DOWNTOWN — Aldermen showed strong support for reviving the city’s environment department this week, but they pressed Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration to quickly restore the department’s ability to enforce environmental laws.
Johnson’s 2024 budget proposal would reopen the Department of Environment with $1.8 million from the city’s general fund.
The department would work to mitigate climate change impacts, address environmental harm in Chicago’s most overburdened communities and help the city reach its goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 60 percent before 2040, according to the budget.
A renewed environment department has long been on the wish lists for City Council members and local activists, who have said it’s a necessary piece of the puzzle in the work to combat climate change.
When former Mayor Rahm Emanuel closed the department in 2012, its responsibilities — including environmental enforcement — were transferred to the public health department and other city agencies.
Former Mayor Lori Lightfoot vowed to revive the department, but did not. Instead, she established an office of Climate and Environmental Equity last year. The environment department would absorb and expand that office while keeping Angela Tovar, the city’s chief sustainability officer, as its leader, officials said at a budget hearing Thursday.
But department officials would have no authority to enforce environmental laws upon the department’s reopening, Tovar said. Johnson has committed to restoring some of those lost powers to the new environment department, though his administration is still figuring out its plan to do so, Tovar said.
Most aldermen who asked questions during Thursday’s hearing celebrated the environment department’s likely reopening, but they hammered home their desire for the department’s muscle to be restored — and quickly.
“Where’s the beef? Where’s the enforcement-regulatory [powers]?” Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) said. “If we’re having a Department of Environment, let’s really have a Department of Environment. You should have inspectors. You should have a regulatory and enforcement wing to be able to issue citations when necessary, like we did back in the good old days.”
Citations for air pollution have dropped 90 percent since the health department took over environmental enforcement, according to two decades of public records reviewed by Neighbors for Environmental Justice earlier this year.
Public health officials have also “bungled so many environmental disasters,” including the botched 2020 Hilco demolition that covered Little Village in dust, which could have been avoided with a functioning environment department, Reilly said.
Dave Graham, the health official whom the Inspector General’s Office recommended be disciplined or even fired for his role in the Hilco debacle, was promoted this week to oversee environmental enforcement and inspections, according to WTTW.
Johnson’s administration will finalize a plan for bringing back the department’s enforcement power “way ahead” of the 2025 budget season, but it hasn’t yet locked down a timeline for doing so, Tovar said Thursday.
The department’s top policy priorities for 2024 are passing a cumulative impact ordinance and decreasing buildings’ dependence on fossil fuels, Tovar said.
A cumulative impact assessment released last month identified nearly 30 percent of the city as “environmental justice neighborhoods,” which have been most impacted by industry and pollution.
The assessment recommends an ordinance that starts a fund for community benefits projects in environmental justice neighborhoods, creates an environmental justice advisory body and requires a cumulative impact assessment every three years, among other points.
The department would also help the housing department on the Residential Decarbonization Retrofit Program, a $15 million effort to provide eco-friendly heating and cooling systems, water heaters, thermostats and other energy-saving upgrades to lower-income owners of homes with up to four units.
The environment department would employ 14 full-time workers in its first year, and their salaries would make up $1.2 million, or about two-thirds of the yearly budget. The other $600,000 would go toward contracts, tech equipment and assistance from the Department of Fleet and Facility Management.
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