On the Trail of Environmental Fraud

The first thing that caught my eye was a detailed odor complaint assigned to my McKinley Park neighborhood residence. The surprising thing was that I didn’t submit the complaint.

I was reviewing the City of Chicago’s published list of complaints against MAT Asphalt: a fairly detailed public database that includes a postal address for each complaint location. This was part of a collection of complaints — also including those made to the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency (IEPA) — cited by neighborhood protesters and leading to an August 2021 investigation announcement by Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.

I quickly checked that neither my spouse nor young child had made the call cited in the complaint. I also checked our phone records, which showed no such calls. (To date, we’ve received no follow-up or confirmation about this complaint.)

Asphalt Reporting

As the publisher of the McKinley Park News, I broke the story on MAT Asphalt and have regularly covered this industrial development and the controversy surrounding it.

More recently, neighborhood news correspondent Ankita Mukhopadhyay has been reporting on MAT Asphalt. She’s a perfect fit for this role, given her international experience in environmental reporting for Deutsche Welle (DW) and her just-minted graduate degree in journalism from Northwestern University’s Medill School. (Congrats, Ankita!) After more review of the complaints data, we decided it merited a closer look.

Related: Most MAT Asphalt Odor Complaints Not Upheld, State Mum on Investigation

Deafening Silence

Although the City of Chicago complaint data included addresses, the data provided from the IEPA had them redacted. Following the best practices of tenacious reporting, Ankita privately requested as much information as we could get. In addition to determining the distribution of complaints within the neighborhood, I was curious if false reports with my address — or others — had also been submitted to the IEPA.

Ankita’s latest reporting analyzes the data, breaking down complaints to show those verified versus not upheld, as well as looking at how the complaints are distributed within the neighborhood. She also tries to interrogate the much-ballyhooed attorney general’s investigation, but encounters only a deafening silence.

Veracity and Accuracy

Far from silent has been the McKinley Park neighborhood’s loudest protest group, which has a seeming primary focus on MAT Asphalt. Their published missives of baseless allegations against the McKinley Park News have been driving new traffic, attention and signups for our publication.

Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to consider this group to be a credible environmental or community organization for some time: an editorial stance supported by dozens of reasons we’ve tallied internally.

We continue to have supreme confidence in the veracity and accuracy of our neighborhood news coverage, as well as the staff of professional journalists who create it. No one has told us of factual errors in our reporting, despite our entreaties and the many channels to do so via the McKinley Park News website.

Likewise, no critics have been in touch prior to slinging substance-free disapprobation, which has ranged from accusations that we're taking payoffs to sensationalizing select bits of our unpublished, non-public correspondence.

Valid Complaints

Our examination has thus far uncovered only one fraudulent complaint: the one assigned to my residence. We haven't surveyed further, as our small size and limited resources allow only for investigative journalism delivered bite by bite.

However, neither the IEPA nor the City of Chicago seem to be checking on the veracity of complaints, and the Illinois attorney general and bevy of elected officials calling for an investigation have been silent for nearly a year.

I certainly know neighbors right near MAT Asphalt who have submitted odor complaints in good faith, and I've caught whiffs of asphalt from near the plant (as well as other smells from this busy industrial area). As noted in Ankita's reporting, a number of complaints were upheld when examined.

Ongoing Coverage

The McKinley Park News looks forward to reporting the ongoing story of MAT Asphalt and the complaints against it. Unfortunately, we’ll have to say goodbye to Ankita for this: She’s off to New York City to report for Politico. (More congrats to this talented young journalist!)

We'll continue to track this story, including whether we uncover any other fraudulent complaints. If you as a neighborhood resident discover such, or would like to comment on the complaints you've submitted, get in touch to help inform our reporting.

In the meantime, watch the McKinley Park News for ongoing coverage of all sorts of news and events coverage for the whole neighborhood (and not just MAT Asphalt). We appreciate your engagement with and consideration for our micro-local news publication.

All the best to you and yours,

— Justin Kerr
Publisher, McKinley Park News