Metro-east environmental activists confront Duckworth. She vows to help them fight pollution
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Illinois, got an earful of complaints and demands from environmental activists Saturday about flooding, sewer backups and the quality of the air and water in the East St. Louis and Cahokia Heights areas.
Duckworth took in the barrage of comments and then noted her efforts to fight pollution and vowed to support the metro-east activists. She also promised to keep meeting with them as they requested and to keep trying to get federal funding to help solve the problems raised by the residents.
The United Congregations of Metro East organized the meeting of about 70 people in the Southern Mission Missionary Baptist Church at 2801 State St. in East St. Louis.
“This is a really important issue to me,” Duckworth said. “And I’m going to stick with it.
“ I am becoming known as the ‘sewer senator,’ because I care so deeply about sewer systems,” she said, as she drew laughter from the crowd.
Duckworth said she is the co-chair and co-founder of the U.S. Senate Environmental Justice Caucus.
The activists raised several issues, including:
▪ The amount of air pollution at Veolia ES Technical Solutions, which stores and burns hazardous waste with three incinerators, 25 storage tanks and material processing areas at 7 Mobile St. in Sauget. The site’s current five-year permit from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency ends in July.
▪ Flooding in Cahokia Heights, where sewage backs up in toilets, sinks and bathtubs or spills into homes with flood water when heavy rain forces sewers to overflow. Local, state and federal officials have authorized tens of millions of dollars to fix this issue since media coverage and lawsuits starting in 2020 drew more attention to it.
▪ Flooding of the Harding Ditch, which needs to be dredged. This is a major storm water drainage canal in the East St. Louis and Cahokia Heights area, and funding has not been allocated for this project. A record rainfall in July 2022 flooded streets, homes and cars when the Harding Ditch could not hold the amount of water it received, including storm water runoff from above the Mississippi River bluffs.
“I’ve been out there in the community, seen people’s yards, smelled people’s yards, smelled people’s basements, smelled people’s garages, I’ve been out there. So we’re going to continue to work on it,” Duckworth said.
“I’m not going to give up on this. Like I said, I was first on the ground, I’m going to be the last to leave until we get the problem solved.”
Duckworth told the crowd that she has gotten the U.S. Environment Protection Agency to change the way it reviews a business’ level of pollution.
Instead of looking at the current level, federal officials now look at the “cumulative effect.”
“I said, you need to look at what’s happened in the last 100 years in that location and look at the cumulative effect of industry after industry after industry,” she said.
While Duckworth described her efforts to obtain federal funding to solve long-term environmental problems, she also noted that fellow Democrat Gov. J.B. Pritzker has been supportive of getting state funding for helping metro-east residents.
“We also have to hold local leaders accountable as well, and that’s where community voices become really important,” Duckworth said.
“Because so often, as we’ve seen over the last 100 years, some of the local leaders have prioritized some things over another and that’s got to end.”
Activists highlight environmental problems
The Harding Ditch issue was highlighted in George McClellan’s remarks to Duckworth.
McClellan, vice president of the NAACP East St. Louis Branch, said the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has reported that 75% to 80% of the flood water in the ditch comes from outside the East St. Louis and Cahokia Heights area.
The ditch system needs an estimated $125 million to $150 million in repairs, McClellan said.
“The surrounding communities keep benefiting from the existence of the Harding Ditch, but take no responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep,” he said. “It makes no sense.”
Arianna Norris-Landry, one of the speakers to address Duckworth, said her Cahokia Heights home near the Veolia site has lost all of its value. She said her basement has flooded four times in the past six years, and the metallic air she sometimes breathes in her neighborhood causes health problems for herself and other residents.
Norris-Landry said officials in the “industrial complex” have destroyed the community’s past and they are bent on destroying the community’s future.
“They’d rather forget,” she said. “But senator, I’m asking you to remember that we are still here suffering in a stew of sewage, bad water, bad air, corruption and greed. I’m asking you to remember we are here and asking you to please remember the children.”
Belleville News-Democrat reporters Lexi Cortes and Kelly Smits contributed information for this article.
