Chicago is one of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, stretching along the shores of Lake Michigan. Since its foundation, the city has been actively developing industry. In this regard, people have to deal with a large amount of industrial waste.
The impact of pollution on the population varied depending on waste disposal methods, changing geography of production, changes in the economic sphere and certain political initiatives, chicagoname.com writes.
Colossal damage to the environment
In the early 19th century, the main industrial activity was concentrated along the southern arm of the Chicago River, partly because the waterway served as a convenient storage facility for waste. At the time, this waste consisted mostly of organic matter (blood, fat and manure from slaughterhouses, meat processing plants and tanneries). Planing mills and sawmills emitted large amounts of wood dust into the air.
The most severe impact of these enterprises was on working-class people who lived in the adjacent residential neighborhoods. But the southwest wind carried foul odors to the prestigious areas of the city in the center.
Starting in 1860, after numerous complaints from citizens, the authorities began to develop and enforce various health laws. This resulted in the offending businesses being pushed out of the city to new industrial suburbs.
Soon after, officials turned to technological solutions in an effort to mitigate the long-standing threat to the city’s drinking water supply posed by waterborne waste. There were repeated attempts to alter the flow of the Chicago River and direct waste away from the Lake Michigan intake reservoir. Thus, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal was completed in 1900.
The active growth of the steel industry in the Calumet region changed the structure and geography of industrial pollution. Steel mills on the South and East sides of Chicago became the backbone of a huge industrial complex along the shoreline of Lake Michigan. The complex also included oil refineries, chemical plants and more than a hundred metalworking plants.
Steel mills emitted the largest amounts of waste into the atmosphere. At night, the sky glowed red from the iron oxide particles spewed out of the open-hearth furnaces. Slag from blast furnaces was used to fill in swampy areas and widen the lake shore. Coal tar from coke plants and acids covered the Grand Calumet River. The water quality in the southern tip of Lake Michigan deteriorated markedly by 1930. The rise in pollution levels after World War II, caused by increased industrial production, further exacerbated the problem.
Slag waste was constantly polluting the beaches. The catch of sturgeon, trout and yellow perch was rapidly declining.
Attempts to combat waste
In 1950, people began to worry about the health effects of waste. But no one thought about how steel mills affected the environment.
In 1960, an environmental movement emerged in Chicago. It succeeded in getting the authorities to pass several important laws. They obliged factories to install special equipment that would capture pollutants before they were released into the air and water.
Nevertheless, the factories dumped most of the captured waste into poorly designed landfills, as this method of disposal was not regulated at all until 1970.
Since 1980, heavy industry has been downsized. It has helped reduce air and water pollution. However, the activities of our ancestors are still evident.