Tag: Government

Apparently unconcerned that Illinois is one of the top 10 states for industrial air and water pollution in the country, Governor Rauner’s administration is failing to police and penalize industrial polluters. Put more bluntly, Rauner and his EPA are giving polluters a pass. The Illinois EPA, unlik...

There are many potential reasons why you might want to contact your state’s most important environmental and health agencies. Usually it is because you are concerned about an environmental issue in your area. Here are 10 questions you may want answered: (1) Is there an environmental investigation ...

Michigan’s Attorney General has criminally charged more than 50 people over the deplorable government behavior that stripped the families of Flint of their clean water from Lake Huron, and substituted dangerous, lead-contaminated water from the Flint River. And now the Attorney General has just fi...

I want to take a moment to recognize McHenry County, IL, and its Public Health Administrator, Michael Hill, for disclosing on the County’s website what it calls “Groundwater Contamination Incidents”. http://ow.ly/Gb7v30cyNOF McHenry, while a fast-developing county, is not far removed from its ...

Government Often Keeps Us in the Dark Is your government protecting you? If your air or water is contaminated, and your government knows it, it’ll tell you, right? Sadly, the answer to these questions is often, “no”. I’ve represented thousands of families over the last 18 years who have disc...

How long after the discovery of chemical contamination in groundwater should the government be checking to see if those chemicals have turned into a gas (“vapor”), and migrated upward to intrude into the breathing space of homes? They shouldn’t wait a quarter of a century, that’s for sure. N...

One of the surest topics on which to get agreement is that we should punish the filing of “frivolous” lawsuits. There are legitimate debates to be had over the definition of “frivolous”, who decides what is “frivolous”, and what the punishment (usually called a “sanction”) should be....

It’s such a compelling story: A 10-years-in-the-making plan to pour $1 billion into the redevelopment of Jordan Downs, a once-dangerous, crime-ridden public housing project in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles, that had been the stage for nationally-televised riots in the 1960s. The idea is to...

Illinois legislators have an opportunity this fall to do something important and help to regain some of the public’s trust in government. They can pass a bill to test for lead in the drinking water at Illinois’ schools. (Yes, believe it or not, no such testing is currently required….as if we n...

PORTLAND PARKS DIRECTOR NEEDS TO ‘GET’ THAT LEAD-CONTAMINATED DRINKING WATER IS DANGEROUS…..OR QUIT HIS JOB A recent review of the Portland Parks and Recreation’s (PPR) handling of high levels of lead contamination in the drinking fountains at the Multnomah Arts Center concluded that the age...