News Category: Around Campus

By Michael Hawthorne

Chicago and a group representing Great Lakes surfers urged a federal judge Thursday to crack down on U.S. Steel, accusing the Trump administration of failing to punish the company harshly enough for repeated spills of toxic chromium into Lake Michigan.

The nearly $900,000 in fines and penalties proposed by the government are woefully inadequate when compared with the ecological damage caused by chromium discharges from U.S. Steel’s Midwest Plant in Portage, Ind., according to court documents filed by the Chicago Law Department and the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation.

Lawyers for the surfers and city also condemned a lack of environmental improvement projects for surrounding communities and demanded an independent study of potential long-term damage caused by the company’s spills into Lake Michigan, the region’s primary source of drinking water.

Citing the steel mill’s close proximity to a Chicago drinking water intake off 68th Street, Mayor Rahm Emanuel tried unsuccessfully to intervene in the case before federal lawyers announced their proposed deal.

“The government’s inadequate oversight … demonstrates the need for Surfrider to remain vigilant,” Mark Templeton, the group’s attorney, wrote in its new court filing, noting that federal and state regulators had failed to penalize U.S. Steel earlier for multiple spills documented by the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago.

Continue reading on the Chicago Tribune…

By Lauren Cross

As the EPA proposes strengthening its standards for lead dust hazards in the face of a federal court order, attorneys representing families exposed to lead poisoning in East Chicago say EPA’s practice of inconsistently addressing such hazards at Superfund sites across the country cannot continue until the new rule.

“If you’re going to go through the trouble to use what you deem as the best science, then you should make sure that everyone benefits,” said Debbie Chizewer, an attorney with Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Environmental Advocacy Clinic.

Under a judge’s order, the EPA in June proposed strengthening its dust-lead hazard standards from 40 to 10 micrograms per square foot on floors and from 250 to 100 sq/ft. on window sills. Since EPA’s rule was first finalized in 2001, the understanding lead exposure in children has advanced and mounting scientific research has found no safe level is acceptable.

However, the Environmental Protection Agency has historically failed to address interior lead dust hazards for homeowners living in hazardous Superfund sites, and in the few cases that they have, such as in East Chicago and Pueblo, Colorado, the federal agency has not applied the current standards universally.

That’s according to public comments submitted Aug. 16 by attorneys with Northwestern, Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at University of Chicago Law School, the Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, and Health Justice Innovations.

…

EPA has cleaned the interiors of 396 homes in the USS Lead Superfund site since 2016 as part of their “aggressive” cleanup timeline, the agency has said. EPA Region 5 staff has argued the agency is only cleaning home interiors found to have contaminated soil because of the unlikelihood families are tracking lead-contaminated dirt into their home.

Northwestern, University of Chicago, Shriver, and Health Justice, however, see it differently.

“If that’s true, they should do the work and figure it out. This community has suffered incredible accumulative exposure. Just do the testing,” Mark Templeton, director of the University of Chicago Law School’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, said Friday.

Rather than using existing federal standards as a guide, EPA also created its own site-specific dust standard and assessment protocol in East Chicago, Templeton, Chizewer and others argue.

Continue reading on The Times of Northwest Indiana..l

By Michael Hawthorne

Trump International Hotel & Tower is endangering fish and other aquatic life in the Chicago River, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan alleges in a new lawsuit targeting the president’s skyscraper for multiple violations of clean water laws.

The glass-and-steel tower, emblazoned with a sign spelling “TRUMP” in letters more than 20 feet high, is one of the city’s largest users of river water for its cooling systems. It siphons nearly 20 million gallons a day through intakes so powerful the machines could fill an Olympic swimming pool in less than an hour, then pumps the water back into the river up to 35 degrees hotter.

Madigan’s lawsuit, filed late Monday in Cook County Circuit Court, accuses Trump Tower of failing to meet several requirements in a state permit intended to limit the number of fish pinned against intake screens or killed by sudden changes in pressure and temperature.

Building managers also failed to properly renew the permit and have been operating the massive cooling system unlawfully for nearly a year, according to the lawsuit.

