While campaigning in 2023, Mayor Brandon Johnson said he’d create laws to curb pollution in South and West Side neighborhoods. Keeping to his promise, this April, Johnson introduced the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impact Ordinance to curb the disproportionately high levels of pollution those communities face.
But the measure stalled in the City Council Zoning Committee. At a Nov. 3 committee meeting, Ald. Bennett Lawson of the 44th Ward said he wouldn’t call a vote on the measure, typically a sign that it doesn’t have enough support to be put to a vote at City Council, according to WTTW.
Aldermen Jason Ervin, Emma Mitts, Monique Scott and Chris Taliaferro didn’t respond to requests for comment.
The Hazel Johnson ordinance requires a more thorough zoning process for industries with intensive land use that want to launch or expand in Chicago. Under the ordinance, those businesses must conduct an impact study that analyses current and potential environmental and health impacts like air, water and soil pollution. The ordinance also creates the Environmental Justice Project Manager position at the city’s Department of Environment and an Environmental Justice Advisory Board.
The Hazel Johnson ordinance was largely built on Chicago’s 2023 cumulative impact assessment, which analyzed which neighborhoods are most vulnerable to environmental pollution — Austin, Garfield Park and North Lawndale among them.
Black and Hispanic neighborhoods are statistically more likely to have land zoned for heavy industry and manufacturing, according to the Metropolitan Planning Council. And the increased pollution such industry brings with it can have negative impacts on nearby residents’ cardiovascular and respiratory systems.
“Economic development cannot be a tradeoff where we sacrifice the health of Black and Brown communities,” Johnson said when he introduced the ordinance. “We need to build thoughtfully, and that means ensuring that our zoning policies help protect all Chicagoans from excessive pollution.”