May, 03 2011, 10:13am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Josh Mogerman, NRDC, 312-651-7909; Jack Darin, Sierra Club, 312-251-1680 x112; Glynnis Collins, Prairie Rivers Network, 217-344-2371
Serial Spillers: Groups Sue to Stop Chicago Water Regulators from Polluting the Chicago River
MWRD's illegal sewage discharges mucking waterways from Chicago to Gulf of Mexico
CHICAGO, IL
A coalition of conservation groups have sued to stop the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) from dumping raw sewage mixed with stormwater, as well as algae-fueling pollution, into the Chicago River system. Effluent from MWRD's sewage treatment plants and combined sewer overflow pipes regularly violate Clean Water Act standards in the River, impacting downstream waters from Chicago all the way to the Gulf of Mexico according to the suit.
"Keeping raw sewage out of our waters is the District's core responsibility," said Ann Alexander, Senior Attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Yet the problem continues unabated, even after three decades and billions of taxpayer dollars. Chicagoland shouldn't have to wait any longer for the District to do its job right."
NRDC, Sierra Club and Prairie Rivers Network filed a federal lawsuit today in the Northern District of Illinois over the regional water treater's pollution problem. The suit points to discharges of pollution from treatment plants that regularly violate federal standards requiring that discharges not cause or contribute to low levels of oxygen, which fish need to breath; and unnatural sludge or growth of algae, which harms other forms of life in the water.
MWRD manages water infrastructure in the nearly 900 square mile region in Cook County. This includes the area's sewer lines and sewage treatment plants, most notably the three plants that are the subject of the lawsuit - Calumet, North Side, and Stickney. These plants, the largest in Illinois, are authorized to release over a billion gallons of wastewater every day to Chicago waters, and that wastewater contains large amounts of phosphorus. Excess phosphorus acts as an unnatural fertilizer triggering growth of algae, aquatic plants and bacteria that block sunlight needed by other aquatic life, sucks the oxygen out of the water, and can potentially be toxic.
Phosphorus is also a major cause of the Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico, a huge area in the Gulf where fish and other forms of life cannot survive. Chicago waters, which consist primarily of effluent from the MWRD plants, have been shown to be the largest single contributor of phosphorus to the Dead Zone. As treatment plants around the region address phosphorus, MWRD has fallen behind results achieved by water systems in many Midwestern cities and towns, including Detroit, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis.
MWRD's water infrastructure also includes dozens of overflow points where untreated sewage combined with storm water pour into the river during rain events that overwhelm the District's treatment plants. The sewer system of Chicago, like many older cities, combines waste water with storm water, sending both through the same system of pipes to the sewage treatment plants that are spread around the Chicago area. Because the system is combined, stormwater floods the pipes beyond the capacity of sewage treatment plants, forcing raw sewage and rain water directly to Chicago waters through overflow pipes.
The release of raw sewage from MWRD's plants can kill fish, because it takes away the oxygen the fish need to breathe. The District's own reports state that the waters receiving its combined sewer overflows violate dissolved oxygen standards a substantial percentage of the time in parts of the Chicago River. Combined sewage and stormwater from the District can also flood basements and force opening of the locks to Lake Michigan.
"We shouldn't have raw sewage in the Chicago River every time we get a big rainstorm," said Jack Darin, Director of the Illinois Chapter of the Sierra Club. "Upgrading Chicago's sewers to modern standards will not only give us a healthy river, it will create good jobs when Chicagoans need them the most."
"The millions of dollars MWRD has spent to fight off a cleaner Chicago River could have moved us forward on dealing with the nutrient pollution that fouls waters downstate and in the Gulf of Mexico," said Glynnis Collins, Executive Director of Prairie Rivers Network, referring to the ongoing hearings before the Illinois Pollution Control Board concerning Illinois EPA's proposal to improve water quality standards in Chicago area waterways. "The City, State, and Feds all want to get this rolling. We hope the suit can help force the issue along."
The three plaintiffs in this lawsuit have also been battling MWRD in the Pollution Control Board hearings on the question of whether the District should be required to disinfect its sewage effluent, as is done in almost all other major cities across the nation.
In addition to today's lawsuit by Chicago River advocates, there are indications that MWRD is in consent decree discussions with the US Department of Justice and USEPA over its outdated sewage infrastructure. This comes a week after USEPA released guidance that "encourages" cities to use green infrastructure to the "maximum extent possible" for stormwater and CSOs.
