H2Ooooh, No

By Margaret Lyons in News on Oct 12, 2007 4:32PM

Sure, Al Gore got a Nobel Prize today, but the environment? Well, it's still pretty fucked. Nearly half of Illinois's waterways are unsafe for swimming or fishing.

According to Environment Illinois — do we need to say that's an environmental advocacy group? Eh, it is — almost half of Illinois's industrial and municipal facilities are not in compliance with the Clean Water Act and regularly churn out way more pollution than they're allowed to. Some of the findings from EI's report:

In Illinois, the average facility exceeded its pollution permit limit by 530%, more than 6 times the legal limit, ranking Illinois 7th in the country for average exceedance.

Polluters in Illinois reported 47 instances in which they exceeded their Clean Water Act permit by at least 500 percent over the legal limit.

15 different facilities in Will County exceeded their Clean Water Act permit at least once during this period, ranking Will County 8th in the country for the most facilities exceeding their permits. DuPage County and McHenry Counties also ranked among the top fifty counties nationally for their numbers of facilities exceeding their permits.

And our neighbors aren't doing much better. Indiana may allow U.S. Steel Corp to dump more pollutants into the Grand Calumet River, which empties into Lake Michigan. The company has filed for a new permit that won't limit the amount of "oil and grease, lead, arsenic, benzene, fluoride and nitrates" the Gary Works plant discharges, and raises the limit on how much chromium they can dump.

"Cute Pollution" by Kamillionare.