CHICAGO (CN) — The Army Corps of Engineers announced Tuesday that it was abandoning its plan to expand a waste disposal facility on the southeast side of Chicago.
The Corps’ plan, approved in 2020, called for the “vertical expansion” of an existing 43-acre waste disposal site abutting Lake Michigan, the Calumet River and the Illinois-Indiana border. The site has been in operation since the 1980s, and contains sediment and material dredged from local waterways. This reportedly includes pollutants like arsenic, mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls.
The Corps stated in a September 2020 environmental impact statement that it backed the planned facility expansion “to safely contain dredged material from the Calumet River and the Cal-Sag Channel.”
In the same statement, the Corps estimated the expanded site would house about 530,000 cubic yards of dredged material — roughly half of the material it expected to be removed from Chicago area waterways over the next 20 years.
Two local neighborhood groups pushed back against the plan, however, filing a lawsuit against the Corps in March 2023. The Alliance of the Southeast and the Friends of The Park claimed that expanding the dump site would harm residents of Chicago’s southeast side and adjacent areas.
“The Corps’ decision to seek an expansion of the Confined Disposal Facility would perpetuate the cycle that nearby vulnerable and underserved populations have had to endure,” the groups said in their complaint.
Once a major center for the steel industry, the majority Black and Latino southeast side is still reckoning with the environmental impacts of that industrial legacy.
A report published by the city in 2020 found most communities surrounding the Calumet River on the southeast side ranked low on air quality and health indices, and the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency has deemed the area an Environmental Justice Concern.
The groups argued that “over 75 companies in Southeast Chicago have been investigated for noncompliance with the Clean Air Act, and Superfund sites in the area include the site of the Acme Coke Plant, more than 100 acres of contaminated land containing carcinogenic chemicals and harmful metals.”
The two neighborhood groups found support from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose office filed an amicus brief opposing construction of the new dumping site last July. Raoul’s office agreed expanding the dump site would do more harm than good for local residents.
“As their history demonstrates, the residents of Southeast Chicago have shouldered an unfair share of environmental harm for far too long,” Raoul’s office argued. “Prohibiting the expansion of the Confined Disposal Facility into the Dredged Material Disposal Facility is an important step to prioritize the quality of life of the residents of Southeast Chicago, ensure their constitutional right to a healthful environment, and bring long overdue environmental justice to the community.”
In its announcement Tuesday, the Corps claimed it had been informed Illinois officials would “deny any required permits for the vertical expansion.”
The Corps nevertheless restated its commitment to dredging operations in the Calumet River, saying they were “critical” for maintaining the local and national economy.
“The Corps remains committed to maintaining commercial navigation in the Calumet Harbor, Calumet River, and the Cal-Sag Channel,” Colonel Kenneth Rockwell, commander of the Corps’ Chicago District, said in a prepared statement. “We will work closely with federal, state, and local partners to identify viable solutions that support regional navigation and economic stability.”