Mayor Rahm Emanuel joined Chicago Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel, Illinois Sierra Club Executive Director Jack Darrin, Natural Resources Defense Capital Midwest Deputy Director Karen Hobbs and Environmental Law & Policy Center Executive Director Howard Learner to announce that the City of Chicago will tomorrow send a Notice of Intent (NOI) to sue U.S. Steel for violations of the federal Clean Water Act following the recent discharge of pollutants into Lake Michigan from the corporation’s facility in Portage, Indiana. Under the federal Clean Water Act, sending an NOI is a required first step before a lawsuit can be filed 60 days later.

In addition to providing notice of the City’s intent to file a complaint in federal court under the authority of the Clean Water Act, the NOI explains that, based on monitoring reports and publicly available information, the City has reason to believe that U.S. Steel has repeatedly violated, and will continue to violate sections of the Clean Water Act and its National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permit, in terms of both discharge limits and facility maintenance. Specifically, the letter cites evidence of chromium discharge violations in both April and October of 2017, in which nearly 300 pounds of hexavalent chromium and 56.7 pounds per day of total recoverable chromium, respectively, were discharged into a waterway that flows directly into Lake Michigan.