…

A draft of the state’s latest permit gives building managers another three years to complete the ecological study and confirms state inspectors failed to ensure the skyscraper has complied with the fish-protecting regulations.

The Illinois EPA pulled back from renewing Trump Tower’s permit after the Sierra Club, Friends of the Chicago River and the University of Chicago’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic threatened to sue.

The groups have informally discussed a settlement with Trump Tower representatives. On Tuesday, the Trump Organization emailed a two-sentence statement in response to Madigan’s lawsuit:

“We are disappointed that the Illinois attorney general would choose to file this suit considering such items are generally handled at the administrative level. One can only conclude that this decision was motivated by politics.”

Continue reading on the Chicago Tribune…

By David North

A group of dedicated Great Lakes surfers is always chasing the next big wave, even if it means surfing in dangerous water alongside grimy landscapes home to some of the area’s largest polluters.

The surfers say some of the best waves in the midwest are near Whiting and Portage in northern Indiana, an area of Lake Michigan they refer to as “Southend.” But the surf scene is unlike the coastal ocean paradises where most surfers flock. The local spots are directly next to towering industrial complexes, including those of British Petroleum (BP) and U.S. Steel.

The BP facility sits near what used to be a gun club. Surfers call the location “Shooters.”

“It feels a bit more like you’re part of the background of a Kurt Russell, post-America apocalyptic wasteland,” says Patrick Noyes, who last year directed a documentary about the spot, Southend: The Place Where I Go Surfing. “There is BP, [the] huge aboveground web of pipes . . . next to a huge ArcelorMittal steel manufacturing facility with fire-breathing, smog-belching smokestacks next to a gigantic pile of coal.”

Longtime surfer Rex Flodstrom says “the refineries, flame towers, and industry make a unique backdrop for surfing. Sometimes you see irregular clouds of black or orange smoke.”

Beyond the grit, the location poses a number of hazards to surfers, says Mitch McNeil. McNeil is the chairman of the Surfrider Foundation’s Chicago chapter, a group that advocates to make more locations open for surfing, which was banned in the city until recently and now is restricted to two areas in the summer and four the rest of the year.

…

Last April, Surfrider Chicago took its advocacy to another level after U.S. Steel discharged nearly 300 pounds of toxic hexavalent chromium into the Burns Waterway in Portage, which flows into Lake Michigan. The company cited equipment failure as the cause of the spill.

U.S. Steel, under EPA oversight, collected water samples from the waterway on April 11 that contained chromium levels several hundred times greater than those allowed under its permits, the EPA reported. Levels at the point where the waterway meets Lake Michigan were at least twice the amount allowed.

Chromium is a naturally occurring element used in electroplating, making stainless steel, manufacturing textiles, and preserving wood. According to the Centers for Disease Control, exposure to hexavalent chromium “at high levels can damage the nose and cause cancer.” A toxic substances fact sheet further warns that “ingesting high levels may result in anemia or damage to the stomach or intestines. . . . Allergic reactions consisting of severe redness and swelling of the skin have [also] been noted.” The dangers associated with the chemical were made famous in the movie Erin Brockovich.

Last October, U.S. Steel violated its federal permit again when chromium was once more released into the water by Portage, the EPA said. While the company informed regulators at the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, it requested the incident be kept “confidential,” the Chicago Tribune reported earlier this year. The U.S. EPA apparently wasn’t aware of this spill until a Tribune reporter contacted the agency.

That’s when Surfrider Chicago got involved. Under the federal Clean Water Act, private citizens can sue private companies for harming the environment. Surfrider, which is represented by the University of Chicago’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of Northern Indiana’s Hammond office.

The suit says that surfers—unaware of what happened—were in the water shortly after the spill.

“The weekend following U.S. Steel’s October 2017 illegal chromium discharge, surfing conditions on the Southend were among the best of the year,” the lawsuit states. “Surfrider members were surfing on the Southend that weekend and surfers were at the Portage Lakefront without any awareness of U.S. Steel’s illegal discharge.”

The lawsuit cites several incidents of surfers having adverse reactions to the polluted water, among them the cases of “a surfer in his thirties who suffered from shingles in his eye and two male surfers with urinary tract infections.”

