Cook County taxpayers spend over a billion dollars a year on the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District of Greater Chicago (MWRD).
In return, they’re supposed to get clean water and effective sewage treatment—but reporting by the Chicago Tribune showed that the MWRD dumps raw, untreated sewage into the waterways every six days, on average, often for multiple days in a row during periods of heavy rain. There were roughly 2000 individual “combined sewer outflows” (the technical term for raw sewage releases) in 2017 alone.
That’s an unacceptable level of contamination, and because of it, the water quality in Chicago and Cook County waterways often fails to meet EPA minimum standards. Despite those failings, MWRD leadership described their system as “working as intended” following rains that caused multiple discharges this February.
The good news is, voters can take direct action on March 20th!
The MWRD is run by an elected, nine-member Board of Commissioners. For more than 20 years, all elected Commissioners have been Democrats, and the 2018 slate of Democrat candidates is largely made up of the same incumbents who have been overseeing the MWRD during its years of raw sewage dumps.
Voters who are tired of the pollution (and the enormous amount of taxpayer spending, much of which goes directly to the current Commissioners’ campaign donors) can take a Green Party ballot in the March 20th primary, and vote for candidates who will work to stop the routine discharges of untreated sewage.
Ready to vote Green in the primaries? Visit our “How to Vote” page to learn how to find your polling place, and how to cast a write-in vote for the Vacancy of Bradford election.
The Green Party is the only opposition party running a slate of five candidates for the five open seats. Voters who want to say “enough is enough” should pull the Green Party ballot at the March 20th primary, and cast a vote for the Green Party MWRD candidates, including the special write-in-only “Vacancy of Bradford” primary that was announced in January.
Cook County voters deserve clean water and clean government. Incumbent Democrats on the Board have obviously failed them, and the Republican Party isn’t even bothering to run a full slate of candidates.
For real change at the MWRD, vote Green at the March 20th primary!