Oh yes, we have our "show" green roofs and such, but I have never lived in a city with such a poor recycling program (it's frankly almost non-existent). There are no provisions to reduce vehicle emissions through car-pool lanes, which most cities have had for nearly twenty years, or promotion of alternative-energy vehicles by giving them special access for parking, etc. There are still coal-burning plants here. I could go on.
Here's a typical Daley response:
In his typically blunt style, Mayor Richard M. Daley replied Wednesday afternoon to a letter from the Environmental Protection Agency, urging that his city's Chicago River be made clean enough to swim in.
"The federal government should look out their window at the Potomac and figure out what the Potomac is all about," the mayor said, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
And then, in true Daley form, "Go swim in the Potomac."
The mayor was responding to a recommendation from the EPA and the Obama administration, quietly filed with a state rule-making panel and uncovered by the Chicago Tribune yesterday.
For decades, the river was a channel of sludge directed away from Lake Michigan, designed to separate the city's drinking water from its waste. But the elder Mayor Daley, father of the current mayor, had a vision for the river: that Chicagoans would fish and play in it.
Then, it seemed like a pipe dream. But thirty years of improvements have made the lake fishable, and kayakers can be seen cruising up and down along the channel.
The Obama administration's recommendations would hold the river to even higher standards of cleanliness. But Daley's outrage over the recommendation stems in part from the government's refusal to fund Chicago river cleanup projects to date.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/06/02/daley-to-feds-on-chicago_n_598141.html
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