City of Lake and Prairie: Chicago's Environmental History by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Technology & Engineering, General, environmental, history, United States, State & Local, Midwest (IA; IL; IN; KS; MI; MN; MO; ND; NE; OH; SD; WI)
ISBN: 9780822987727
Google: uAH4DwAAQBAJ
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2020-09-08T00:10:10.256533+00:00

FIG 14.1. Bill Mauldin, “It’s Getting So Bad That Even People Are Complaining,” 1965, Chicago Sun-Times. Copyrights held by and image courtesy of the Pritzker Military Museum & Library.

The stakes for air pollution control became higher with each passing year. After Donora, several large cities experienced even deadlier temperature inversions that trapped pollution under clouds for days at a time. Among the most notable were the five-day “Big Smoke” in December 1952 that killed upward of 4,000 people in London, England, and New York City’s three inversions in 1953, 1963, and 1966, the latter killing more than 170 people. While Chicago experienced inversions, there were no mass deaths, and the city proclaimed itself a national leader with tougher standards. On days when northerly winds prevailed, Chicago was a showcase for improvement, while southerly winds brought dense, filthy smog.26

“NO PLACE TO HIDE”: GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS AND COMMUNITY ORGANIZING

Despite heightened expectations for improved federal, state, and local regulation, little had changed in the skies over the nation’s largest cities. Into the void of serious enforcement, Chicago’s community and environmental organizations united to exert political pressure on Mayor Richard J. Daley and other government officials. In the summer of 1969 the Tuberculosis Institute of Chicago and Cook County helped organized the Clean Air Coordinating Committee (CACC). The CACC brought together twenty-five neighborhood, environmental conservation, and public health groups.27

The CACC immediately mobilized membership to attend public hearings of the Illinois and Indiana Air Pollution Control Boards to testify on the need for stringent emissions standards to comply with provisions of the federal 1967 Clean Air Act. Other activities included condemning the City Council and Mayor Daley for granting coal users a one-year delay on a 1969 deadline to limit the sulfur content in coal to only 2.5 percent (most coal burned in Chicago had a content of 6–7 percent). Dr. William R. Barclay, Tuberculosis Institute president, specifically criticized the city’s extension for economically benefiting a few at the discomfort and danger to millions of citizens.28

Just a few months later in November 1969 Chicago experienced a “super smog” that killed at least one hundred people and forced children and those with respiratory ailments indoors or to hospitals. Almost immediately the underpinnings of the social, political, and economic paradigm that tolerated visible air pollution shifted. Over the following year media coverage on the deadly effects of pollution fueled an unprecedented level of political activity from community groups that forced Mayor Daley to switch course and adopt the most salient features of his environmental critics’ agenda.29

On January 13, 1970, WBBM-TV (CBS) aired an evening special on air pollution titled “No Place to Hide” that pulled no punches in blaming Commonwealth Edison (Com Ed) power plants as the primary source of deadly sulfur dioxide emissions. The WBBM-TV team created an Action Guide on Air Pollution that provided an overview of health risks and resources to help citizens demand the enactment of stricter air pollution controls. The Action Guide included a directory of citywide environmental organizations, including CACC, the Campaign

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