In early 2018, residents in the McKinley Park neighborhood of Chicago, a majority-Latinx community on the Southwest side, were shocked to learn of the new construction of a hot mix asphalt plant in the community’s historical Central Manufacturing District stockyard that consisted of what were, by then, mostly vacant warehouses. Concerned about the fine dust, harmful toxins, and increased truck traffic that the plant would release into the surrounding community, residents brought particular attention to the plant’s 700-foot proximity from the southern edge of a major park, 1,300-foot proximity to Horizon Science Academy, a K-12 school serving 770 students, and 1,100-foot proximity to the nearest homes (Briscoe).
The community was especially taken aback by their apparent betrayal by their alderman at the time, Chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection and Energy George Cardenas. The alderman’s spokesperson, Liliana Escarpita, told Block Club Chicago that they “were just as surprised as everyone else when [they] saw the huge silos in that plant development in that district.” However, in 2017, just a month after an email from the attorney of Michael Tadin Jr., the plant’s owner, confirmed that “Alderman Cardenas told him we would have a meeting with DPD to discuss [the plant]” Cardenas supported the rezoning of the residential land adjacent to the plant as mixed-commercial, a move that was necessary for the plant to begin operations (Serrato). Despite his recognition of the “devastating effects” of pollution on Chicago’s residents and the “frighteningly bad” asthma hospitalization rates in the city that are double the national average, Cardenas praised MAT Asphalt, the company erecting the asphalt plant, for bringing jobs to the area in a way that would improve quality of life in the community, citing his “faith in the company’s new pollution control equipment.” Moreover, Tadin's companies as well as companies owned by business partners in the asphalt plant as acknowledged by Tadin have donated at least $19,500 to PACs linked to Alderman Cardenas (Briscoe). Though such stories of corruption are not unheard of in Chicago politics – in fact, Tadin’s father was linked to the scandals regarding bribery and questionable business practices in the City’s Hired Truck Program – I contend that a more helpful overall frame of analysis for the MAT Asphalt case is environmental justice.
In this article, I intend to prove that MAT Asphalt’s existence in McKinley Park is an environmental justice issue. I will do this first by establishing the plant’s occupation of the community area as a significant contributor to racially and economically disparate exposure to dangerous environmental conditions, then by discussing how MAT Asphalt contributes to broader institutional issues that contribute to environmental justice problems citywide and nationwide. Ultimately, I hope to underscore the importance of the community-led grassroots environmental justice movement against it.
Most critically, MAT Asphalt’s occupation of the McKinley Park neighborhood is clearly an environmental justice issue as an example of racially disparate exposure to dangerous conditions, but before expanding on the risks that the particular plant poses to the community, it is important to establish that MAT Asphalt is situated in a community area that has been the site of working-class migrants’ exposure to environmental and health risks in the service of the profits of owners of business and land. Thus, it has had major environmental justice issues throughout its history. Settlement in the McKinley Park area began when Irish immigrants working on the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the 1830s created informal squatters’ settlements around the area. Migrant steelworkers in the 1860s also settled in the area so that they could work at the adjacent steel mills, but many houses had to be built on stilts due to standing water in the area, which bred "hordes of mosquitoes, and spring flooding." Moreover, landowners desperately "invited scavengers to dump ashes and thereby fill low areas" in the hopes of elevating their holdings (“McKinley Park”).
After the 1871 Chicago fire, many of the industrial operations that had been displaced by the destruction relocated to the area, along with the meatpacking industry, which dumped waste directly into the Chicago River's south fork at such an extreme scale that the stream became known as "Bubbly Creek" due to the decomposing material sending bubbles to its surface. Despite the physical decline and eventual closure of the Central Manufacturing District that housed many of these industrial operations and the overall decline in manufacturing jobs in the United States in modern recent history, McKinley Park continues to be a major residential area and port of entry for immigrants in Chicago. Following a major shift in patterns of labor migration citywide and nationwide and white city residents’ migration to the suburbs in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, it has seen a recent demographic shift: CMAP reported in July 2023 that the community was 54.6% Latino and 28.4% Asian (“McKinley Park Community Data Snapshot”). Moreover, over 20% of McKinley Park residents live below the poverty line (Wang). The largely non-white working-class Southwest side, where McKinley Park is located, is home to an especially high concentration of asphalt plants, rail yards, and intermodal facilities whose emissions dissipate slower and remain in the area longer as a result of low-speed wind from the South-Southwest (Kerr). Moreover, McKinley Park has been classified as an “environmental justice neighborhood” by the City of Chicago, as it is one of the neighborhoods most overburdened by pollution and industry (Evans).
I contend that this history of communities racialized as migrants being used as the labor forces and dumping grounds and labor forces for polluting industries in McKinley Park and the larger Southwest side can be considered a clear illustration of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore calls organized abandonment, which is when institutions operate to increase private profits at the expense of the increased vulnerability and subordination of certain populations (Gilmore and Kumanyika). Ultimately, by setting up shop in a migrant, working-class neighborhood that has been extremely vulnerable to environmental hazards throughout its history, in large part due to residents’ proximity to polluting industries, MAT Asphalt continues to exacerbate these environmental justice issues and help McKinley Park epitomize the concept of organized abandonment locally.
