Saying Chicago city officials have bowed to the will of “environmental justice” activists, a company seeking to build a new $80 million metal recycling center on Chicago’s southeast side has filed suit against the city of Chicago, seeking a court order forcing the city to issue the needed building permits and pay them more than $100 million for their trouble.
On May 17, General Iron, which does business as Southside Recycling, filed a complaint in Chicago federal court. The complaint accused the city of violating its own rules in refusing to issue the permit needed to construct the facility.
“Southside Recycling now confronts a City which has violated its LRF (Large Recycling Facility) Rules and its Contract with SR by failing to issue the permit, without offering even a single legally justifiable excuse,” Southside Recycling wrote in its complaint.
“There are many risks undertaken when building an $80 million state-of-the-art recycling facility. But one risk that SR did not take was that after full compliance with every requirement, the City would decide to set aside its rules and Agreement and suspend the permit review.”
General Iron, as Southside Recycling, has sought to open a new metal recycling facility since 2018. That move was prompted by the city’s decision to pressure General Iron to close the metal recycling facility it had operated for decades on Chicago’s North Side for decades, citing emissions and pollution concerns.
In the years since, the city and Southside Recycling have worked on the necessary permits to allow the work to proceed on a new 175-acre site in Chicago’s South Deering neighborhood. According to the complaint, the recycling company has owned the land for decades.
According to the complaint, the city repeatedly assured the recycling center developers that its plans either met or exceeded all of the city’s rules. According to the complaint, Southside Recycling further obtained all of the needed permits from the state, including emissions permits for its metal shredder from the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
They noted the IEPA modeling and review work, which was supervised by the U.S. EPA, “expressly addressed the important environmental justice concerns of the community” and “explicitly took into account the Southeast Side’s existing environmental burdens.”
Southside Recycling noted its facility would enclose the metal shredder, and include a “state-of-the-art emissions capture and control system,” which they said, “is the most advanced emissions capture and control system of any shredding facility in the United States.”
The analyses, they said, “concluded that the impact from the facility would be protective of the health of the surrounding community.”
“Southside Recycling is not part of an environmental justice problem,” the complaint said. “Its commitment and financial investment in the most state-of-the-art pollution controls are actually part of the solution to maintaining environmentally conscious industry and economic opportunity in Chicago.”
Southside Recycling then submitted a formal large recycling facility permit request in November 2020.
However, in the months since, activists have assailed the project at public hearings and in public demonstrations, demanding the city deny the permit request.
And in that time, the city has appeared to slow-walk the approval process, according to the complaint, citing “Guidelines Regarding Permitting Processes for Consequential Large Recycling Facilities,” issued by the Chicago Department of Public Health after Southside Recycling submitted its permit request.
Following a December public hearing, the city claimed to identify “deficiencies” with the recycling center permit request. According to the complaint, Southside Recycling “adequately addressed” all of the city’s concerns and its LRF rules.
However, the city still refused to issue the permit as it should have been required to do, under its rules, by May 15, according to the complaint. This, they said, also violates Illinois law, which does not give a city the discretion to deny a permit to a landowner who meets all of the legal requirements to obtain the permit.
In the complaint, Southside Recycling pinned the blame for the city’s refusal to issue the permit on politics, as city officials fear the response from activists who oppose the recycling facility.
“The City has violated its duty to issue the LRF permit because certain community groups and environmental advocates have presented to the City a false choice between permitting the new facility and providing environmental justice to the surrounding community,” Southside Recycling wrote in its complaint. “These groups have not, and cannot, dispute SR’s legal entitlement to the permit, nor can they contest the emission testing results, air dispersion modeling analyses or other science that demonstrates how SR’s state-of-the-art facility more than satisfies all applicable environmental health-based standards.”
The recycler further notes in its complaint that refusing the permit would actually lead to further pollution and violation of “environmental justice,” as it would result in more work for “the only other large recycling facility in the Chicagoland area,” operated by Sims Metal Management, in Chicago’s heavily Hispanic Pilsen neighborhood. That facility, according to the complaint, “employs none of the pollution control equipment that will be utilized at the new SR facility’s shredder.”
“By failing to issue the LRF permit to Southside Recycling, the City is allowing more metal to be processed and recycled by a shredder with no pollution control equipment, thereby further overburdening the community of Pilsen and surrounding neighborhoods,” Southside Recycling wrote in its complaint.
The complaint asks the court to order Chicago City Hall to issue the permit to Southside Recycling, and to award the recycling company more than $100 million in damages. They said the money award is needed as “compensation for the lost profit and other damages and costs to its business on account of the City’s failure to issue the LRF permit expeditiously” and in compensation for the city’s “illegal taking” of the property, by bowing to the activists and refusing to issue the permit.
General Iron and Southside Recycling are represented in the action by attorney David J. Chizewer, of the firm of Goldberg Kohn Ltd., of Chicago.