This summer, one of City Bureau’s fellowship teams is exploring environmental justice on the Southeast Side.
By Ahmad Sayles, Corli Jay, Bridget Vaughn and Olivia Stovicek
Steelworkers Park, shown here on July 5, 2021, was previously part of the U.S. Steel Complex known as South Works, which was in operation from the early 1880s and until closed in 1992. (Bridget Vaughn/City Bureau)
Industry—and pollution—has long been concentrated on Chicago’s Southeast Side. Local government has contributed to keeping it that way: City planning has designated much of the area for manufacturing and industrial use since at least the 1940s. Today, the Southeast Side hosts the Calumet Industrial Corridor, the largest such corridor in the city.
Many residents and activists have called the city’s encouragement of polluting industry in the Southeast Side’s majority Latinx and Black neighborhoods environmental racism. Residents have resisted, most recently by organizing to stop the city from allowing the owners of metal shredder General Iron to move its operations from Lincoln Park to the Southeast Side.
City Bureau’s Southeast Side team visited different areas in or near the Calumet Industrial Corridor to learn what people in these communities know about pollution in their neighborhoods and how they find information pertaining to the issue.
Many people the team interviewed were aware of problems with pollution, but they didn’t know if the city was doing anything about it. They talked about needing jobs within their communities that are prioritized for those who live there, but also wanting jobs that don’t have a negative impact on their health. The team learned residents believe there could be a balance when it comes to industry, health and green space, but not many we spoke with had hope in politicians to make that happen.
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We interviewed Marcus Wilkins, 68, in Calumet Park. Wilkins was concerned about the loss of manufacturing jobs in Chicago and wanted to see greener jobs than the East Side had in the past.
What do you currently know and feel about pollution in your area?
Pollution is bad, but if you have people, you’re going to have it. It’s inevitable. This has been a manufacturing area for over 150 years. And it was a time when there was almost no environmental consciousness. These things happened, unfortunately. Hopefully, they can clean it up.
Hopefully, [city officials and companies] will find a way to provide manufacturing jobs and produce less pollution than the old ones did. Once upon a time, you had no trouble getting a job in the city, particularly in this part of town. Valley Mould is gone, Interlake is gone, Republic is gone. Wisconsin Steel is gone. South Works is gone. Those were jobs that helped us make a living. They turned us from a swamp into a city. But you can’t sustain that level of pollution. Hopefully, a balance can be struck between the need for people to make what they use, and a way to do it without destroying the environment.
What would a healthy Southeast Side look like to you?
You need people committed to producing the most environmentally friendly ways of doing things. You don’t want to have it like it was when I was a kid. Everything here was covered with red dust from the steel mills. The slag would be coming out of the pipes or the smokestacks. If you go back up around Commercial [Avenue] in the ’80s and ’90s, every house over there was covered with this red dust. And people just accepted it. They didn’t have any choice. If you wanted to make a living, you worked in the mills.
What kind of jobs, green spaces or other resources do you envision for your neighborhood?
Anything and everything. Well, you got sales, and you got the service industry. But the only way to a real strong economy is when you make what you need and produce. When your raw materials come out of the ground, go through your factories and turn them into components, and go to other places and turn into a finished product. That puts a lot more people to work.
If you can get people to work, they will be buying and selling things, living in apartments and buying houses. They’ll have a stake in their future and their communities. We ain’t gonna go back to the days when you had belching smokestacks. But there are smarter ways to do it.
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Victor Williamson, 55, East Side, is a cyclist. Williamson said much of his knowledge of pollution comes from experience riding through the area.
What do you currently know and feel about pollution in your area?
You can’t erase history. I mean, at one time, this was the mecca of the steel mills. To my understanding, that land that’s running adjacent to Lake Shore Drive between 87th and 79th, there was a steel mill there at one time. So, it’s history. You can’t change it. But you can try to make a difference going forward.
What would a healthy Southeast Side look like to you? How would the community and city government be involved?
They gotta invest the dollars. I’m all about development, as long as it’s fair. As long as people of color aren’t forced out with gentrification, I’m all about that. But yeah, the city has dollars to clean up everywhere.
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(Bridget Vaughn/City Bureau)
Jesse Delapaz, 71, East Side, said when it was easier for him to walk, he used to be very involved in the community—including helping with both of 10th Ward Alder Susan Sadlowski Garza’s election campaigns. Delapaz’s family has long been in the area, since the 1940s on his mother’s side, and he grew up one block away from the U.S. Steel plant.
What do you currently know and feel about pollution in your area?
I’ve been around it my whole life. Pollution is a major issue, especially in this area. But I don’t worry about it because I believe God is going to take care. If your organs are healthy or stronger, your organs will be able to deal with it—obviously, because there are people in the neighborhood that have been here their whole life. My grandmother lived to be 94. She had 13 kids. Three marriages, she outlived every husband she had.
So, I think pollution is bad. But like I said, if your organs are strong, you can deal with them. That doesn’t mean you have to or you should deal with them. You can deal with them. That’s all I’m saying. I think our family is fortunate that we had strong organs. I don’t think many of my family members died from cancer from pollution; they died of other causes.
Is there anything that you would want to see the city do to reduce pollution in this neighborhood?
Of course, but the politicians are all crooked. That’s been a fact forever. I love my alderwoman right now, Alderwoman Garza. She’s new [since 2015], and she beat somebody who was in there, who was [connected] to the Daley family, so they had a lot of pull. And she beat them. That meant people were ready for change. And a lot of people are tired of the pollution, what we have to deal with, and wish they would not just throw things on us, that they would try to make it healthier. But we do what we have to do.
