As the new top environment cop in Illinois, James Jennings knew coming in his job would be challenging no matter who won the presidential election.
The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency is rebuilding under Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker after more than a decade spent shedding inspectors, slowing the policing of air and water pollution and feuding with the state attorney general’s office.
During the past two years alone, the agency added 261 new employees, according to state records. Its budget rose to $871 million in 2024, nearly double the amount spent in 2020.
But it is unclear if new blood and more money can offset Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s promised rollbacks of federal environmental protections. Trump also vows to dismantle the U.S. EPA, which in recent years led most of the major cases against Illinois polluters.
“Things will be different than how we currently work with the federal government,” Jennings, the new Illinois EPA director, said in a recent interview with the Chicago Tribune. “Our priorities … are going to be the same.”
Topping Jennings’ agenda is expanding the state’s efforts to slow climate change, taking more aggressive action to protect Illinoisans from toxic forever chemicals, speeding up the removal of brain-damaging lead pipes and addressing environmental justice concerns.
He acknowledged the agency needs to build trust throughout the state — a tough assignment when some believe it is too tough on businesses and others repeatedly document weak enforcement of environmental laws.
“Those of us of a certain age recall the (U.S.) EPA was the agency vilified in ‘Ghostbusters,’” Jennings said. “We need to do a better job being transparent and helping communities identify where they can go with their issues.”
Some of the improvements he outlined are required under the February settlement of a federal civil rights lawsuit.
Lawyers for community groups filed the suit in response to the Illinois EPA’s approval of a scrap shredder in Chicago’s predominantly Latino Southeast Side after the owners closed their often-troubled General Iron operation in wealthy, largely white Lincoln Park.
Public outreach, the most tangible piece of any environmental justice program, has been spotty at best in Illinois, and not just regarding the scrap shredder permit.
A 2018 Tribune investigation found no public hearings had been held in nearly two years as the Illinois EPA evaluated permits that could increase pollution in environmental justice communities, including one for an asphalt plant in the McKinley Park neighborhood.
Even when notices about permits were sent to neighborhood groups, the letters didn’t detail how the public could become involved. Nor did they outline the period of time the public had to respond.
Another Tribune investigation that year found then-Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner’s administration had dramatically reduced penalties sought from polluters, largely because the Illinois EPA cut back on referring cases to the attorney general’s office for prosecution.
Jennings, an attorney who has worked at the agency for 13 years and most recently served as deputy director, said 100 cases had been sent to Attorney General Kwame Raoul in 2024. On average the Illinois EPA under Pritzker has asked Raoul to step in 120 times a year, compared with 80 on average during each of Rauner’s four years in office, according to state records.
In future enforcement cases, Jennings said, fines will be directed to projects in affected communities rather than being funneled to a general pot of money in state coffers.
By contrast, during Trump’s first term the Justice Department stopped pushing for community-based projects during negotiations with polluters.
There are scores of other ways Trump’s probable second-term agenda runs counter to the environmental policies of Pritzker and President Joe Biden.
For instance, Trump calls climate change a hoax, promises a massive expansion of fossil fuel production and plans to undercut Biden’s ambitious climate programs.
The Climate and Equitable Jobs Act, brokered by Pritzker and the General Assembly, phases out fossil-fuel electric generation in Illinois within the next quarter century, encourages more rapid expansion of renewable energy and provides state rebates for buying electric vehicles, among other things.
A $430 million grant from the Biden administration will be spent on initiatives such as electrifying heavy-duty fleet vehicles and connecting locomotives to electric power at rail yards to reduce lung-damaging pollution. The Illinois EPA estimates those projects and others financed by the grant will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 57 million metric tons, equivalent to taking 600,000 cars off the roads.
Another difference: Chemical companies are urging Trump to reverse regulations adopted by Biden setting the first national limits on certain forever chemicals in drinking water. Industry lobbyists and Republicans in Congress want Trump to axe a rule that declares two of the most widely studied chemicals as hazardous under the federal Superfund law, a policy change that forces polluters, rather than taxpayers, to pay for cleanups.
State rules proposed by the Illinois EPA would limit the chemicals in groundwater relied upon for public and private wells, opening the door to future action against those responsible for the contamination. Jennings said the agency is working with the Illinois Department of Public Health to help well owners determine if their water is contaminated.
More than 8 million Illinoisans — 6 out of every 10 people in the state — get their drinking water from a utility where at least one forever chemical has been detected, a 2022 Tribune investigation found. Another 1.4 million depend on private wells, but there has been no systematic approach to determine if any of them are unknowingly ingesting chemicals that build up in human blood, cause cancer and other diseases and take years to leave the body.
People who have worked with Jennings during his other jobs at the Illinois EPA speak highly of him. That said, there remain sharp differences between business groups and environmental advocates about the agency’s role.
Jen Walling, executive director of the nonprofit Illinois Environmental Council, worries state lawmakers won’t have the political will to respond to Trump’s expected cuts to the U.S. EPA. Unlike other state agencies funded with general tax collections, the Illinois EPA’s budget depends solely on federal grants and permit fees.
“No matter how exceptional (Jennings) may be, he’s going to be faced with decisions that already were made for him during the past decade,” Walling said.
The long decline in agency staffing also frustrated industry executives.
At one point, it took the Illinois EPA more than 650 days to review Clean Air Act permits for big polluters. Pritzker’s three predecessors — Rauner and Democrats Pat Quinn and Rod Blagojevich — refused to negotiate with the business community about the Illinois EPA’s budget and staffing needs, said Mark Denzler, president of the Illinois Manufacturers Association.
Denzler said his group isn’t opposed to regulations if, in his words, they are “smart and sensible.” He said his members want more certainty with permit applications and renewals, and a seat at the table when new state regulations are proposed.
“We need to protect the land, water, and air, while at the same allowing economic growth,” Denzler said. “You allow new investment in Illinois, you allow the economy to move forward. It’s a balancing act that makes the most sense.”
In many ways the Illinois EPA director’s job is far more complicated than it was 30 years ago when Mary Gade led the agency under then-Republican Gov. Jim Edgar.
One of Gade’s big tasks was hammering out an agreement between industries, environmental groups and other states. In 1990, bipartisan majorities in Congress amended the federal Clean Air Act to confront rising levels of lung-damaging smog fueled by emissions from coal-fired power plants. The deal Gade helped negotiate led to a sharp drop in smog pollution throughout the United States.
Smog is still a problem, Gade noted. So are contaminated sites abandoned by industry. But now those well-understood threats to public health and the environment vie for attention and money with more recently discovered hazards such as forever chemicals and microplastics.
The days of sweeping bipartisan legislation from Congress appear to be a relic from the past. Republicans in the House of Representatives routinely attack the U.S. EPA and introduce legislation to abolish its authority. A right-wing majority on the U.S. Supreme Court reduced the power of federal agencies to adopt environment and safety regulations unless lawmakers spell out the details.
Even without those hurdles it often takes persistent citizens, pressure from nonprofit groups and the glare of media attention to break through inertia among federal and state employees compared to either jack-booted thugs or hapless bureaucrats.
“Many of these newer threats have become integrated into our society, not just as waste, but in products,” said Gade, who also served as the U.S. EPA’s regional administrator under Republican President George W. Bush. “It’s almost overwhelming. You need an agency leader who has vision and adequate staffing, and a president or governor who agrees about the course you need to take.”
