ILAPA News BURST! Little Village Toxic Tour Demonstrates Alternative Planning Techniques

	We all know that recycling is good for the environment. But what if that recycling takes place in your own backyard? Planners Network is concerned with issues such as environmental justice that often happen under the radar of traditional planning. On a brisk but clear Saturday in October, about 20 students, faculty and alumni from the University of Illinois at Chicago gathered to take a two-hour walking tour of Little Village, a south Chicago neighborhood where ordinary citizens have become champions for democratic action. Planners Network UIC was established in 2005 by a group of urban planning students to serve as an alternative to other planning organizations and to create a network for other professionals, activists, academics and students involved in physical, social, economic, and environmental planning. “The Toxic Tour perfectly compliments Planners Network's mission of looking at local planning through a social justice and equity lens,” said Lee Deuben, the PNUIC member who organized the tour. “While Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) is a grass roots organization and they don't consider themselves planners per se, they are the people on the ground promoting change and taking action that greatly benefits the health and well-being of their community.” LVEJO has been working since the early 1990s to keep polluting industry out of their neighborhood. They’ve used various tactics including protests, boycotts and demonstrations. LVEJO’s mission is to democratically rally residents to work together to improve the living conditions and environment in Little Village and Chicago. They want to have a voice in democracy, including having a say in what economic development happens in their community, to assure that it benefits them environmentally, economically and socially. LVEJO must fight every day for clean air and soil that people who live in other neighborhoods take for granted. Clearly, planners can learn a lot from LVEJO's progressive campaigns and programs. The Toxic Tour covers just a small part of the Little Village (South Lawndale) neighborhood, but it gives a clear picture of the abuses of industry that residents have put up with for too long - from ignored requests for a park to schools that were built on contaminated land. Part of LVEJO’s mission is to empower residents of all ages. To that end, the tour was conducted in part by LVEJO's youth leaders who are working to become certified guides. The lead guide is Kimberly Wasserman, an organizer with LVEJO for over 15 years. Before the tour began, she gave the group a brief history of Little Village’s struggles with industry, the city and their own alderman. She argued that what LVEJO is demanding is not extravagant. For example, a large site that they want to be converted to a park would not even begin to fulfill a minimum standard of two acres of open space per 1,000 residents in Little Village. This 24-acre vacant lot at 28th Street and Sacramento was the first stop of the tour. The site is currently ranked as a Superfund site by the EPA for over a decade. Superfund designation means that it contains toxic chemicals that are harmful to humans and the environment. Residents have hoped that once the site was cleaned up, it would have been turned into a park or a school. According to LVEJO’s website, the city agrees that five new schools are needed, yet only sixteen acres in the neighborhood are designated for two new schools. The rest of the open land is designated for commercial or industrial use. But the alderman refused to compromise on this site. Instead, the property was sold to Celotex. The factory used to be in a north side Chicago neighborhood, but was forced to move when $500,000 condos were built across the street. Somehow it was ok for them to move across the street from existing (and cheaper) homes. To add insult to injury, the company has hired a fraction of the residents that it had promised it would. Currently it employs two people from the neighborhood. Just down the road from the factory is a barrel recycling plant. The plant hires a greater number of Little Village residents, but also has had many worker violations, in addition to illegally dumping and burning toxic chemicals. Wasserman said that the plant has cleaned up their act since LVEJO reported the violations to officials, but it is still not a great neighbor to have on a street where many children live. The tour then crossed several railroad tracks, the official boundary between a residential neighborhood and the industrial district. Wasserman is adamant that LVEJO is not trying to run these companies out of town. “They can stay, but we are encouraging them to use cleaner practices. One plant recycles plastic. “Which is great,” said Wasserman, “but who knows what kind of health effects could result from this that might not show up for 30 years? We’re kind of like human guinea pigs.” Farther up the road and just a quarter of a mile away from homes, a coal burning electric plant is clearly visible. Here was a place where the tour had made some difference. After LVEJO had been bringing people out there for years, the plant finally made some changes. Unfortunately, the changes were merely cosmetic. Where coal used to be piled nearly into back yards, there was now rolling green hills with freshly planted trees. “If you could see over the hill, you would see that the pile of coal is just as big,” said Wasserman. “Though the hills do block the dust a little.” The coal dust has caused hundreds of documented cases of asthma. Little Village's zip code has the 3rd worse air pollution in the 8-county Chicago Metropolitan area. The wind shifted as the tour made their way along the railroad corridor, bringing with it a dense odor that some compared to burning plastic. The landscape gradually changed to more natural patterns. Birds could be heard as wind rustled through the leaves of mature trees. The tour’s final stop was a large vacant lot surrounded by brush-covered hills. The site currently serves as an illegal parking lot for freight trucks, but LVEJO envisions it becoming a massive urban agricultural project. Though the site is too isolated to be suitable for a park, it could be a wonderful place for residents to grow fruits and vegetables on a larger scale than they are currently able to in backyard gardens. At least one Planners Network member volunteered to teach urban gardening techniques to residents. Others were intrigued by LVEJO’s take on urban planning. “Pollution and poverty are often presented as separate problems,” said UIC student John West. “This tour revealed how back-room political dealings and strong corporate interests led to pollution in the back yards of the working class people of Little Village.” While the tour does not offer ways to cut down on energy use, or to provide alternate locations for industry to locate in, it is a great educational tool. The tour vividly illustrates what happens when the very real consequences of cheap energy hit close to home, something that most people do not think of every time they flip on a light switch. Wasserman and her colleagues at LVEJO may not have all of the answers to environmental problems, but they are working hard to make sure that they at least have some political leverage in what happens in their backyard. “People are proud of our neighborhood,” said Wasserman. “They’re used to us taking large groups of people through the neighborhood, and they’re happy to answer any questions you may have.” To learn more about how residents in Little Village are fighting for environmental justice, go to http://www.lvejo.org To learn more or to join Planner's Network, visit http://www.plannersnetwork.org/ Sarah Morton is a master’s candidate in Urban Planning and Policy at UIC, a photographer/archivist for LISC's New Communities Program and a member of PNUIC.
	Sara Morton sarah.ann.morton@gmail.com