Gov. J.B. Pritzker won’t proceed with Brighton Park migrant camp, citing ‘serious’ environmental concerns
Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration moved to officially scrap Mayor Brandon Johnson’s plan to build a migrant camp on a controversial Southwest Side lot Tuesday, in a scathing rebuke of the city’s evaluation of the land’s potential environmental hazards.
In a statement, Pritzker’s office said an Illinois Environmental Protection Agency review of the city’s environmental report — which was released late Friday evening — indicates “concerns related to insufficient soil sampling and remediation” at the Brighton Park site selected by Johnson’s team.
And because the time required for additional testing and remediation would be extensive, the state “will not proceed” with the base camp, Pritzker said.
“My administration is committed to keeping asylum-seekers safe as we work to help them achieve independence,” Pritzker said in a statement. “We will not proceed with housing families on a site where serious environmental concerns are still present. My administration remains committed to a data-driven plan to improve the asylum-seeker response and we will continue to coordinate with the City of Chicago as we work to expand available shelter through winter.”
At an unrelated public appearance on Tuesday, Johnson maintained “third-party validators” found the site to be safe, then pivoted to city efforts to get migrants out of district police stations.
“The state did not provide any additional guidelines or any sort of methodology in which they were requiring us to go by, so we used the standards that were available to us,” the mayor said.
Johnson’s office later said the state was responsible for kicking off construction last week, and the environmental sampling analysis was done according to “an emergency response protocol under the Illinois Emergency Management Act.”
“Despite being made aware of the above assessment and remediation process, the State provided no additional guidance on its preferred methodology or assessment criteria, nor raised any concerns about its own decision to move forward with construction,” the mayor’s statement said.
Despite his public insistence that relations with the city remain cordial, Pritzker’s move was a stunning rejection of Johnson’s plan, which was already proceeding. It will force the mayor to react to the state stepping on his response to a crisis within Chicago’s borders, a reversal of the usual political power dynamic that comes after weeks of brewing disharmony between the two.
The development also places the Democratic governor, widely rumored to have future presidential ambitions, firmly in charge of a burgeoning situation that has proved Johnson’s most vexing challenge since he took office in May.
Underscoring the escalating tension between Springfield and City Hall, Pritzker spokeswoman Jordan Abudayyeh shot back at Johnson’s statement, saying state environmental standards “are clear and known to the city.”
“Those are not the standards the city chose to use,” Abudayyeh said in a statement. “The city did not engage with IEPA or the state before releasing the report and when it did release the report, was unable to explain the lesser standards they did choose to use and how they arrived at those standards.”
“While the city might be comfortable placing asylum seekers on a site where toxins are present without a full understanding of whether it is safe, the state is not,” Abudayyeh added.
The mayor’s plan to place asylum-seekers in heated winter tents was one of several flashpoints in his and Pritzker’s differences on migrants. Although Johnson and surrogates have for a while critiqued the state for what they said was insufficient aid, the governor has made a point to cast his recent involvement as one of Springfield swooping in because Chicago leaders were failing to get asylum-seekers off of police station floors and sidewalks before cold weather arrived.
Now the search for another camp site to house migrants continues amid freezing temperatures at night and no immediate backup plan. How Johnson’s team navigates the next weeks will be a pivotal moment for the administration that had vowed to be transparent and champion environmental justice but has drawn sharp ire over its handling of the Brighton Park plan.
Last Friday, the city released a nearly 800-page report by outside contractor Terracon Consultants that said high levels of mercury and other chemicals were found and being removed from the Brighton Park lot at 3710 S. California Ave.
“With the limited soil removal and placement and maintenance of the barrier, the site is safe for temporary residential use,” the mayor’s office said then.
The state had reservations, however, and paused construction on the site Sunday after Pritzker’s office expressed frustration at its own wait for the report’s release, even as the state was supposed to cover the cost of setting up and operating the tent encampment.
The base camp in question would have held about 2,000 asylum-seekers and was slated to open its doors later this month to become the city’s first government-run camp for new arrivals as they wait for beds inside bricks-and-mortar shelters. Pritzker on Tuesday said a 200-bed housing facility at the former CVS in Little Village will be next instead, along with possible options within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago network.
The city and state have aimed to set up a shelter at the CVS site since at least May, and Johnson’s Tuesday statement betrayed frustration over the slow pace despite “clear signals from Texas officials that the number of buses will continue to increase.”
“We look forward to partnering with the state on finally standing up the CVS shelter site,” the mayor said. “And we will work collaboratively to achieve the state’s expressed commitment to fund additional temporary residential shelter for new arrivals as winter and more buses arrive.”
Pritzker spokeswoman Abudayyeh said Tuesday it is now incumbent on the city to identify an alternate tent encampment site, which she indicated may not be needed immediately if more bricks-and-mortar shelters can be opened, given the fewer migrants at the police stations and O’Hare International Airport.
“We’re open to any sort of shelter solution,” she said.
The Pritzker administration, which has pledged $65 million to set up and operate the tent encampment and the CVS site, was still working to determine whether the state will be on the hook for any of the construction work already completed in Brighton Park, Abudayyeh said. It was unclear Tuesday whether an agreement with contractor GardaWorld Federal Services not to charge the state if the site was found not to be habitable would apply, she said.