Firstly, MAT Asphalt exposes the already overburdened community of color to a significant amount of pollution. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) rejected the first renewal of its operating permit “after estimating the plant had the potential to emit more than 10 times the acceptable amount of toxic particulate matter,” an obstacle MAT Asphalt overcame by claiming to have made miscalculations and resubmitting a permit application that put its total particulate emissions at 117.72 tons per year (Sabino). Though this level was below the federal limit, residents’ testimonies reveal that the impact on the lived experience of the surrounding community was devastating. Residents have filed complaints with the IEPA, with one stating, “the fumes emitting from the asphalt plant have been extraordinarily strong today. It was difficult for me to walk from my car to inside our building without being physically affected [...] my maintenance team had no choice but to turn off the air conditioning system because the fumes from the outside were so strong that they were affecting students and those inside the building” (“Stop MAT Asphalt”). Other concerns from residents regarding the impact of the plant reflected that the odors emanating from the plant were so strong that they caused nausea, prevented families from taking their children for a walk, and prohibited residents from opening their windows (Husain). Moreover, the plant broke promises about its pollution mitigation efforts: Kate Moser, who lives a block away from MAT Asphalt, observed, “you look out the window, and it’s an open container of asphalt. It’s not even covered with a tarp, which again, we were told would happen. It’s just an open container driving down the street blowing nasty particulate into the air in our yard” (Sabino). These health effects only serve to exacerbate Chicago’s major racial disparities in health, with the highest rates of hypertension, heart disease, and stroke clustered in the predominantly Black and brown South and West sides (Smith, Davis, and Kho).
Despite data from the Chicago Department of Public Health showing that 2055 West Pershing Road, the location of the MAT Asphalt plant, is now the second-most popular location from which the Department of Environment has received environmental complaints, environmental regulations have been poorly enforced (“CDPH Environmental Complaints”). Moreover, Neighbors for Environmental Justice alleges that the Chicago Department of Public Health has conducted most of its inspections in the afternoon, after the plant was done operating, and of the six types of pollution restricted in MAT Asphalt's permit, four have never been measured (“Stop MAT Asphalt”). Thus, little has been done to respond to complaints regarding the health issues that MAT Asphalt exacerbates in the already vulnerable McKinley Park community. Furthermore, despite identifying McKinley Park as an area of Environmental Justice concern, the Illinois EPA never made fact sheets available on the Agency's web page or held an informational meeting or availability session regarding the plant as they are required to do. MAT Asphalt has also been a case study in environmental injustice through its exacerbation of social issues as well as health issues: funding for a proposed $40 million plan to convert one of the buildings in the Central Manufacturing District into 120 affordable apartments was rejected by the city’s Department of Housing as a result of their “outstanding concerns about the location of the development in relation to the asphalt plant,” leading one resident to respond, “not only is MAT Asphalt harming our quality of life and our park, but now it’s obvious they are sabotaging the type of investment our neighborhood deserves” (Chase). Finally, though Alderman Cardenas claims that his support for the plant weighs both lived experience and economic opportunity for the area, it is critical to note that MAT Asphalt claims on its website to employ just nine full-time employees (“Community”).
Ultimately, MAT Asphalt’s existence in McKinley Park is an environmental justice issue as a clear example of racially disparate exposure to dangerous conditions. However, its contribution to broader institutional issues contributing to environmental problems also makes it an environmental justice issue and reveals the kind of solutions we should be looking towards to ensure that already overburdened communities of color are not exposed to a disproportionate amount of dangerous environmental conditions.
For instance, MAT Asphalt is a for-profit asphalt company that relies primarily on paving contracts from the city; thus, it has an economic interest in an industry that is responsible for creating infrastructure that causes major environmental issues, the impacts of which are felt disproportionately by overburdened and underserved communities both citywide and nationwide. For instance, a Yale study found that asphalt pollutes the air when exposed to bright sunlight, and asphalt parking lots disrupt pedestrian life and lessen security by making people walking along them feel vulnerable (Stokstad). Moreover, impervious surfaces like those made with asphalt reduce the natural ecosystem's ability to regulate, purify, and retain water, which leads to an increased risk of flooding, contaminants, and property damage. Historic programs such as redlining have contributed to patterns of disinvestment in cities like Chicago that have caused neglected and sequestered neighborhoods to contain disproportionately more asphalt-paved impervious surfaces: together with the lack of trees and green space investment in these areas, the result is greater urban heat island effects and greater vulnerability to climate hazards and environmental risk for already underserved communities. Finally, in a similar fashion to the way in which MAT Asphalt prevented affordable housing investment in McKinley Park, the asphalt industry prevents green infrastructure investment: the asphalt industry is part of a highway industry that has an economic interest in car-centric infrastructure and against transit-oriented development that may decrease peoples’ reliance on polluting, congesting, inefficient cars and the highways and roads they require (Shaikh and Talen).
