We’ve documented how flooding and sewage backups often hit vulnerable communities the hardest with our work on Rain Ready, Urban Flooding Baseline tool, and others. We’ve also highlighted how these events disproportionately damage communities of color. The goal of this new coalition is to identify policies to shift and develop new policies to determine where and what kind of infrastructure might best address the challenges we face. Our partners include: 

• Alliance for the Great Lakes 
• Calumet Collaborative
• Equitable Resilience and Sustainability
• Little Village Environmental Justice Organization
• NeighborSpace
• Southeast Environmental Task Force

Read more about the Flood and Sewage Coalition project on the website of Alliance for the Great Lakes

The community advisory group is made up of neighborhood leaders from Chicago’s South and West Sides, the South Suburbs, and Northwest Indiana. Members will help shape policy strategies, providing comments on current policy opportunities,  and ensuring that the coalition’s work reflects lived experiences and community priorities.

We also plan to co-develop the Flood and Sewage Vulnerability Tool, which aims to highlight neighborhoods at risk of flooding by looking at multiple factors such as housing, health, environment, and social equity. The goal is for the map to be paired alongside accounts of residents’ lived experiences.

Policy and Partnerships

The coalition is also partnering with the City of Chicago’s Department of Environment to ensure that dollars are going to the most flood vulnerable communities. The vision is to address immediate flood risks and broader systemic inequities in infrastructure planning.

Partners will continue learning, refining the Flood and Sewage Vulnerability Tool, and developing policy recommendations that prioritize historically disinvested areas. This ongoing collaboration will help ensure that public investments not only address immediate flood risks but also correct long-standing inequities in infrastructure planning.

Questions?