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Brian and Liz Sykes are siblings from Jeffery Manor.
Brian, 32, said he grew up with asthma, and both their parents, who grew up elsewhere on the South Side before moving to Jeffrey Manor, dealt with it, too.
What do you currently know and feel about pollution in your area? What else do you want to know?
Oh, we’re basically surrounded by factories. I think there was a study that was done a couple of years ago, just talking about just the high pollution rates around here because of the factories and how waste is distributed.
What would I want to know? What is actually getting past some of the filtration systems into the water? As far as these other factories around, how are they getting rid of their waste? What are some of the things that might be contributing to folks’ health?
What would a healthy Southeast Side look like to you? How would the community and city government be involved?
I think investing in the infrastructure, our water systems, making sure these factories are up to code. If they have any programs that will help people with their housing to make sure that the houses are livable. Just making sure that things are taken care of. Because I know where impoverished people live, when it comes to waste, period, that is an issue, because of the simple fact that upkeep is not necessarily taken care of the way it should. And so you get all types of different health problems.
What kinds of jobs, green spaces or other resources do you envision for your neighborhood?
There’s several different factories being built. Allowing those jobs to be available to people in the community first, because it’s like this: If you’re gonna reside here, at least talk to the people in the community, allow them to be able to make a living and to be able to improve what’s going on around here.
Liz, 29, had lived in Jeffrey Manor for her entire life until she moved to the Jackson Park Highlands District in South Shore last year.
What do you currently know and feel about pollution in Jeffrey Manor? What else do you want to know?
I’m aware there are a lot of factories around here. There’s always a toxic smell around certain areas, and particularly along Torrence [Avenue].
I would like to know if there’s anything being done concerning it, because these problems have been going on for as long as I can remember. Even in my mom’s home, where I was staying, you can smell it coming through the vents. You can smell it coming through the drain in the basement. Those are things we couldn’t control. I remember when I used to ride my bike in the area, I already knew how close I was getting to Torrence, because I would have to ride right back, because the smell was just awful.
Where would you go for more information on this topic?
I would just Google it. That’s the only thing that I could do. Or maybe go to the alderman’s office, but I don’t know how much information they may have.
What would a healthy Southeast Side look like to you? How would the community and city government be involved?
Informing the residents on what’s going on in the neighborhood, because you really won’t know, unless you really start digging and digging and asking a bunch of questions. I don’t know where I can go to [ask], “Hey, what’s being built?” or, “What’s being torn down?” or, “What does that factory manufacture?” If there was a place that you can go to have that information right at your fingertips, or a website for the communities or something like that—anything, social media, Facebook group, or something, to just make people aware of what’s going on. And not only to make them aware, but what we can do to improve the situation.
What would you like to see done with open land in the area like the South Works site on the lakefront?
I would like to see [the city] either make it into a garden, or, if you’re going to build something, have a recreation center or something for the youth. We can use more nice areas like parks and stuff like that.
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Leon, 55, is a lifelong resident of South Deering. He said he used to wake up and smell the steel mills, and he thinks respiratory problems he developed were related to those emissions.
What do you think are the lasting effects of the steel mills here?
I think the steel mills built up a lot of communities. That’s where a lot of these communities came from, you know. In that aspect, I think it would be good. But then as time went on, people got all kinds of problems, sickness from the pollution.
The [steel companies] knew what they were doing. I’m pretty sure with all the research and things like that, they knew what was in the minerals or the steel that they were doing, and they knew what would happen, but we didn’t know what was going on.
Any other thoughts on the steel mills’ impact?
What we need [is] some type of economic resources makeover in the neighborhood, because we can see the effects—the neighborhood went down, the economy. ... It really hurt a lot of families over here, but at the same time, we still need some resources on the Southeast Side. We still have plenty of land around here where they can bring some good stuff around here.
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AhTian Newsome, 33, lives just north of the Southeast Side in South Shore and frequents the area for activities like shopping at the Aldi at 106th Street and Avenue B, where we spoke.
What do you currently know and feel about pollution in your area?
It's really bad everywhere, but it's definitely bad in the city. I don't know a whole lot about pollution. But I do know there's a lot of littering, a lot of air pollution. There's a lot of traffic, a lot of diesel trucks emitting. There's factories around here I know, especially on the East Side by the lake. You can see smoke on the lake when you're out on the boats.
That does not make me happy. I wish I knew more what to do. I do ride my bike; I ride-share when I can. But I mean, there's got to be something we can do on a bigger scale. Because there was just a gas leak on the ocean recently; there's a lot of lakes drying up. … I want to have kids, and I'm scared, not just for the crime, but like, where are they gonna live? How's the Earth gonna be? I don't know how it's gonna be. We need to do something right now—last week. It makes me concerned and scared, but I don't know what to do.
Where do you go/would you go for more information or news on this topic, and about what you can do?
I watch the news regularly. That's why I knew about the gas leak and everything, but they weren't saying … what's going to be done. If I knew where to go and how to utilize those resources, I would do that.
What do you think of when you think of a healthy Southeast Side?
It would be less pollution. More fresh fruit and vegetable options, more accessibility to grocery stores. Everyone cleaning up more—there's a lot of street trash. … What I would like to see, it's more greenery, cleaner areas, clean up all those empty lots and let's get rid of all the abandoned buildings and get those filled with people.
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