Thus, though moving the MAT Asphalt would decrease immediate environmental risk for the surrounding community, as long as the asphalt industry continues to persist and government institutions continue to give it city contracts, it will operate with an economic interest against sustainable development, suggesting that, aside from moving the plant, a more long-term solution to the environmental justice issues associated with MAT Asphalt may be to decrease our city’s reliance on car-centric infrastructure entirely by prioritizing investments in rail infrastructure.
MAT Asphalt is also associated with institutional environmental justice issues with zoning. By keeping uses and people, by way of regulated housing type, apart, and regulating what kind of development that land can be used for, zoning ideally works to restrict land use in a way that protects quality-of-life for residents. Thus, the zoning system should have ideally worked to prevent a polluting industry from encroaching on the quality of life of people in the homes, school, and park that MAT Asphalt neighbors by preventing the construction of a major polluter 1,300 feet from a K-12 school serving 770 students and 1,100 feet from the nearest residences.
But though the enforcement of this ideal in the zoning process may have prevented MAT Asphalt from impacting the McKinley Park community, the long-term solution to the issues with zoning is not stricter enforcement of the separation of land uses, as this ideal within zoning actually serves to decrease urban diversity, a major asset of urban environments. In fact, Jane Jacobs argued that diversity in cities allowed for the production of something greater than the sum of its parts and Lewis Mumford argued that many-sided urban environments allowed for “higher forms of human achievement” (Shaikh and Talen). Therefore, a long-term solution to the environmental justice issues with zoning associated with MAT Asphalt might look more like the kind of zoning scheme that the Form-Based Codes Institute advocates for: a system that tends to form by smoothing out juxtapositions of uses and housing that people might object to would allow for diversity in lot size and building use and type while avoiding uses that disproportionately expose certain communities to environmental risks, especially if equity is an explicit goal in zoning reform (Shaikh and Talen). Such a zoning system would enable sustainable development that increases local economic prosperity while allowing nearby communities to thrive, such as the Center for Neighborhood Technology’s 2016 proposal for an Industrial EcoDistrict in the historic Central Manufacturing District two years before MAT Asphalt was built in the same space: the facility would have housed “multiple manufacturers in a single district, with built-in shared efficiencies and an integrated infrastructure system that combines renewable energy, energy efficiency, nonautomobile mobility, business development, and sustainable water management all in one place” (“Chicago’s Central Manufacturing District: The Past and Future of Urban Manufacturing”).
Ultimately, MAT Asphalt’s exacerbation of local social, environmental, and health issues as well as its contribution towards institutional environmental harm underscore its existence in McKinley Park as an environmental justice issue and reveal some of the long-term solutions we should be looking towards to ensure that development happens in a way that does not expose already overburdened communities of color to a disproportionate amount of dangerous environmental conditions. Thus, the community-led grassroots environmental justice movement’s advocacy of its immediate closing to prevent the further destruction of vulnerable communities in the service of corporate profits has been critical. Residents who lived in or near McKinley Park formed Neighbors for Environmental Justice, a 501c(3) non-profit, in reaction to MAT Asphalt’s sudden construction (N4EJ). The organization leads tours around the neighborhood and disseminates IEPA, city, and internal MAT documents, emails, and information as well as air quality reports and pollution research to raise awareness of the burden of environmental racism and the institutional failures that enable it (Wang). The group also leads protests against MAT Asphalt, staging a ‘People’s Hearing’ on the plant in 2020, continuously publicizing residents’ testimonies and complaints about being impacted by plant operations, and publicly opposing MAT’s efforts to expand by purchasing more property in 2022 (Finlon). These efforts have seen some victories, suggesting that their tactics have been powerful. In response to the community’s advocacy about not being notified of the plant’s construction despite an IEPA policy that grants McKinley Park, as an area of environmental justice concern, special public engagement protections, McKinley Park’s Illinois state senator sponsored and passed a bill that requires the IEPA “to notify state elected officials of new developments that would require a pollution permit” (Sabino).
Despite Neighbors for Environmental Justice’s multiple-year campaign against the plant and their success in reforming the public engagement process, MAT Asphalt continues to exist and operate to this day, mainly running on public funds for asphalt projects, the last of which awarded the controversial polluter at least $141 million in city contracts (Savedra). As a result, the movement continues to be critical, especially in the face of the presence of a site that is a clear case study in environmental injustice as a function of its disproportionate local impact on already-vulnerable communities through its exacerbation of social, environmental, and health issues and its contribution to institutional issues associated with zoning and impervious surface-infrastructure which causes disproportionate environmental harm citywide and nationwide. However, longer-term solutions must recognize the value of divesting from infrastructure that relies on a heavily polluting asphalt industry and of a zoning system that allows for urban diversity that considers environmental risks, rather than an extremely restrictive scheme or a poorly unenforced one.
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Originally published December 2023
Site last updated May 2024
Site last updated May 2024