After walking away from a number of high-profile civil rights investigations, including one that nearly led to the overhaul of Louisiana’s pollution-permitting process, the Environmental Protection Agency has settled a Title XI claim with the state of Illinois.
The agreement between the EPA and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency centers on General Iron, a scrap-metal business that was set to move to a new facility on the city’s heavily Latinx and Black Southeast side, which has a long history of both industry and pollution. Now, the IEPA will have to change its permitting process for all air pollution so that there is more input from neighboring communities.
The settlement, which stems from a Title XI complaint local organizing filed four years ago, is heralded as a victory for environmental justice. But it comes at a moment when the EPA has been hamstrung by a Louisiana lawsuit challenging the disparate impact standard, which allows the federal government to investigate civil rights issues without directly proving that state officials had the intent to discriminate.
If the suit, brought last year by Louisiana’s then-attorney general Jeff Landry, succeeds, it could effectively do away with the agency’s ability to pursue environmental justice investigations.
“It’s like a bittersweet moment for me,” Gina Ramirez from the Natural Resources Defense Council told Grist and WBEZ. “Because I know that there’s other civil rights complaints in red states that have been having a really hard time being settled or they’ve been thrown out.”
While the EPA backed down in its civil rights investigation in Flint, Michigan in the wake of the Louisiana lawsuit, the Illinois agreement suggests the EPA can continue its more aggressive approach to environmental justice in states where Democrats are in power.
In Illinois, the settlement could have sweeping effects for the Black and brown communities across the state that are often forced to live alongside major polluters. The IEPA will have to rework its permitting process based around two key provisions from the settlement agreement: increased community input on all applications for pollution permits, and increased scrutiny of companies like General Iron that have a history of violating pollution regulations. There will also be new rules related to how close pollution-permit holders can be to certain vulnerable populations, such as schools.
While the notion that a repeat pollution-violation offender shouldn’t be able to open a facility less than a mile from a public school may seem logical, that’s exactly what had been slated to happen with General Iron. The company had planned to open a facility to shred old cars and other scrap metal.
General Iron has a long history of pollution violations, including a 2020 explosion at the facility’s former home in Lincoln Park (a white, affluent neighborhood) that led to a spike in emissions. Still, General Iron’s permits were approved by the IEPA. But Mayor Lori Lightfoot denied its city permits after a mounting community protest that included both the Title XI complaint and a hunger strike.
But once the new permitting process is in place, the next Southeast side should have more direct means fighting against the next General Iron.
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