By Laura Gersony, Circle of Blue – July 21, 2021
It’s just before 6 p.m. on a breezy Wednesday night in Little Village, a neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side. Department of Water Management personnel lift two tables out of the trunk of a minivan at Block 3100 on Ridgeway Ave. You drape them with blue tablecloths with the DWM logo.
A small crowd gathers as the staff, who switch between English and Spanish, explain that Chicago has launched a novel public health program. The city is offering to replace toxic lead water pipes to their homes – at no cost to residents.
But the offer, which is unique among American municipalities, has met with little enthusiasm. In fact, it sinks like a stone thrown into a pool. A man in a red ball cap is the first to answer. “How many people have died of lead poisoning in Chicago in the past 100 years?” he asks in Spanish.
The science of lead poisoning is well documented, explains one employee. Exposure to trace amounts can damage the brain and nervous system, cause hearing and language problems, learning difficulties, and more, especially in young children. It is rare for people to die from lead poisoning, but there are long-term side effects. The man shakes his head and shrugs. “I would like to see more evidence.”
In the Latino-majority Little Village, concerns about the project are multi-dimensional. Some are concerned about the disruption digging will cause for lawns and gardens. Others fear that due to the onerous Trump-era immigration policies, they will be punished later for accepting government aid. Some residents even fear that they go back to the Tuskegee experiments of 1932, in which the US government used black Americans as test subjects.
Just like public resistance to Covid-19 vaccines, the response to the Chicago lead pipe replacement project is a story that is playing out in neighborhoods across the country. Government initiatives in the public interest are constrained by distrust, even with the best of intentions and means.
Since applications for the program began in March, city officials have knocked on doors, hung up leaflets, held block meetings, and more. The department heads insist this is just the beginning. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
Last year Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a $ 8.5 billion program to replace all lead pipes in the city. A feature of the initiative, the Equity Program, provides full replacement subsidies for Chicago residents below a certain income level.
The project was hailed from all sides as long overdue. Chicago has one of the highest levels of lead in drinking water in the country as it installed lead pipes for nearly a century until they were federally banned in 1986. People of color are twice as likely to live in areas with lead pipes as their white counterparts. From 2015 to 2020, lead levels in some areas of Chicago were as high as in Flint, Michigan during their devastating water crisis that began in 2014.
The Wednesday night meeting is part of a pilot program on that block of Ridgeway Avenue, where officials are particularly pushing residents to sign up to have their pipes replaced. For its part, the city uses resources for public relations work. Since the applications opened in March, city officials have knocked on doors, hung up leaflets, hosted block meetings, hired a bilingual community coordinator to better reach Spanish-speaking residents, documented exactly who was interested in the program, and more. The department heads insist this is just the beginning.
DWM thought the block was a good location for a pilot program, as plans were already being made to replace the block’s centuries-old aqueduct, the central aqueduct below the street. The large variety of houses on the street also goes well with the program: There are one and two-story houses with courtyards and fences and different street distances.
“The people on this block benefit from being the first to get this – and they get it for free, which is great,” said Alderman Michael Rodriguez, who represents the neighborhood on Chicago City Council and knocked on doors, to open them awareness of the program. “But at the same time they have a lot of questions because they are the first to get it. They have very few people to whom they have had this experience. “
Nevertheless, it was exhausting to convince the residents to participate. Alderman Rodriguez estimated that after three block meetings like the one on Wednesday, about half of the 40 or 50 homeowners who live on the block had signed up. Registrations are even slower across the city. Four months after the equity program applications opened, only 143 homeowners applied.
Last year Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced a $ 8.5 billion program to replace all lead pipes in the city. A feature of the initiative, the Equity Program, provides full replacement subsidies for Chicago residents below a certain income level. Photo © J. Carl Ganter / Circle of Blue
One obstacle has little to do with lead pipes and more to do with immigration policy and practice. Under the Trump administration’s 2019 public charge rule, documented immigrants who have received public benefits such as Medicaid or grocery stamps for over a year may not be deemed eligible for a green card. While President Joe Biden has since reversed this rule, it casts a long shadow over Little Village.
Jadhira Sanchez, a lifelong resident of Little Village who works with the Enlace Chicago nonprofit, said immigrants remain reluctant to accept government assistance. She shared an experience with Enlace distributing rental money during the pandemic.
