and robust under my leadership at EPA’s Great Lakes regional office in Chicago.

We’re currently in the process of hiring more than 70 new staff — including more than 17 inspectors and other enforcement personnel — and we continue to work vigorously with states, communities and regulated entities to ensure compliance with our environmental laws.

Continuous compliance is vital to maintaining the environmental gains we already achieved and to making progress toward reaching our ambitious goals.

SEND LETTERS TO: letters@suntimes.com. Please include your neighborhood or hometown and a phone number for verification purposes.

Understandably, people generally focus on statistics regarding formal enforcement actions to assess EPA’s commitment to our mission and our success. However, these actions represent only a small portion of the incredible work done by EPA’s dedicated career staff.

Taking formal enforcement action is an important tool — but not the only tool we reach for — to achieve compliance. EPA makes use of the full array of enforcement and compliance resources to achieve lasting environmental results.

Through cooperation and collaboration with all our partners — states, tribes, industry — we are working towards innovative and efficient ways to solve the many challenges we face.

And EPA will not hesitate to take formal enforcement action when it is deemed necessary and appropriate.

Since 2017, EPA has picked up the pace to complete Superfund cleanups and restore areas of concern throughout the Great Lakes basin.

EPA has made tremendous environmental progress since the agency’s inception nearly 50 years ago and I will do everything in my power to keep up — and expand — the good work.

Cathy Stepp,

U.S. EPA Region 5 administrator

Chicago’s young men need READI

Thank you for your editorial on READI Chicago.

As a job trainer for ex-offenders and justice involved individuals at the Barlow Education and Employment Center of St. Leonard’s Ministries on the near West Side, I see, on a daily basis, men and women eager to change their behavior and become productive members of society.

They have been incarcerated in the state system and have been through the hell that exists inside of prisons. With the success of a program like READI, it is likely that young men will never have to go through that experience.

Let us hope and work for READI’s effective success.

Pete Baker, Near West Side

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