And I think at the time they dumped all that slag over there, they didn't realize it was... you know... It's a vacant field.

Yeah, they probably didn't realize it was all this shit in there, you know?

Let alone, what it could do to you, you know.

Well, look at this.

Take a dip in this water.

Oh, look at that up there.

Holy God.

I'd be afraid to stick my finger in there.

I mean, with the lily pads, you would think that it's supporting, supporting something good.

It's leaching off of the piles up here.

Yeah.

All back and through here, there's like hills.

When it rains, it just eventually finds its way into this water line.

This is slag.

What's slag?

Slag, it's a product of the steel mill, right?

Byproduct.

Yes, carbon, I think a lot of carbon.

Impurities of the steel.

Yeah.

Impurities of the steel.

Steel is basically iron ore that's been oxygenated, and it's had various minerals added to it.

In the blast furnace, the boys smelt the ore into iron, the first step in making steel.

Limestone is added as a flux.

And that means it takes the impurities out of the iron ore.

And typically, what you're left with is a material called slag.

The slag comes up to the top like cream in a pitcher, and goes out the other way.

Here it goes, mother.

Ah, Jimmy, let's shake hands.

We're doing our toxic tour.

White sand beach.

Right here in Hegewisch.

How long they've been dumping here to create this.

Right, because this is all fill.

Yeah, definitely.

But how many truckloads did it take to bring all this here?

This thing is huge.

This is amazing.

That's what I mean, how many years... And where did they start?

And then this keep going.

Yeah.

Pushing it that way.

Pushing it this way.

It's amazing.

So we've been here for what, 150 years?

The white settlers, you know, and we managed to fuck this whole thing up.

150 years!

Took a lot of effort, but we did it.

Yeah, we did it, damn it.

We did it!

We accomplished.

Why did the steel industry come down to this area?

It's mainly about transportation and availability of materials.

So the mills thrived for about 100 years.

So it started in the 1880s.

U.S.

Steel was the largest.

But along the Calumet River, there would be the Wisconsin Steel plant.

And the Republic Steel mill also would be along the Calumet River.

So those are the three main ones.

Each one of these depended on the river and the lake for bringing in raw materials and also sending out finished things like the ingots.

Wolf Lake is just about little less than a mile east of here.

And this creek flows out from Wolf Lake and flows into the Calumet River.

This helps to regulate the water level at Wolf Lake.

The water that first forms Indian Creek, it's quite clear coming out of Wolf Lake.

And then as it comes underneath Avenue O, and comes into this toxic area here.

Then you see the change in color.

It's a remarkable difference from where it began.

So, you know, it's picking up a lot of the leachate.

This is the start of Indian Creek.

The only reason Indian Creek is here, because it was used to drain the 22,000 acres in this area in the late 1800s for development.

Indian Creek was man-made.

This is a beaver lodge.

It's a fairly small one.

It's newer.

It's been here about two months now.

And the beavers built into the shoreline here because they have a bottom that's non-sustaining because of the chemical runoff.

What happens, the bottom, if you step on it, you go down about 4 to 5ft of muck.

And the muck is so fine, that it does not support anything.

So when the beaver tries to build into there, she has nothing to hold.

So she's come on to the shoreline on Indian Creek.

She's using anything that she can.

She'll cut different trees and you can see... See how that looks like a knife cut.

When they cut, they cut at an angle.

The tree would be standing like this.

And when she cuts it with her teeth, you notice how clean that is?

And she'll just pick different trees and bushes along the creek here.

She even will use two by fours and one by fours, other wood.

She uses plastic, there's a gallon jug in there.

And they just incorporate all this and literally it becomes a fortified house.

Their lodge.

They call them lodges and they'll be... there's a family of 6 or 7 could be inside there.

What I find interesting here is, they're in a contaminated creek and they're surviving.

So I really think they adjusted.

She actually might be coming, I just saw underwater movement.

There she comes.

She's eating.