In a recent settlement with the USEPA and US Department of Justice, one of the central solutions to similar issues in Cleveland-area waterways is a significant embrace of large-scale green infrastructure projects that use natural systems and materials to hold and clean water in heavy storm events. This green infrastructure can be part of a comprehensive and cost-effective way for cities to address combined sewer overflow problems and improve water quality. Other cities throughout the Midwest, including Milwaukee, Wisconsin; Aurora, Illinois; and Lenaxa, Kansas, are using green infrastructure to reduce the frequency and severity of combined sewer overflows, while improving neighborhoods and reducing infrastructure costs. Additionally, the work in Cleveland has been estimated to produce 30,000 jobs in northeast Ohio.
Additional Resources:
- Court filings on the suit can be found at https://docs.nrdc.org/water/wat_11050301.
- USEPA's "Recent Examples of Green Infrastructure in Permits and Enforcement Actions" (pdf)
- "Re-Envisioning the Chicago River" highlights potential positive impacts from the use of green technologies to relieve pressure on the stressed water infrastructure throughout Chicagoland
- "Rooftops to Rivers" looks at current uses of green technologies
NRDC works to safeguard the earth--its people, its plants and animals, and the natural systems on which all life depends. We combine the power of more than three million members and online activists with the expertise of some 700 scientists, lawyers, and policy advocates across the globe to ensure the rights of all people to the air, the water, and the wild.
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300+ Arrested Outside Schumer's Home During Jewish-Led Seder Against Gaza Genocide
"No one is free until everyone is free," read a banner representing a Seder plate. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Apr 24, 2024
As U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer prepared to vote on Tuesday night for a foreign aid package including billions to continue arming Israel in its bombardment of Gaza, roughly 300 protesters were arrested outside his home in Brooklyn for holding an "emergency Passover seder" protest, demanding the U.S. end its support for an assault that has killed at least 34,262 Palestinians.
The protest was led by anti-Zionist Jewish organizers with Jewish Voice for Peace, IfNotNow, and Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, with a large round banner representing a traditional Seder plate at the center of the protest at Grand Army Plaza, a block from Schumer's home.
Hundreds of people, some wearing traditional Palestinian keffiyehs, linked arms and chanted, "Free, free Palestine!" while blocking traffic and displaying the Seder plate.
"No one is free until everyone is free," read the banner. "Jews say stop arming Israel."
Schumer's home has been the site of numerous protests since October, when Israel began its attacks on and blockade of Gaza, which have left parts of the enclave facing famine and the entire population of 2.3 million people suffering from "acute food insecurity," at a minimum.
"A genocide being carried out in our names as Jews demands that we adapt our sacred tradition again, take to the streets, and do everything we can to prevent more death," author and activist Naomi Klein said at the protest.
The Biden administration has approved numerous weapons transfers to Israel, and the Senate overwhelmingly voted Tuesday night in favor of the package that includes $17 billion more in unconditional aid for the Israel Defense Forces.
Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) were the only members of the Democratic caucus who voted against the funding bill. Fifteen Republicans also opposed the bill over its inclusion of Ukraine aid.
The demonstration at Grand Army Plaza was organized amid a burgeoning protest movement on U.S. college campuses, including at Columbia University, where more than 100 students were suspended and then arrested for trespassing last week after setting up an encampment to demand the school divest from all companies that work with the Israeli government.
The student-led protests have been denounced by President Joe Biden and other pro-Israel critics as "antisemitic" and endangering Jewish students, despite the fact that Jewish students have helped to organize the nonviolent demonstrations.
One organizer, Calvin Harrison, told The New York Times that he attended the Brooklyn protest Tuesday night "because I'm a Jew and I was raised to believe that Judaism is about justice."
"Passover is a celebration of liberation for the future," he told the Times. "We can't celebrate liberation for ourselves while we're oppressing Palestinians."
Yonah Lieberman, co-founder of IfNotNow, recalled the group's Liberation Seder in 2016 in New York, where campaigners protested the Anti-Defamation League's support for the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories.
"Eighteen of us were arrested," he said. "Tonight: [Organizers] led a Seder in the streets demanding Schumer stop arming Israel. Hundreds are being arrested. The movement grows."
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'Blood on Their Hands': 79 US Senators Approve Billions More in Military Aid for Israel
Sen. Bernie Sanders, one of just three Senate Democratic caucus members to oppose the bill, said that "U.S. taxpayers should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government."
Apr 24, 2024
With the support of nearly 80% of the chamber's lawmakers, the U.S. Senate on Tuesday approved a sprawling foreign aid package that includes $17 billion in unconditional military assistance for the Israeli government as it ramps up its catastrophic assault on the Gaza Strip.
