Residents of Chicago's Southeast Side say they have a decades-long problem: something stinks.
Dozens of residents gathered Wednesday afternoon on the 2700 block of East 100th Street, across from the Pullman Innovations facility, which makes vegetable oil for ingredients in animal feed, to say they're tired of holding their noses.
10th Ward Alderman Peter Chico said, "the odor that is emitted from here is unbearable."
Janet Zavala is President of the Veteran's Park Improvement Association and told the assembled, "in the morning I get texts from parents, or you can read it on Facebook...and on the way to school they'll say the smell is awful. It's not unusual to see children pulling their shirts or jackets up over their noses on their way to the school building because the smell is so bad. And the conversation on Facebook always ends with, 'I hope they don't have to go out to recess today.'"
Pat Carrillo has lived in the area for nearly fifty years and put it bluntly: "Horrendous smell. It smells like dead fish. Smells like dead bodies!"
State Senator Robert Peters says not all Chicagoans are treated equally. "If this was happening on the North Side," Peters said,"in an upperclass neighborhood, this would have been dealt with. But this is happening in a working class community. And our working class communities cannot be treated as dumps!"
Chico and Peters say the odor has persisted for decades and have contacted City of Chicago leaders, the Chicago Department of Health, and they plan to put more pressure on the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.
WBBM has reached out to Pullman Innovations and the Illinois EPA for comment.