She's eating green leaves.

That's what she's doing there.

This is the Schroud property right here.

This is Wolf Lake, Indiana.

Yeah.

Maybe.

So right here is the swamp land area that would be Hyde Lake.

So we were watching these kids fish over in Wolf Lake, right at the entrance to where it comes in from that creek.

You can see the stuff in the water, man.

None of it's good.

That whole area there, that's just years and years of abuse.

Who's responsible?

Republic Steel?

Republic Steel?

And I don't know what other companies... What was the other steel mill left in there?

LTV.

Ah, LTV.

Another problem we have, though, is that's a private property.

So it's not like where we can hold the city accountable for it.

The city has to go after this.

But that doesn't mean, you don't let the public know that.

No, I agree.

This is contaminated.

If you walked around the perimeter of Schroud site and went to each one of those homes and if you asked them, do you know what is contained in this site?

I don't think any of them would know.

Like I said... And not only that, I don't think they would know the effects on their kids.

All this area right here is adversely affected, they're going to be the front line for any kind of disease and anything.

Wait, wait, wind blows,... You have to look further than that.

Okay, not only just the residents, you have a baseball field to the west of them.

Oh yeah.

So you have all these families... Two baseball fields.

Right.

So you have all these families coming in, seeing their kids play and getting their air poisoned.

One thing is, when you come into Hegewisch, what do you see when you're on Avenue O?

You don't see it, right?

So if I don't see it if I'm going to my house, how much of a concern is it really?

I can't see it, so it's no problem.

Exactly!

What we have to look at is, how many fights we've got going on.

We've got the CDF, right?

We've got General Iron.

We don't even know what the whole complete makeup of this land is.

This is too, too big.

No, that's the problem.

It's too big.

My parents are both from Mexico.

My dad worked at U.S.

Steel.

Like many families in this community, they were able to buy their house.

He had a good job, but that ended.

One by one those steel mills started to close.

And tens of thousands of people were left with no job.

It devastated the Southeast Side of Chicago.

You know, once these companies up and left, they don't really care about us anymore.

And that's when the neighborhood really made a turn.

There was no more good paying jobs.

Of course, these companies went on and probably still made millions of dollars, but we're left here with these piles of toxic byproducts of these companies.

Right here is the road that Republic Steel used to carry their slag, ingots, coal, coke.

And they would store or dump it out here.

As you could see, it came out of, about a mile and a half north.

Would come through here, go over Indian Creek.

And that was 67 acres back there where they would store, dump and hide back in the 60s, 70s and 80s.

At one time, a lot of this was marshland.

In fact, there was actual lakes over here.

They were called Hyde Lake, that encompassed most of this property.

So much slag was produced, they had to go somewhere with it, and they indiscriminately just dumped it.

Small lakes and marshes were all filled in.

I've been covering this by myself and document every day.

When the EPA was here, first they said it was dead.

We've identified so much stuff in here.

This is teeming with life that shouldn't be here.

Indian Creek serves as the only water outlet for Wolf Lake.

It usually flows towards the Calumet River, but when water levels are too high, the creek reverses direction and flows back into Wolf Lake.

And this is at an all time high.

As you could see down there, it's breaching on the shoreline.

This is amazing.

This bacteria color, it looks the green.

People say, oh, it looks like bacteria is in there.

This is from the Schroud property.

And you can see it in the clouds, there's no movement, it's just sitting.

You'll understand why we're so concerned about this back flowing, because it's so high now.

And the property it goes through is the Schroud property.

As it's coming closer to shore, it degregates it more.

Because the flow of Indian Creek needs to stay open, any blockage has to be cleared out regularly.

This was definitely either some guys or some really strong... some strong beaver?

No, it's got to be beavers.

There's their trail.

This is impressive.

This is a start of a beaver dam.

Holy shmoly.

There we go.

Oh, it's stinky.

It's the worst smell in the world, I swear.

You just can't describe it.

It's just upsetting.

