Here’s how air pollution is affecting southwest IL communities, according to residents
A woman raising her three great-grandchildren in East St. Louis and an alderman representing North St. Louis have each had loved ones diagnosed with asthma. And they think air pollution in the region is a reason.
Great-grandmother Mamie Cosey and St. Louis city’s Ward 3 Alderman Brandon Bosley shared their experiences with a crowd of about 100 people who gathered Saturday morning in Venice, Illinois, in the hopes that federal, state and local lawmakers would also listen.
“We deserve better,” Cosey said during the event.
Saturday’s Air Quality Rally for Environmental Justice marked the first time that environmental groups and community members from Illinois and Missouri came together for an event calling on leaders to address the problem.
The activist organizations involved were United Congregations of Metro East, Metro East Green Alliance, Sierra Club Piasa Palisades from Alton, as well as groups from Missouri, including Metropolitan Congregations United in St. Louis, Missouri Sierra Club, Earth Day 365, Community First Plus, and Mississippi River Network.
The groups’ shared goals include confronting the problems of hazardous waste incineration near neighborhoods and pollution from coal power.
Rally participants marched across the McKinley Bridge’s pedestrian sidewalk from Venice to the Missouri border, symbolizing the new partnership.
Alderwoman Heather Navarro, who represents St. Louis city’s Ward 28, which includes Forest Park, also attended the rally.
Rally organizers said they invited some southwestern Illinois legislators, including state Rep. Katie Stuart, D-Edwardsville; state Sen. Rachelle Crowe, D-Glen Carbon; and state Rep. Amy Elik, R-Fosterburg. The officials said they could not make it, according to organizers.
Impact of pollution in St. Louis area, according to residents
Mamie Cosey, 80, lives 1.5 miles from the Veolia incineration plant, located in nearby Sauget. She said she worries about air quality in her neighborhood because her great-grandchildren have asthma.
“I’m thankful to God that he allowed me to be able to have the strength to raise them, but there is a problem. And the problem is that my children cannot grow up like other children. There are days when they cannot even go outside of our home and play and shoot ball and jump rope and all of the things that young children should be allowed to do,” Cosey said at the rally.
Research has shown that facilities with industrial air pollution are most often located in neighborhoods with Black residents. Air pollution can cause asthma and make the symptoms of the chronic respiratory disease worse, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
In St. Clair and Madison counties, Black residents visit hospital emergency rooms because of asthma at higher rates on average than any other residents, with the highest rates among Black children, according to Illinois Department of Public Health statistics from 2017 to 2019.
In Madison County, the three-year average rate among children was 237.66 ER visits per 10,000 people, compared to 50.31 visits per 10,000 for white children. St. Clair County’s rate for Black children was 178.65 visits per 10,000 compared to 46.11 for white children.
The Rev. Norma Patterson, an East St. Louis pastor and former educator, described air pollution as a type of oppression during Saturday’s event. Patterson’s church is Good Shepherd of Faith United Church of Christ. She also serves on the executive board for United Congregations of Metro East.
“Oppression takes many shapes and forms,” she said. ” ... Oppression is in the air when it’s time for you to go to sleep at night and you can’t breathe. Asthma in my family. Asthma in the children that I taught in south St. Louis. Time to do something. Do something, people.”
Brandon Bosley, the St. Louis alderman, said he has also seen his children, his sisters and his constituents develop asthma.
What are the proposed environmental solutions?
On Saturday, rally organizers asked attendees to sign a petition urging Illinois lawmakers to pass the Clean Energy Jobs Act, which stalled in the last legislative session. The bill would phase out coal power in Illinois.
Alderman Bosley also discussed an idea for the city of St. Louis at the rally.
“What I will propose, what I would like to happen in my ward ... I’d like air quality monitors right along the highway and air quality monitors all throughout my area,” he told rally participants.
“Therefore, when we have these conversations, we’ll actually have some analytics to go on, and we can see what’s in our air, what we’re breathing and what particular companies are contributing to those particular problems and issues that we want to eradicate,” Bosley added.
This story was originally published July 24, 2021 at 6:28 PM.
