This month, we celebrated the culmination of years of organizing, legal advocacy, and public engagement with the announcement of a new shoreline park on Chicago’s Southeast Side. For decades, the site has been the dumping ground for toxic dredged waste, known as the Combined Disposal Facility, or CDF. The CDF was supposed to be closed in the 1990s and turned into a park, but the dump kept getting extensions.
When the Army Corps proposed a new dramatic expansion that would have added another 25 feet of towering waste on Lake Michigan, the community said enough is enough. ELPC, representing Friends of the Parks and Alliance of the Southeast, sued the Army Corps in federal court. We pushed Illinois EPA to oppose the permit, causing the Army Corps to scrap its plans. Now the Chicago Park District is committed to following through on the 45-acre Future Park #608 for community residents and all Chicagoans to use and enjoy.
The Illinois Commerce Commission heeded ELPC advice on Illinois’ gas utility Nicor and Ameren rate cases in two ways. First, the ICC ended “renewable natural gas” programs which charged customers without demonstrating cost-effective environmental value. Second, the ICC approved substantially smaller rate increases than the companies proposed.
In November, the US EPA proposed sharply reducing the streams and wetlands protected by the Clean Water Act. This new proposal goes beyond the dramatic reductions in protections that resulted from the Supreme Court’s 2023 Sackett v. EPA decision. The Trump administration is explicitly seeking to “save” polluters money, while failing to account for the costs to the public.
Consumers Energy is planning to sell 13 hydroelectric dams in Michigan to a private equity firm, prompting concerns about environmental impacts and ratepayers’ electric bills. ELPC is defending five fishing groups who see the sale as an opportunity to reconsider ecosystem impacts and improve conditions for fish migration.
Events
ELPC Thinks: How to Turn a Toxic Waste Dump into a Park
Founded in 1993, the Environmental Law & Policy Center is the Midwest's leading environmental legal advocacy organization. We advocate, innovate, and litigate to protect the Midwest's environment from the Great Lakes to the Great Plains.