Regardless, further shelter options are likely needed. Since August 2022, more than 24,000 migrants have come to Chicago, mostly hailing from Central and South America. The influx was so great at times that this fall, a peak of about 3,800 new arrivals were camped out at police stations and O’Hare.
That number dropped sharply to about 610 total as of Tuesday, a dynamic that could continue during the colder months but is unlikely to hold given past behavior. Under former Mayor Lori Lightfoot, the pace of buses from Texas and other southern border states slowed to a crawl in early 2023 but quickly escalated once spring — and the announcement that Chicago will be the site of next year’s Democratic National Convention — arrived.
Johnson first announced his idea to place migrants in winterized tent encampments in September, but a series of false starts and heated community pushback have dogged his administration the entire way. Pritzker’s announcement Tuesday, however, spelled one of the most prominent blemishes yet on the mayor’s progressive bona fides.
“IEPA would not approve the proposed Brighton Park site for residential use, based on our regulatory standards for remediation of contaminated properties,” Illinois EPA Director John Kim wrote in a statement. “The well-being of residents and workers at the site is our highest priority, and current and planned site conditions do not adequately reduce risks of human exposure to known and potential environmental conditions.”
The state criticism of the city’s handling of the site comes after Johnson last week said the contractor’s assessment of the environmental risks served as “further proof that I’ve proved that I’m committed to environmental justice.”
Days later, Johnson’s office dropped the environmental report that revealed chemicals were present, according to the company hired by the city to assess the viability, though his team had said those concerns would be mitigated. The document was only released late Friday evening to those who made a public records request.
“According to the report, soil with mercury levels was identified at one location and was removed and properly disposed off-site at a landfill,” Johnson’s office said. “Likewise, soil with a high level of a semivolatile compound was identified at another location, and will be removed and disposed of off-site.”
The Terracon report said in the “one sample location” where high mercury exposure was detected, “The soil surrounding this sample was excavated and properly disposed off-site at a landfill,” while the spots with excess amounts of bis(2-ethylhexyl)phthalate, a chemical used to make polyvinyl chloride (PVC), “will be remediated via excavation and landfill disposal.”
In addition, high levels of “semivolatile organic compounds (SVOCs)” and four metals were also found and required workers to ensure “the placement of imported clean stone from a quarry and compaction of the stone to a minimum thickness of six inches throughout the site. The stone layer will be periodically inspected and maintained.”
The consultant’s report also noted a lead smelter once operated in the northeast corner of the site. Lead levels detected in the soil under the now-defunct encampment were up to three times higher than U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards for areas where children play.
The mayor’s office said last week that the investigation entailed “soil sampling, groundwater sampling, and soil gas sampling which yielded soil analytical results, groundwater analytical results, and soil gas analytical results.”
But the IEPA analysis of the environmental report said the consultant’s investigation entailed a “limited nature and insufficient number of soil borings” as well as shoddy remediation work that fell short of state standards, Pritzker’s administration said Tuesday.
“The remediations implemented thus far do not satisfy IEPA standards and are insufficient,” the state said. “At a minimum, an expanded engineered barrier between contaminated soil and human exposure would need to be installed to address exposure concerns. Further investigation might also identify additional contamination that would require additional remediation.”
Reached for comment Tuesday, local Ald. Julia Ramirez, 12th, said she was relieved at the news but hopes the Johnson administration learned a valuable lesson.
“For us, it was a concern that they were constructing even before the environmental report,” said Ramirez, who long opposed the city’s rollout of the now-scuttled base camp. “What’s really important is that when they’re looking at other lots … that we would have done this over a month-and-a-half ago, two months ago, and have that conversation, done the environmental report, before proceeding.”
Far South Side Ald. Ronnie Mosley — Ramirez’s colleague in the City Council who represents the only other migrant camp site considered so far — echoed her sentiments. His 21st Ward had been on deck to host a tent encampment at the former Jewel-Osco at 115th and Halsted streets, but he said Tuesday he “absolutely” welcomed state officials performing a similar review of the city’s environmental testing.
“I’m hoping the state takes that same interest in making sure all Illinoisans are safe,” Mosley told the Tribune.
In October, the city inked a six-month, $548,400 land use contract for the lot at 3710 S. California Ave. owned by Barnacres Corp., a Markham-based company helmed by Otoniel “Tony” Sanchez. Sanchez was also a Johnson donor, giving $1,500 to the mayor’s political fund two months before the lease signing.
Johnson’s political advisers have said that money was being returned and city workers involved in scouting the location did not know about the donation.
On Tuesday afternoon, hulking white tent structures sat vacant on the fresh gravel that had been dumped on the Brighton Park lot. Dueling water-stained signs reading, “No Trespassing” and “So disappointed at Johnson” peppered the fences and tent coverings.
“I feel like our mayor rushed so quickly to put this up and wasted so much money,” said Dan Patlan, a 42-year-old landlord from across the street. “And now you’re going to waste more money to take it down, when you knew. You knew there was the potential for it to be contaminated.”
Chicago Tribune’s Michael Hawthorne contributed reporting.
