Through a history of redlining and racial discrimination brought on by the 1920 Urban Renewal Campaign, it is seen that East Chicago’s minority community is subject to the consequences of the contamination and has led to claims of environmental racism.
[1] The USS Lead Superfund Site is the location of a culmination of environmental pollution by numerous sources in East Chicago.
The choice to construct housing on this contaminated land was a result of East Chicago's urban renewal campaign, which began in the 1920s following an influx of Hispanic and Black workers during World War I.
According to scholar Elizabeth Browning of the University of Oklahoma, the renewal plan brought in a combination of "racially restrictive covenants and other discriminatory practices."
The act used federal funding to subsidize East Chicago’s renewal plans by almost two-thirds of the project’s total costs.
According to Browning, “this strategic employment of zoning indirectly facilitated residential segregation – preserving much of the area for low-income African American and Latinx housing”.
2018-2023 census data showed the continued majority of marginalized community in East Chicago, 38% of the population being Black and 54% being Hispanic.
The discriminatory housing polices implemented in the 1920s continued to have a lasting impact on how East Chicago’s demographic geography was assembled.
Rich affluent whites were located in the cleaner renewed part of the city and minority communities were displaced to industrially contaminated land.
Then the site was converted to a secondary smelter; where the facility began recovering lead from scrap metal and automotive batteries.
These metallic elements are easily dispersed to the environment, where they can then unknowingly enter the human body causing numerous health effects.
According to the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, this pollution was possible because “lead in fumes from metal smelting, battery manufacturing, and some factories became airborne and then mixed with soil”.
[12] Lead gasoline was not banned until 1996 causing additional contamination, however the bulk of pollution came from the refineries just north of the WCHC site.
[14] [15] The lead contamination brought on by these refineries was known well before any action was taken to mitigate the effects on residents of the WCHC site and the eventual demolition and clean-up effort.
Common health effects of lead blood levels below 10 micrograms per deciliter include affects to brain development, IQ reduction, reduced attention span, antisocial behavior, anemia, hypertension, renal impairment, immunotoxicity, decreased kidney function, increased blood pressure, or degenerative disorders of the central nervous system.
[19] In extreme cases according to the WHO, “at high levels of exposure to lead, the brain and central nervous system can be severely damaged causing coma, convulsions and even death”.
Elevated arsenic blood levels according to the WHO, are associated with immediate effects such as vomiting, abdominal pain and diarrhea, numbness and tingling of extremities and muscle cramping.
Both lead and arsenic can be linked to detrimental pregnancy outcomes and infant mortality, due to the ease of blood crossing the placenta to the fetus.
These residents were forced to move across state lines, which resulted in the loss of jobs and Medicaid coverage, as well as school changes for children.
It was also found that relocation “can create problematic readjustment periods for children”, negatively affecting cognitive, social, emotional and behavioral development.
The EPA plans to enter into a Prospective Purchaser Agreement (PPA) with Industrial Development Advantage (IDA) of East Chicago LLC, who will continue the clean-up efforts of the site.
After demolition of the West Calumet Housing Complex in 2019, the City of East Chicago made an agreement with the IDA, calling for the development of a warehouse and transportation center.