And then to see it leach into the water, the drinking table that connects everything.

You just want to cry.

It's awful, it's awful.

And now we have toxins leaching that can't be identified.

They just leach into the water table.

It was high E.coli.

Yeah.

And anything had to do with asphalt.

What else?

Sulfur, sulfur-based products?

Sulfur-based products.

That's the stinky egg smell.

In the summertime, you come out here early in the morning, you know what you find?

You don't find ATVers or motorcycles out here.

You find little boys between the ages of 10 and 15 with their backpacks filled for the day with water and snacks.

Because you know what they're doing?

They're out here playing survival.

And this is not a place, because it's going to come back and get them.

With auto-immunes... attention deficit is really severe out here.

You got all kinds of kids with attention deficit and other illnesses.

And it can be directly related, I believe, to the area and the toxins that are being kicked up through the water system.

And with the ATVers coming out here and blowing up these big clouds of smoke that have all this pollution in it, that's never settled.

And it doesn't settle.

It needs to be dealt with.

I remember when the mills were fully functioning.

We were going past where the steel mill was, there's smoke and flame, and to me, it was like a fire breathing dragon.

Mills are dirty.

They're loud.

A lot of pollution issues.

But it was very common to hear people say, if there's soot on the windows, there's food on the table.

According to a sales agreement filed with the Cook County Recorder of Deeds office, LTV Steel sold the property to developer Donald Schroud for $50,000 in March of 1994.

The agreement stipulated that Schroud was to assume all responsibility for cleaning up the site.

Daily Southtown, March 29th, 1994.

An owner of the property made all kinds of promises.

The EPA cited him numerous times.

We've been chasing after him since the late 90s to clean this up.

Gave headaches to the city and the state and the federal.

Nobody could touch this guy and do something about him.

People from the Health Department have been with him in court.

All I heard was, he came in, he had the attitude that I don't care and went about his merry way.

Someone like that to me.

I don't know, I can't even comment on that.

That's stuff that upsets me when a man can't care.

Once the steel companies claimed bankruptcy and left the area, who's to go after?

Because the bankruptcy kind of absolves them.

Republic Steel and LTV Steel are two examples of that.

Anthony Taglieri, age 26.

Killed by a bullet in the back.

Local 1033.

Otis Jones, 33, died of a bullet wound in the back.

Local 1033.

Why do we honor those who died and suffered for the union cause 85 years ago?

Because our martyrs fought for the right to join a union and work together for a better life.

General Iron wants to move literally across the street from this high school.

It's going to be with another company called Reserve Management Group.

The Memorial Day Massacre is one of the bloodiest incidents in U.S.

labor history.

It took place right in front of the gates of Republic Steel, the same site that is now occupied by Reserve Management Group, the company that merged with General Iron.

This merger with General Iron was going to expand what they already do here to also shredded vehicles.

So vehicles, when they're shredded, are extremely problematic.

The people on the north side have been complaining for years of auto fluff, which is like dirty cotton candy, like nasty stuff that is actually a carcinogen.

One of the issues that we had with this merger is that it wasn't going to be like what we had here already.

It was actually going to make a mega shredder, probably the biggest mega shredder in the whole Midwest.

We look at the repercussions of having these type of developments next to our homes.

We are the highest amounts of asthma in the city, highest amounts of deaths related to respiratory issues, related to cancer rates.

Growing up in this area and seeing a lot of family members getting sick, I just thought that was the norm.

Like somebody always knew somebody that had cancer, heart disease or lung disease.

And, you know, maybe it's because they smoke or maybe because they worked in the mills and, you know, it's so dirty in there.

I think it really wasn't until I became a mom that I started to realize, like, wait a minute, maybe we don't have to live like this.

Are these all the signs they made?

Yeah.

Actually the students have other ones.

Those need to go straight to the parks.

They're predicting thunderstorms tonight.

Are you ready?

Yeah, I'm good.