“Even when we were handing people checks, before they even snatched the check, they said, ‘Are you sure I won’t get in trouble? Are you sure I won’t be billed for that money in a year? ‘”She said. “We’d probably be asked that question twenty times in one phone call.”
Asa Ascencio Zuccaro, the executive director of the nonprofit Latinx Flint, said the same was seen in Flint’s immigrant communities during their water crisis. Urban aid centers often required residents’ IDs or social security numbers, which had a deterrent effect in the immigrant communities. As a result, grassroots organizations and religious groups took over the cloak to provide their neighbors with water.
Even after the height of the crisis, when the city replaced lead water pipes, some residents decided not to do so – not because they thought the operation was unimportant, but out of distrust of city officials. “A lot of people just felt uncomfortable when people came into their homes, so they refused,” he said.
But this was only the latest chapter in a much longer story in Flint, where chronic divestment left the city shaky long before the water crisis. “There is a historical feeling of feeling excluded or excluded,” said Ascencio Zuccaro.
This is also the case in Little Village, where the roots of the homeowners’ reluctance go back decades. Some residents are reluctant to be the first to join a government-run program. The 1932 Tuskegee Experiment, an ethically abusive study in which the U.S. Health Service injected syphilis into black subjects without their informed consent and offered no cures, is anchored in the collective consciousness of the neighborhood.
“There are programs that have been very shady towards minority communities,” said Sanchez. “People may not even know the name of the project, but they’ll say, ‘Before, remember, that’s what did this to the Morenos. How can I trust they won’t do the same to me? ‘”
Local residents have long protested that the city is using it as an ecological “landfill”. An industrial corridor encloses the south and west sides, and the neighborhood suffers from disproportionate air pollution from nearby manufacturing.
An event from last year weighs heavily on the heads of local residents: A developer tore down a disused chimney right next to Little Village and covered the neighborhood with dust amid a respiratory pandemic. Mayor Lightfoot said the builder had promised there would be no rubble, but residents blamed the city for signing the proposal rather than giving advance notice.
“At eight in the morning everything went black and you couldn’t see a meter in front of you. People had asthma attacks, ”said Maria Cecilia Quiñones Peña, a block resident who is also a water efficiency expert with the nonprofit Elevate Energy. “The small village is constantly being forgotten. So why should people trust the city to do something in their homes, especially if it affects people’s lower dollars? “
Other residents have concerns about possible rising water costs for households. Rob Castaneda is a lifelong resident of Little Village and a co-founder of the community organization Beyond the Ball. He explained that the need to install a water meter – which allows for a water bill based on the actual amount of water used that month instead of a flat rate – is what many working-class residents have to offer worried.
According to DWM officials, water bills typically drop 25-50% after a meter is installed. But without the measuring device “you know what it costs; it’s fixed, ”said Castaneda.
Despite the hesitation, the city is making slow progress. “It’s a bargain,” said a resident who attended the meeting. In fact, the city guides emphasize that the program makes financial sense for residents as the operation typically costs between $ 15,000 and $ 25,000.
“Anyone looking at the health page is a breeze,” added Casteneda. “But that is the special thing about a working-class district: Unfortunately, not only the healthiest, but the most economically sensible decisions are made.”
Local residents have long protested that the city is using Little Village as an ecological “landfill”. An industrial corridor encloses the south and west sides, and the neighborhood suffers from disproportionate air pollution from nearby manufacturing. Photo © Tyler Hewitt
Angel Hawthorne, DWM’s director of public affairs, said to allay local residents’ distrust the department is hitting the ground on the Little Village pilot – and it’s starting to work.
“By walking around the block and talking to people, I often had the opportunity to say, tell me! [your concerns]. And I think you’ve seen me so often by now that you know, okay, ‘she keeps coming back so she really has to take care of it,’ ”she said, laughing.
In fact, several residents signed up after the meeting on Wednesday. But others, like the man in the red cap, couldn’t be convinced. “It’s the same every time,” he told Circle of Blue after the meeting. “They’re trying to convince us, but that’s not to our advantage. I’m just trying to protect myself. “
Sarahi Rincon Molina helped translate this article into Spanish.
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