Health Department abdicated responsibility to enforce air pollution standards, audit shows

City Hall Inspector General Joe Ferguson on Monday gave Mayor Lori Lightfoot the evidence she needs to bring back the Chicago Department of Environment, which former Mayor Rahm Emanuel summarily dismantled shortly after taking office.

Ferguson released an audit essentially accusing the city’s Department of Public Health of endangering Chicagoans by abdicating its responsibility to enforce air pollution standards.

From 2015 through 2017, the Health Department met its own internal goals for the frequency of air quality inspections less than half the time, the audit states.

Only 17% of the facilities that should have had annual inspections actually were inspected. And 19% of those facilities that were supposed to be inspected every year were not inspected at all over the three-year period, Ferguson said.

In 2017, only 48 percent of open facilities had valid certificates of operation. The Health Department also was criticized for failing to categorize potential air pollution levels for 359 facilities and for failing to ensure that violations identified by its inspectors are corrected.

The inspector general blamed the dismal record on “insufficient staffing and a lack of written guidance on how to prioritize the highest risk facilities for inspection.”

Rich Hein/Sun-Times

At the same time, Ferguson credited the department for setting a “commendably aggressive goal” of responding to air-quality complaints within 24 hours — which he called “critical given the fleeting nature of air emissions” — and meeting that goal 84 percent of the time during the same three-year period.

“Gaps in CDPH’s air pollution permit inspection program are increasing the risk that facilities emit more pollution than allowed by law,” the audit states.

“Infrequent inspections reduce incentives for permit holders to annually renew their certificates of operation or to request permits for new equipment because violations are more likely to go undiscovered.”

The Department of Public Health responded to the audit with a promise to develop goals for inspection frequency, fill vacant inspection jobs and hire a consultant to help determine appropriate staffing levels.

The department also promised to finalize an inspection manual and develop and implement an enforcement mechanism to “identify facilities that have not renewed their annual certificates,” apparently convinced violations were unlikely to be uncovered.

Ferguson noted that, shortly after taking office, Emanuel “dismantled” the Department of Environment and dispersed the department’s regulatory functions “across nine other city departments and offices.”

That gave the Department of Public Health regulatory oversight of air pollution “in the form of soot, microscopic particles and toxic airborne chemicals, which cause significant harm to the environment and human health,” the inspector general said.

“Our audit found that CDPH’s inspection program is not fulfilling its prescribed role in mitigating such harms,” Ferguson wrote in a press release that accompanied his audit.

“A key culprit is resourcing. That broader phenomenon starts with a failure to cost out new regulatory regimes and standards to assure the funding needed for full implementation and a general failure to hold public hearings to periodically assess whether appropriations align with evolving needs and priorities.”

Although the audit honed in on just “one component” of environmental enforcement, the findings should trigger a broader assessment of the “broader environmental protection enterprise,” Ferguson said.

During the campaign, Lightfoot accused Emanuel of “abdicating” his responsibility to protect the environment, allowing “polluting industries” to “operate without adequate oversight” — often in minority communities.

“Water that we are told is safe contains elevated levels of lead. Our air quality is poor. And hundreds of thousands of blue cans of recyclable materials are dumped in landfills instead of being recycled,” Lightfoot wrote in her “Plan for a Cleaner Environment.”