Continue reading on Chicago Reader…

By Michael Hawthorne

Fishing piers and floating gardens welcome anglers to the Chicago Riverwalk, but a few blocks upstream is a little-known threat to fish and other aquatic life in the city’s steadily improving waterway: Trump International Hotel & Tower.

State records obtained by the Tribune show the president’s glass-and-steel skyscraper is one of the largest users of Chicago River water for its cooling systems, siphoning nearly 20 million gallons a day through intakes so powerful the machines could fill an Olympic swimming pool in less than an hour, then pumping the water back into the river up to 35 degrees hotter.

Like other large users that draw water directly from rivers or lakes, Trump Tower is required to follow federal and state regulations detailing how facilities should limit the number of fish pinned against intake screens or killed by sudden changes in pressure and temperature.

Yet of the nearly dozen high-rises that rely on the Chicago River for cooling water, the decade-old skyscraper developed by Donald Trump is the only one that has failed to document it took those measures, state records show. Trump’s Chicago managers also haven’t conducted a study of fish killed by the luxury hotel and condominium complex — another step required five years ago by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency in a permit for the building’s water intakes.

Estimates of Trump Tower fish kills likely won’t be available anytime soon. A draft of the state’s latest permit gives building managers another three years to complete the ecological study and confirms state inspectors failed to ensure the skyscraper has complied with the fish-protecting regulations.

“I can’t keep a library book checked out for more than two weeks without getting a fine,” said Albert Ettinger, an environmental lawyer challenging the permit on behalf of the Illinois chapter of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Chicago River. “Why should Trump Tower get special treatment?”

Citing the state’s lack of enforcement, Ettinger and Mark Templeton, director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago, notified Trump Tower’s managers on Friday that the nonprofit groups are preparing a federal lawsuit accusing them of repeatedly violating the 1972 Clean Water Act.

Questions raised by the lawyers already appear to be having their intended effect.

Continue reading on the Chicago Tribune…

By Sarah Reese

A program manager at the National Parks Conservation Association on Monday slammed U.S. Steel’s wastewater plans for the Midwest Plant, saying they forced the EPA to make an 11th-hour decision.

The Environmental Protection Agency on May 30 sent a letter to U.S. Steel disapproving parts of the steelmaker’s wastewater plans, saying in part they lacked references to standard operational procedures that could help avoid or minimize impacts from spills.

U.S. Steel must submit a revised wastewater treatment operation and maintenance manual and preventive maintenance program plan within 30 days of receipt of EPA’s letter.

A public comment period on the proposed consent decree ends June 6.

“This letter really makes it clear that U.S. Steel’s plans aren’t good enough,” said Colin Deverell, Midwest program manager for the National Parks Conservation Association.

U.S. Steel’s plans were so vague, EPA was right to reject parts of them less than a week before the end of a public comment period, he said.

“There absolutely needs to be an opportunity for all of us to weigh in,” Deverell said. “As written, these plans will not prevent a future spill.”

The proposed consent decree does not lay out whether the revised wastewater plan must be made public, nor does it provide for additional public comment opportunities, attorneys at the University of Chicago Law School’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic said.

…

Rob Weinstock, an attorney at the University of Chicago Law School, said the comment period is the public’s only chance to weigh in. The consent decree, once finalized, provides for no additional public input or transparency.

Weinstock and Mark Templeton, director of the law school’s Abrams Environmental Law Clinic, are representing the Surfrider Foundation in its lawsuit against U.S. Steel. Surfrider and Chicago, which also sued U.S. Steel, have each agreed to put their suits on hold during the consent decree process.

“We can’t advise people on how to write their comments, but they certainly are well within their rights to request more time, more information and more opportunity for comment,” Weinstock said. “The Department of Justice would be obliged to respond to those comments.”

Continue reading on the Times of Northwest Indiana…

By Michael Hawthorne

Almost every time federal officials test a yard in northwest Indiana, they find staggering levels of brain-damaging lead in the soil.

The latest toxic neighborhoods uncovered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are near an abandoned smelter that churned lead, arsenic and other heavy metals into the air during most of the last century. Soil samples collected since October have identified more than two dozen contaminated yards in Hammond and Whiting, and EPA officials expect to find more as they expand their investigation.