The final vote on the $95 billion package, which also included military aid for Ukraine and Taiwan, was 79-18, with just three members of the Senate Democratic caucus—Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Peter Welch (D-Vt.), and Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.)—and 15 Republicans opposing the bill.
Sanders called Tuesday "a dark day for democracy," condemning the upper chamber's refusal to even allow a vote on his proposed amendment to cut offensive military aid to Israel from the legislation.
"I voted no tonight on the foreign aid package for one simple reason: U.S. taxpayers should not be providing billions more to the extremist Netanyahu government to continue its devastating war against the Palestinian people," Sanders said in a statement following the vote. "Thirty-four thousand Palestinians have already been killed and 77,000 have been wounded—70% of whom are women and children."
"The housing in Gaza is destroyed; the infrastructure in Gaza is destroyed; the healthcare system in Gaza is destroyed; the educational system in Gaza is destroyed," Sanders added. "Enough is enough. No more money for Netanyahu's war machine."
The bill, which passed the House over the weekend, now heads to the desk of President Joe Biden, who is expected to sign it in the coming days.
"That Congress passed many billions of dollars for new weaponry for Israel that will be used to devastate Gaza, and could be used in a war against Iran, is deeply disturbing," said the National Iranian American Council.
The 79 senators who voted to pass Biden's foreign aid bill/expand Israel's genocide in Gaza: pic.twitter.com/bVQisvOndd
— Stephen Semler (@stephensemler) April 24, 2024
Overwhelming congressional and White House support for arms and military support stands in stark contrast to U.S. public opinion, which has increasingly turned against Israel's assault on Gaza in recent months as the grisly death toll and humanitarian emergency have worsened and evidence of Israeli war crimes has mounted.
As Tuesday's vote took place, thousands of Jewish New Yorkers and allies rallied outside of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's (D-N.Y.) home to voice outrage over U.S. lawmakers' growing complicity in Israel's military assault.
"We're here as thousands of Jewish New Yorkers, calling on Senator Schumer to halt weapons funding to Israel as it massacres and starves Palestinians in Gaza," said Eva Borgwardt, national spokesperson for IfNotNow, one of the groups that organized the mass demonstration on the second night of Passover.
A Gallup survey released last month found that 55% of U.S. voters—including 75% of Democrats, 60% of Independents, and 30% of Republicans—disapprove of Israel's military assault on Gaza. A separate poll commissioned by the Center for Economic and Policy Research showed that a majority of American voters support halting U.S. weapons shipments to Israel.
Since October, the Biden administration has quietly approved more than 100 arms sales to Israel, flouting U.S. laws that prohibit weapons deliveries to countries that are violating human rights or blocking American humanitarian aid.
"As I have said countless times, sending Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government the munitions it is using to destroy Gaza is wrong and inconsistent with our foreign policy goals," Welch said Tuesday after voting against the aid package. "It is unthinkable that an ally of the U.S. would conduct its military campaign with planes, tanks, bombs, and artillery supplied by the U.S., while impeding access for aid trucks to destitute civilians under its occupation."
"Urgent calls for peace are loudly echoing across the country but seem to fall on deaf ears on Capitol Hill."
Days before the Senate vote, mass graves were discovered at two Gaza hospitals that Israeli forces recently raided and destroyed. The United Nations Human Rights Office on Tuesday demanded an international probe into the mass graves, noting that bodies of Palestinians were found stripped naked with their hands tied.
"Victims had reportedly been buried deep in the ground and covered with waste," Ravina Shamdasani, a spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday.
One Gaza official toldCNN that a total of 300 bodies were found in a mass grave at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and that "there were signs of field executions."
"The U.S. government is arming a regime creating mass graves in Gaza, indeed turning all of Gaza into a mass graveyard," Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now, wrote on social media Tuesday.
On the heels of the Senate vote, Agence France-Pressenoted that one of its correspondents and eyewitnesses "reported heavy bombardment of several areas of northern Gaza."
"Early Wednesday, hospital and security sources in Gaza reported Israeli air strikes in Rafah, as well as the central Nuseirat refugee camp," the outlet reported.
The anti-war group CodePink said in a statement after Tuesday's vote in the U.S. Senate that "urgent calls for peace are loudly echoing across the country but seem to fall on deaf ears on Capitol Hill."
"People and the planet desperately need healthcare, housing, and climate justice, not a further descent into darkness through this massive war bill that funds death and destruction," the group added. "Every elected official who voted in favor of this bill has blood on their hands."
