Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined Chicago Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel, Illinois Sierra Club Executive Director Jack Darrin, Natural Resources Defense Capital Midwest Deputy Director Karen Hobbs and Environmental Law & Policy Center Executive Director Howard Learner to announce that the City of Chicago will tomorrow send a Notice of Intent (NOI) to sue U.S. Steel for violations of the federal Clean Water Act following the recent discharge of pollutants into Lake Michigan from the corporation’s facility in Portage, Indiana.  Under the federal Clean Water Act, sending an NOI is a required first step before a lawsuit can be filed 60 days later.

“Chicagoans rely on Lake Michigan for our drinking water, as an economic engine and as a recreational asset. Lake Michigan is our most precious natural resource; we must preserve and protect it, and we must pursue and punish those who pollute it,” said Mayor Emanuel. “We will not stand idly by as U.S. Steel repeatedly disregards and violates federal laws and our natural resources. Further, it is the mission of state and federal regulators to police polluters, not protect them, which is why we're calling on the Indiana Department of Environmental Management and the U.S EPA to do their jobs and hold corporations like U.S. Steel accountable for their reckless actions."

In addition to providing notice of the City’s intent to file a complaint in federal court under the authority of the Clean Water Act, the NOI explains that, based on monitoring reports and publicly available information, the City has reason to believe that U.S. Steel has repeatedly violated, and will continue to violate sections of the Clean Water Act and its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, in terms of both discharge limits and facility maintenance. Specifically, the letter cites evidence of chromium discharge violations in both April and October of 2017, in which nearly 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium and 56.7 pounds per day of total recoverable chromium, respectively, were discharged into a waterway that flows directly into Lake Michigan.

Out of an abundance of caution, the City of Chicago’s Department of Water Management (DWM) conducted additional water testing at the City’s 68th street water crib and at sites in and around the discharge area after the April discharge and found that Chicago's drinking water supply did not contain elevated levels of hexavalent chromium. Although DWM was not immediately notified about the October spill to be able to conduct immediate testing, water is tested quarterly for chromium. Full results of the November 15 quarterly test will be available Monday; that said, initial results do not indicate elevated levels of hexavalent chromium.

The NOI was also sent to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management (IDEM), the state agency that regulates entities with NPDES permits in Indiana, as well as President Donald Trump's U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Before President Trump took office, the City considered EPA's Region 5 office a partner in efforts to protect the Great Lakes. However, under President Trump and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, the EPA has taken actions that threaten our natural resources. For example, the United States has pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement, is attempting to roll back the Clean Power Plan and has appointed a series of fossil fuel lobbyists to key leadership positions. Further, the President’s budget threatens to significantly cut the Great Lakes Restoration Act budget.

This letter is just the latest action taken by Mayor Emanuel to protect Chicago’s natural resources. As one of his first acts as a Congressman, the Mayor introduced the Great Lakes Restoration Act, which has funded $1.7 billion in preservation for the Great Lakes. Under the Mayor’s leadership, Chicago has enacted some of the strongest environmental protections, including some of the strongest bulk materials regulations for storage and handling in the nation. The Emanuel administration has banned new petcoke and coal facilities, and has prohibited the expansion of existing facilities. Further, Mayor Emanuel created the “Climate Change is Real,” website, putting information from the U.S. EPA’s Climate Change Website on the City of Chicago’s servers after the Trump administration removed the content from federal websites.

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