In a situation eerily similar to the lead-contamination crisis still unfolding in nearby East Chicago, authorities failed to test residential areas next to the former Federated Metals property for more than three decades, even though the EPA and the Indiana Department of Environmental Management designated it one of the region’s most toxic industrial sites in the mid-1980s.

Neighbors wonder why it took the federal agency so long to get involved. Based on interviews and a review of documents, the history of the shuttered Federated Metals smelter appears to have been all but forgotten until 2016, when career employees at the EPA’s Chicago office began digging through files on polluted sites in northwest Indiana that either haven’t been cleaned up or weren’t scoured thoroughly enough years ago.

…

“This is another example of the EPA and the state of Indiana dropping the ball time after time again,” said Mark Templeton, director of the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago, who has not been involved in the Federated Metals case but represents citizens in other regional disputes.

Continue reading at the Chicago Tribune…

By Diane Pathieu and Sarah Schulte

High levels of lead were found in neighborhoods in Whiting and Hammond after the EPA tested more than 80 properties that sit next to the now-shuttered Federated Metals, which closed more than 40 years ago, officials said Tuesday.

Next week, the EPA will begin clean-up at five properties with elevated levels of lead. On May 23, a public meeting will be held for Whiting and Hammond residents.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency plans to test hundreds more properties near the old metals facility. EPA officials could not comment on why the agency did not do routine testing after the factory closed.

Sam Borries, of the EPA Region 5, said their biggest concern is for properties “at or above 1200 ppm of contamination” that also has “sensitive population living on property,” which includes children under age 7 or pregnant women.

…

The discovery of lead contamination in Whiting and Hammond follows the lead crisis in nearby East Chicago where crews are demolishing the West Chicago Housing Complex after hundreds of residents were forced to evacuate.

“I think the state and federal environmental officials have been dropping the ball consistently here, they don’t go looking for these problems, even though they know they exist,” said Mark Templeton, an environmental law professor at the University of Chicago.

As a result, Templeton said the residents are the ones bearing the health burden.

Continue reading on ABC-7 Chicago…

By Michael Hawthorne

Chicago and a band of Great Lakes surfers are challenging a federal legal settlement with U.S. Steel, accusing the Trump administration of failing to punish the steelmaker harshly enough for repeated spills of toxic chromium into Lake Michigan.

In a letter sent Friday and made public Monday, the Chicago Law Department and the nonprofit Surfrider Foundation vowed to oppose the proposed deal in federal court unless the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Justice make significant changes.

The letter described the nearly $900,000 in proposed fines and other penalties as woefully insufficient, condemned a lack of environmental improvement projects for surrounding communities and demanded an independent study of potential long-term damage caused by chromium discharges from U.S. Steel’s Midwest Plant in Portage, Ind.

U.S. Steel also should be required to create an automated early warning system to alert authorities about future spills, the letter concluded.

“State and federal regulators have failed to provide adequate oversight or take necessary enforcement action,” Edward Siskel, the city’s corporation counsel, and Michelle Kremer, Surfrider’s chief executive, wrote in the three-page letter.

The EPA and Justice Department began negotiating privately with U.S. Steel last year after Surfrider enlisted the Abrams Environmental Law Clinic at the University of Chicago to research pollution violations at factories on the southern shore of Lake Michigan.

Law students at the clinic unearthed records that revealed the Midwest Plant had violated chromium limits in its federal water pollution permit at least four times since 2013, including during an April 2017 spill involving 298 pounds of a highly toxic form of the metal known as hexavalent chromium.

Continue reading on the Chicago Tribune…

Chicago and some Great Lakes surfers say a federal settlement inadequately punishes U.S. Steel for chemical spills into Lake Michigan.

The University of Chicago discovered last year that the steelmaker’s Midwest Plant has violated chromium limits at least four times since 2013.

The proposed deal calls for U.S. Steel to pay nearly $900,000, test for hexavalent chromium daily at the plant, create a preventative maintenance program and upgrade pollution monitoring.

Continue reading on the Associated Press…