About Our Projects
LVEJO offers educational Toxic Tours, classroom visits, service learning projects, and environmental justice curriculum. Other inquiries are also welcome. Contact us at comms@lvejo.org to learn more.
Water and Climate Justice
Little Village has been disproportionately impacted by aging water infrastructure, lead service lines, urban flooding, and unaffordable utility costs. Access to clean, safe, and affordable water is a fundamental human right. LVEJO conducts research, advocacy, and outreach to advance water justice and climate resilience in Little Village, while connecting residents to resources that address their immediate needs.
Water & Climate Justice
Collateral Channel
The Collateral Channel is a contaminated waterway at 3100 S. Albany Avenue, directly across from La Villita Park. Built in the 1890s, the channel has accumulated decades of industrial pollution, leaving the water stagnant, heavily polluted, and a health burden for residents living nearby.
Since 2014, LVEJO has organized with residents living near the channel to document its health impacts and advocate for remediation. In 2023, LVEJO petitioned the United States Environmental Protection Agency to investigate the channel under the Superfund program for hazardous waste sites. We are currently awaiting the status of that petition. For more information, read the USEPA Preliminary Assessment Report.
If you are near Albany and 31st Street or the south end of La Villita Park and notice a foul smell, please report it to 311.
Water & Climate Justice
Lead Service Line Replacement
Chicago has more lead service lines than any other major city in the United States, with over 300,000 homes across the city impacted. Lead exposure poses serious health risks, particularly for children. LVEJO advocates for the equitable removal of all lead service lines without adding financial burden to households.
Learn more about existing Chicago resources at leadsafechicago.org, including how to sign up for existing programs, how to get a free water pitcher and filter, and how to verify whether your home has a lead service line.
If you have been impacted by lead in your drinking water, reach out to our team and share your story at water-justice@lvejo.org
Water & Climate Justice
Mitigating Urban Flooding
Climate change is intensifying urban flooding in Chicago, disproportionately harming low-income and immigrant communities like Little Village through increased health, economic, and mobility burdens.
As flooding becomes more frequent and costly, proactive climate-resilient solutions are needed to reduce household and neighborhood impacts while addressing longstanding environmental inequities.LVEJO works alongside community members to identify chronic flooding sites, advance green storm water infrastructure solutions, and advocate for proactive approaches to reduce viaduct, block-level, public space, and household flooding.
To report flooding or request maintenance, contact the City of Chicago through 3-1-1 by phone, online, or app.
Water & Climate Justice
Utility Affordability
The cost of water in the Great Lakes region has risen over 80% in the past decade and continues to rise due to aging water infrastructure systems and the need to address contaminants in our drinking water systems.
The rapid development of data centers and soaring demand for energy is driving up household electricity bills, while repeated rate hike requests from utility providers are increasing household gas bills. LVEJO advocates for equitable utility billing structures and expanded assistance programs to prevent households from falling into utility debt. For help understanding your utility bills and navigating available programs, visit the Citizens Utility Board.
For assistance with past due water bills in Chicago, visit the Utility Billing Relief Program.
Transportation and Mobility Justice
Little Village sits near one of Chicago’s largest industrial corridors. Thousands of diesel trucks move through residential streets daily, exposing residents to some of the worst air quality in Illinois. At the same time, transit access in Little Village is inadequate, forcing residents to depend on cars in a community where many families cannot afford them. LVEJO organizes to reduce diesel emissions, advance transit equity, and hold polluters and policymakers accountable.
Transportation and Mobility Justice
Warehouse Pollution Reduction Act
The Warehouse Pollution Reduction Act would establish annual emission reduction targets to mitigate air pollution from warehouses and diesel trucks traveling to and from the sites.
This legislation would support warehouses and diesel truck companies to make progress towards zero emission vehicles goals for Illinois and improve air quality of residents in frontline communities.
Transportation and Mobility Justice
Clean and Equitable Transportation Infrastructure Act
This legislation establishes standards to expand the availability of zero-mission vehicles, lower costs for families, and transition public fleets away from fossil fuels. It also expands charging infrastructure across Illinois, ensuring the benefits of cleaner transportation are shared across communities statewide.
