City working to fix problems with air pollution enforcement, watchdog says

Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s Administration has taken a number of actions to address the city’s failures in policing air pollution, though it’s unclear whether they’re working, Chicago’s watchdog said Thursday.

In 2019, Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson said in a report that city inspectors were either not inspecting or infrequently monitoring hundreds of factories, small businesses and other polluting sources, potentially contributing to health problems across the city. At the time, Ferguson’s office identified more than 1,500 facilities emitting air pollution in the city that required city oversight.

“These performance issues increased the risk of excessive emissions that harm public health and the environment,” Ferguson said in a follow-up report this week.

As part of that 2019 report the inspector general’s office made recommendations for better oversight, including an increase in inspections; a prioritization to monitor in communities with multiple sources of pollution; better record keeping; additional staffing and more accessible public data on air pollution sources. Ferguson said the city made 10 of 14 proposed corrective actions from that 2019 report and is working toward improving procedures laid out through the other recommendations.

The report noted that the inspector general’s office cannot confirm whether the new procedures are actually working, adding “we make no determination as to their effectiveness.”

Ferguson previously traced the lax oversight back to former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s decision in 2012 to eliminate the city’s Department of Environment, handing much of the pollution enforcement responsibility to the Chicago Department of Public Health. That department saw a decrease in environmental inspectors, an issue that still exists, according to Ferguson’s latest report.

One other recommendation that hasn’t been fully implemented proposed prioritizing inspections in environmental justice communities, which are low-income, largely Black and Latino neighborhoods that face multiple sources of pollution, the report said. The city said in a statement that it’s made headway toward the environmental justice goal and other areas.

“We have made significant progress on these recommendations, in particular prioritizing inspections with a focus on air pollution burden and equity, improving data transparency and bringing on new staff,” the city statement said.

The city’s inspection processes still aren’t adequate, according to Neighbors for Environmental Justice, a Southwest Side community group formed several years ago in response to an asphalt plant that opened directly across the street from McKinley Park.

“The same places are generating complaints week after week and each complaint gets closed out within 24 hours and the place keeps polluting,” said Anthony Moser, a member of the McKinley Park group. “We do not consider that a meaningful improvement. The city needs to treat air quality as a serious issue.”

Brett Chase’s reporting on the environment and public health is made possible by a grant from The Chicago Community Trust.