The Case for Reinstating Chicago’s Department of Environment
What a week it has been! Environmentalists and climate activists all over Illinois are pausing to exhale and enjoy a moment of celebration. Not only has Congress acted, sending the first major climate legislation to President Biden to sign, Mayor Lightfoot has announced an agreement to purchase renewable energy for all city facilities and operations by 2025, making Chicago one of the largest cities in the country to do so.
But next week we have to be back at it. While Representative Sean Casten of Illinois and a scientist who owned a clean energy company acknowledged that legislators and activists deserve “an end-zone dance” after the Inflation Reduction Bill is signed into law, they then must get back to work.
The same goes for City Hall and the Environmental Action Committee!
All the lofty goals in the 2022 CAP (Climate Action Plan) and We Will Chicago program will not be accomplished without massive coordination efforts between city government and the private sector and among the city agencies themselves.
So where is Chicago’s Department of Environment, League President Jane Ruby asks in her Op Ed published in the Sun-Times? Restoring the department was one of Mayor Lightfoot’s campaign promises; the time is now for her to make good and plan for the reinstatement of the department in the 2023 budget.
We did have an environmental department until former Mayor Rahm Emanuel abolished it in 2012 as a cost-saving measure. That Divvy program we all love? That came to fruition under the Department of Environment. And we only have to look at the Hilco demolition disaster to see why we need the interagency oversight a Department of Environment would afford.
Additionally, our friends at Chicago Environmentalists state, “Parts of our city are plagued by generations of environmental injustice due to the presence of polluting industries. Water levels and rainfall are becoming more erratic due to climate change, and urban flooding is becoming an increasing threat. We still have more water lines made of lead than any other city in the United States, and soil contamination is rampant, with black and brown communities being disproportionately affected by both issues. Recycling rates are abysmal compared to other major cities, and our enforcement of recycling policy is severely lacking. Chicago still allows Styrofoam products to be used, as well as a variety of other single-use plastics that cannot be recycled. Furthermore, our city does not offer municipal composting. Even though there have been action plans to fight climate change in the last decade, the results have fallen short.”
The Environmental Action Committee has taken on the reinstatement of the Department of Environment as one of our major initiatives, so stay tuned for Action Alerts in the coming weeks!
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