Letter to the Editor: Neighborhoods’ Pollution Burden
The Chicago Tribune published a Letter to the Editor by LWV Chicago President Jane Ruby on April 15 arguing in favor of the Hazel M. Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance. Read the letter below!
Neighborhoods’ pollution burden
Chicago likes to think of itself as a city of neighborhoods. But for too many years, some neighborhoods have been asked to carry burdens that others never would: more pollution, more industrial traffic and emissions, more environmental health risks. Thankfully, Chicago’s City Council has an opportunity to take a meaningful step toward correcting these long-standing inequities. All they have to do is pass the Hazel M. Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance.
Hazel Johnson, the great Chicago organizer remembered as the mother of environmental justice, believed that where you live should not determine how much environmental harm your family is expected to bear. She spent a lifetime fighting to expose the unfair reality of environmental impact, how polluting land uses were concentrated overwhelmingly in Black and Latino communities. These communities, underrepresented in and underserved by city government, have too often been treated as an afterthought in decisions that affect their health, safety and quality of life.
Johnson’s legacy calls on us to take meaningful action to correct these profound inequities. This ordinance would help Chicago do exactly that.
The ordinance would require that the city evaluate proposed industrial developments in light of the cumulative environmental and public health burdens neighborhoods already carry, rather than reviewing each project in isolation. It would also strengthen transparency, expand community input and ensure that major industrial proposals receive closer scrutiny before they move forward.
This ordinance is not about impeding economic development, but rather ensuring responsible development. Chicago has already seen the consequences of getting this wrong. The city now has a golden opportunity to learn from past failures by adopting a fairer, more accountable standard.
At its most fundamental level, democracy is about people having a real voice in decisions that shape their lives. This ordinance would give people that voice.
I encourage every member of the City Council to answer the call to make Chicago’s democracy stronger.
— Jane Ruby, president, League of Women Voters of Chicago
