"Crackdown On East Chicago Air Polluter Stalls Under Trump EPA"

"During a stop in East Chicago three months ago, Scott Pruitt vowed that cleaning up the low-income, predominantly African-American and Latino city would be one of his top priorities as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

But as contractors spend the summer digging up dozens of contaminated yards near abandoned industrial sites in the Northwest Indiana city, the EPA has stalled its crackdown on a company still operating nearby that is a major contributor to chronically dirty air in the community and the broader Chicago area.

Before Pruitt took office in February, inspectors from the EPA's Chicago office had documented hundreds of violations of federal air pollution standards at the Indiana Harbor Coke Co., which bakes coal into high-carbon coke for steel mills on a sprawling man-made peninsula jutting from the southwest shore of Lake Michigan."

Michael Hawthorne reports for the Chicago Tribune July 24, 2017.