Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration’s false claim that it can’t release a scathing watchdog report about a 2020 environmental debacle in Little Village shows the city’s pattern of disregard for communities of color, activists charged Thursday.
Accusing the administration of “environmental racism,” Kim Wasserman said that the mayor owes Little Village an apology for the city’s role in a botched implosion and toppling of an almost 400-foot smokestack near West 36th Street and South Pulaski Road in April 2020 that blanketed the community in dust. The former Crawford coal-fired power plant was being demolished to make way for a controversial 1 million square-foot warehouse now leased by Target.