Transportation and Mobility Justice
Community Air Monitoring
LVEJO’s community science air monitoring program centers the knowledge, experiences, and leadership of residents in understanding the environmental conditions of their own neighborhood.
Through hands-on training, data collection, and community air monitoring walks, residents and youth work together to identify pollution hotspots and build the evidence base for policy change.
Through PurpleAir sensor installations across the neighborhood, residents gather real-time data on air conditions outside their homes, schools, and businesses. LVEJO has partnered with the Chicago Department of Public Health and the University of Illinois Chicago to support Open Air Chicago, expanding neighborhood-level air quality monitoring and public access to environmental data across the city. Residents can also track diesel truck traffic in Little Village and across Chicago through our truck count data portal, developed in collaboration with the Center for Neighborhood Technology. This data supports LVEJO’s campaigns for cleaner air in Little Village.
If you are interested in having an air monitor installed in your home or business, please complete this interest form.
Responsible Development
New development in Little Village too often arrives without community input and deepens existing environmental harm. Warehouses, data centers, and industrial facilities are expanding across Chicago’s West and South Sides, bringing increased truck traffic, diesel pollution, and rising utility costs to communities that are already overburdened. LVEJO organizes for community control over land use decisions and fights for policies that hold polluters accountable and center the health of residents.
Responsible Development
Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance
Decades of broken zoning and land use policies have concentrated toxic pollution in Chicago’s West and South Side communities. These neighborhoods have become “sacrifice zones” where industrial facilities spew pollutants with disastrous impacts on community health and the environment.
LVEJO is advocating for the passage of the Hazel Johnson Cumulative Impacts Ordinance, a proposed City ordinance that would require new or expanding heavy industrial facilities to go through a more thorough zoning process before receiving a permit, including a cumulative impact study to assess potential environmental and health impacts. Those studies would be reviewed by a new Environmental Justice Advisory Board made up of members from communities historically impacted by pollution.
The ordinance is named for Hazel M. Johnson, known as the “Mother of Environmental Justice,” who founded People for Community Recovery in Altgeld Gardens and spent her life exposing and addressing high cancer rates and pollution in her community. Read more about Hazel’s legacy here.
Cumulative Impacts Ordinance
Decades of broken zoning and land use policies have concentrated toxic pollution in Chicago’s vulnerable West and South Side communities. These neighborhoods have become “sacrifice zones” where chemical plants, heavy metal scrappers, and other industrial facilities spew pollutants right next to homes, parks, and schools with disastrous impacts on community health and the environment.
How Would This Ordinance Help?
- New or expanding heavy industrial facilities would have to go through a more thorough zoning process before receiving a permit.
- As part of that process, facilities would be required to conduct a cumulative impact study to assess potential environmental and health impacts.
- Those studies would be reviewed by a new Environmental Justice Advisory Board, including members from communities historically impacted by pollution.
Responsible Development
Make Polluters Pay
For decades the fossil fuel industry has contributed to worsening climate change impacts felt by Little Village residents through chronic basement flooding, extreme heat waves, and harsh winters.
The proposed Climate Change Superfund Act would create a state fund that requires the largest fossil fuel producers to pay their fair share of Illinois’ climate adaptation costs.
Read the proposed Climate Change Superfund Act HB4773/SB29821 and learn more about the national Make Polluters Pay Movement.
Responsible Development
POWER Act
Illinois is among the top five states in the country for data center proposals. Without regulation, these developments drive up household energy and water bills, deplete local water resources, and deepen environmental burdens in already overburdened communities.
LVEJO organizes with community members to advocate for the passage of the POWER Act (Protecting Our Water, Energy, and Ratepayers Act). This proposed Illinois legislation would require data centers to pay for their own energy and infrastructure costs, use renewable energy sources, report and manage their water use, and enter into community benefits agreements with the neighborhoods where they operate.
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