Environmental activists protest outside City Hall in June. (Pat Nabong/Sun-Times file photo)
By Brett Chase, Inside Climate News, September 19, 2023
Promising to end the practice of piling on more environmental burdens to the same South and West Side communities, Mayor Brandon Johnson is proposing a series of reforms aimed at changing city practices after federal investigators last year determined Chicago violates the civil rights of its residents by concentrating polluting businesses in Black and Brown communities.
The proposals include new policies for city departments that include better response times to environmental complaints, air monitoring and measures to reduce air pollution, public engagement around planning and development, and investments in so-called environmental justice communities, areas that receive a disproportionate share of pollution.
The Johnson administration also will ask the City Council to pass new laws related to planning and zoning that make it more difficult to continue placing polluting businesses in the same communities that have historically received them, all on the city’s South and West sides.
Comments (0)