Just try driving on a expired license for five years. Forty-five, or 17 percent, of Illinois’ 268 major Clean Water Act permits have expired, and 6 of them have been expired for more than five years, according to a report by Friends of the Earth and the Environmental Working Group. (Five permits belonging to the Chicago Water Reclamation District have expired.) The permits state the amount and type of pollution that factories and sewage treatment plants are allowed to discharge, and when they’re renewed, the amount of discharge allowed is decreased. Illinois’ record happens to be well above the national average of 25 percent expired permits. Indiana, for instance, has allowed a startling 46 percent of its major permits to expire.
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“Pilsen area businesses complain of 20-30% declines in weekend sales” since the CTA closed the Douglas el line on weekends in 1997 and ’98, according to “Is There Equal Access for All to Public Transportation in Metropolitan Chicago?” a report written by Jacqueline Leavy of the Neighborhood Capital Budget Group for the Human Relations Foundation of Chicago (June). “At least one business on 18th Street in Pilsen closed after the CTA service cutbacks, due to loss of weekend customers. The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum, an important and nationally acclaimed cultural institution near the Douglas L, reports that its weekend attendance declined by 25% after the service cuts. Community operated health care facilities report major problems for staff and patients in traveling to and from medical clinics and the local hospital.”
This bus pollutes your lungs with diesel. The American Lung Association of Metropolitan Chicago states in a recent report, “Missing the Bus to Cleaner Air,” that San Francisco, Seattle, Phoenix, Los Angeles, Houston, Cleveland, Dallas, Atlanta, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Newark, Portland, and Denver all have more buses operating on alternative fuels than the CTA. Eighty percent of San Francisco’s buses use alternative fuels.
