Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
A sustained protest by community activists, a civil rights investigation and data showing the Southeast Side is one of the most polluted areas in the country drew President Joe Biden’s Administration into a city permitting controversy involving the relocation of car-shredder General Iron.
In an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times Thursday, Michael Regan, the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, said the planned move of the scrap-metal shredding operation to a low-income neighborhood that is already highly polluted is a prime example of the environmental justice concerns the Biden Administration wants to remedy.
“As we look at what we perceive to be some of the more egregious cases out there that we need to weigh in on . this popped up on our radar,” he said of the controversy.
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Capitol News Illinois
Senators Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin are asking the Environmental Protection Agency to fix the way the agency investigates and informs the public about harmful air emissions after an internal report last month found a Trump Administration political appointee suppressed an inquiry of cancer-causing gases in the Chicago area.
Last month, the agency’s inspector general reported that a senior political appointee in former President Donald Trump’s Administration suppressed attempts by Chicago-based EPA officials to investigate and remedy problems from area facilities that emit ethylene oxide. Senior officials told staff to limit air monitoring around the Sterigenics medical sterilization plant in Willowbrook and to hold off on sending requests for information to ethylene oxide facilities in the area, according to the report.
STEVEN ALLEN ADAMS Staff writer
WASHINGTON While negotiations continue between U.S. Senate Republicans, Democrats, and the White House on an infrastructure package, lawmakers got a head start on key drinking water and wastewater legislation that could bode well for future discussions.
U.S. Senators Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., announced the passage Thursday of S.914, the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act of 2021. The bill passed 89-2, with only Republican U.S. Senators Mike Lee, R-Utah, and Ted Cruz, R-Texas, voting against it.
The bill was a project of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, where Capito is the ranking Republican member. The bill had early bipartisan support in committee, with Capito co-writing the bill with Senators Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Ben Cardin, D-Md., Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., Tom Carper, D-Del., and Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.