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Defeating 'MAGA Dark Money,' Summer Lee Wins Primary in Landslide
"This is a huge testament to our collective strength and resilience as a progressive movement," said the executive director of Justice Democrats.
Apr 24, 2024
U.S. Rep. Summer Lee, a member of the progressive "Squad," won the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania's 12th Congressional District on Tuesday, fending off an opponent whose campaign was backed by a billionaire Republican megadonor and ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Lee, a vocal critic of the Netanyahu government and leading supporter of a cease-fire in Gaza, handily defeated Bhavini Patel, a borough councilmember in Edgewood, Pennsylvania whose effort to unseat the progressive incumbent was bankrolled by Jeffrey Yass, the state's richest man. Patel actively courted Republican and pro-Israel voters, characterizing Lee as "fringe."
With more than 95% of the vote counted, Lee is ahead of Patel by more than 20 percentage points.
"I am so humbled and proud to win my first primary reelection to be the congresswoman for this incredible district I've spent my life fighting for," Lee said after the race was called in her favor. "Our campaign was built on a record of delivering for our democracy, defending our most fundamental rights, and expanding our vision for what is politically possible for our region's most marginalized communities."
"Our victory is a rejection of right-wing interests and Republican billionaires using corporate super PACs to target Black and brown Democrats in our primaries—be it AIPAC or Moderate PAC or any other MAGA billionaire in Democratic clothing," Lee added. "Western PA is the blueprint for the future all of America deserves."
Opposing genocide is good politics and good policy. #CeasefireNOWÂ https://t.co/A7pnJNskWS
— Summer Lee (@SummerForPA) April 24, 2024
Through the misleadingly named Moderate PAC, Yass—a prolific tax dodger who has been floated as a possible treasury secretary pick if former President Donald Trump wins another term—spent hundreds of thousands of dollars boosting Patel and attacking Lee.
Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn Political Action, said that by ushering Lee to victory, residents of Pennsylvania's 12th District "soundly rejected MAGA dark money."
"MoveOn members are ready to defeat this dangerous flood of dark-money spending against progressive champions and ensure that we continue to elect working-class people to Congress," said Epting.
"Now that it's clear Summer won her primary, AIPAC's super PAC has already officially failed at their one goal for this cycle: taking out the entire Squad."
During her 2022 campaign, Lee faced and overcame huge spending by the powerful pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC via its super PAC, the United Democracy Project. But the organization opted to stay on the sidelines this time around, even as it plans to spend $100 million to defeat progressives in this year's cycle amid growing public opposition to Israel's war on Gaza.
"They had every intention of spending in this race—but they didn't, because they realized they would likely lose," Justice Democrats executive director Alexandra Rojas wrote in an email late Tuesday. "And that is because all of us had Summer's back and supported her campaign to out-organize AIPAC in every way."
"This is a huge testament to our collective strength and resilience as a progressive movement," said Rojas. "Now that it's clear Summer won her primary, AIPAC's super PAC has already officially failed at their one goal for this cycle: taking out the entire Squad."
While AIPAC ultimately sat out the Pennsylvania race, it is devoting considerable resources to ousting other progressive lawmakers, including Reps. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) and Cori Bush (D-Mo.).
The pro-Israel lobbying group has endorsed Bush challenger Wesley Bell, calling him a "strong advocate for the U.S.-Israel relationship." As The Guardianreported last week, Bell has "raised more than $650,000 in earmarked contributions through the group Democracy Engine Inc. PAC—a donation platform that allows unpopular PACs to obscure their donations and lists AIPAC as a client on its LinkedIn page."
AIPAC is the largest donor to Bowman challenger George Latimer, who has supported Israel's war on Gaza and denied that Israel is committing genocide. The Democratic primary for New York's 16th Congressional District is on June 25.
We must be clear-eyed about what's next. @JamaalBowmanNY & @CoriBush are facing an existential threat from AIPAC, their GOP megadonors, and the politicians willing to compromise on core Democratic values to try to take a school principal & nurse out of Congress. #ProtectTheSquad
— Justice Democrats (@justicedems) April 24, 2024
Michele Weindling, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, said Tuesday that following Lee's victory, "we're ramping up to take on AIPAC in Jamaal Bowman's race."
"With a candidate like George Latimer willing to sell their lies to the district, we are going to prove once again that a politician's commitment to their community beats dark money every time," said Weindling. "Whether it's in Pittsburgh or New York, Minneapolis or St. Louis, our generation is going to send billionaires packing and reelect the squad."
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