Oh, I've got Under Armour, I got other stuff.

I got three pairs of pants on, I got several socks.

How long do you want to wait out there til we tell people to leave?

It's a good question.

As long as we have critical mass.

What will it take to meet with Arwady?

A 30 day hunger strike?

Letting people wait out in the cold?

So let's say, we're there, we'll stay there for an hour.

We'll stay there for 2.5 hours.

We'll stay there for four hours.

What do we do?

Well, if it stays like this, when it's not raining anymore, then I think it's okay to stay til eight.

Whose streets?

Our streets!

Whose streets?

Our streets!

Come on and talk to the youth, come on and talk to the youth.

We went on hunger strikes.

Come on and talk to the people who starved for 30 fucking days.

This movement against General Iron, this environmental movement has been carried by youth.

After the murder of George Floyd, we were saying we need to stop racism in our communities, anti-Blackness.

And then we pivoted towards environmental racism because we don't want these polluters coming in and destroying our families.

Again, it's coming from a white neighborhood to a predominantly black and brown neighborhood.

We want clean air.

We want a safe community to live and exist in.

Like it or not, the Southeast Side is your city, too!

Deny the permit, deny the permit!

Attention, attention!

This is the Chicago Police Department.

It is unlawful to obstruct or delay traffic.

Please remove yourself from the roadway.

Failure to remove yourself may result in arrest.

The people united, will never be divided.

I'm sad that it has to come to this.

It's been almost two years.

Not only do we have hunger strikers, now we have constituents getting arrested.

Who do you protect?

Who do you serve?

We have to go to these extremes, because our voices do matter.

You know, the mayor listened to the Northside residents and their concerns about General Iron, and they were rewarded by getting General Iron shuttered and move to the Southeast Side.

I'm really disappointed in the City of Chicago, that we have to keep fighting for our rights.

The U.S.

EPA performed an initial assessment of the Schroud site in 2014.

The property was declared a Superfund site in 2019.

In 2022, barriers were installed to keep out trespassers, but remedial actions have not yet begun.

Wolf Lake is 900 acres.

The reason I'm checking Indian Creek today, because of the flash flood warning, the heavy rain, the significant melt.

Hammond is going to be putting all their water, all that's going into Wolf Lake.

Then that all comes out to Indian Creek, the only outlet.

So there cannot be any kind of blockage when an event of this nature happens.

Look at the Calumet River.

It's reversing.

This is supposed to flow into Lake Michigan, it's not supposed to flow back.

With this weather system coming in, Lake Michigan is getting compounded down here.

Calumet River goes up, now Indian Creek won't have the flow and there's a chance for flooding in the area.

Look at the seagulls hopping a ride!

After the U.S.

Environmental Protection Agency urged the City of Chicago to consider an environmental justice assessment, the permit for General Iron was denied.

However, the case is now in litigation.

With General Iron, it took three-and- a-half years, It took rallies, press conferences, engaging folks and saying, hey, do you know that this is happening?

And it took a hunger strike.

The Southeast Side is not your dump!

But even before General Iron, there has been so many campaigns that we have been a part of,.

You know from stopping a coal gasification plant from opening, petcoke piles that were being stored outdoors, manganese, all these campaigns, they have been very reactive.

A company tries to move in and then we organize our community, we try to stop it.

But we have to start thinking about, what needs to change so that we don't have to keep playing this game of Whac-a-Mole.

A study that the Illinois EPA did., they went quite far downstream and tested at certain points, and were able to determine that some of the toxicity in the Calumet River was caused by Indian Creek flowing into it.

It's always been a sulfuric acid plant.

My company, PVS, bought the plant in 1981.

This was 1914.

This is 1919, 1914.

These buildings are all still here.

This is the creek right here as it comes in.

We've done a lot of work as far as trying to clean things up along our shoreline.

In the 1800s, this used to be swamp land.

So when the steel industry started, they would just use the slag to fill swamp land, so that it could continue to expand and build.

Right now we've got an exploratory dig that we're looking at a foundation over here.

So we dig up some dirt.

Every time we dig, there's a lot of slag in it, there's a lot of lead in it.

So for us, every time we dig, we have to encapsulate it in plastic.

We get it tested the right way.

And then once we know exactly what's in it, we can send it off.

And generally speaking, it's always sent off as hazardous waste.

The plant here, even though we make chemicals, if it wasn't for the dirt, we would not be a high quantity generator of hazardous material, because we don't send a lot of stuff off as hazardous material other than the dirt.

All our water is interconnected.

It's the whole idea of what you do upstream affects everyone downstream.

So if someone is polluting on the front end of the river, five, ten miles down the line, it's all coming through our community and it's all going into Lake Michigan.

Whatever gets dumped in the river gets settled on the bottom and that dirt gets dredged up.

They used to take the toxic dredging, dump it in the middle of the lake.

But then in the early to mid-80s, the U.S.

EPA said, no, that's too toxic.

So they had to confine it, which is how you got a confined disposal facility.

But that disposal facility is right on the edge of the lake, where the Calumet and Lake Michigan meet.

You remember the power plant that was there, right?

Oh, yeah.

I mean, the mercury and everything else that came out of it, you know.

You can still see the stuff, it's like no one is taking anything to deal with it.

We'd come here to swim of course and there would be little goblets of oil in the water.

And this shit would get on you.

That's when I stopped swimming.

I was in high school.

The Calumet River is right on the other side of the Confined Disposal Facility or the CDF.

The Army Corps of Engineers has to dredge the river, right, and to make it more navigable for ships that are coming in to the port district here.

That's important for our commerce and industry.

But it does mean that what's at the bottom of that river because of all of the long term, you know, industry in this community that has left a lot of pollution behind, as well as ongoing runoff from businesses along the river.

There are toxins in that stuff that they dredge up, and they have to dump it somewhere.

Back in 1984, this CDF was established, but it was only supposed to last ten years, according to the, Illinois General Assembly.

But then it got extended and extended.

This was supposed to be closed and capped and turned into a park.

They did a process in the community, but what they did was only look at other options for new sites in the 10th Ward environmental justice community.

The community said, wait a minute, we don't want this stuff dumped closer to our homes.

And so the Army Corps said fine, we'll just build a 25ft higher container here.

How big is this site here?

It goes to the river and we're at 95th and that's like 92nd.

How many acres did you say?

45 acres.

Is this whole thing the CDF from the rocks here?

Everything right behind here that we can kind of see is CDF, but there's a lot of other stuff going on back there as well.

We are concerned about climate change and the rising lake levels and the wave surges that have happened, especially during the winters.

In the north part of the City of Chicago, that wave action has moved concrete barriers.

The U.S.Army Corps of Engineers has not taken into account, how are the rising lake levels impacting the dirt berms, or the dirt walls, that are holding back the toxic sludge from Lake Michigan.

Calumet Park and the CDF share a border, and this is really important because we have families that are playing in the water, swimming in the waters.

Some folks still fish in the waters.

So we want to know what the health impacts are.

Even if they don't build further here, the community said to us, we're concerned about the toxins that are already in there.

We know that there's already some damage to the liner inside the CDF.

So they want to make sure that whatever's in there doesn't also continue to leach.

And that needs to be fixed regardless.

So this is our drinking water, right?

Yes.

So the CDF contains all those chemicals and all that other stuff?

Arsenic, lead, PCBs.

Are we going to try to push to get this CDF completely out of here and away from any water at all?

Yeah, we want to work with the Alliance of the Southeast around identifying a better solution that is totally out of an environmental justice community, totally out of the 10th Ward, and not impacting our water supply.

The Alliance of the Southeast and Friends of the Park have filed a lawsuit because our communities are saying: enough is enough.

We have to change the policies that allow overburdened neighborhoods to continually bear the brunt of all these toxic developments.