X

July Spotlight: Clean Power Lake County

 

 

Clean Power Lake County Members: Celeste Flores and Leah Hartung

 

 

About Clean Power Lake County Clean Power Lake County (CPLC) is a volunteer-led, Waukegan-based, grassroots organization devoted to ensuring clean air, clean water, and healthy soil for every Lake County community member.

 

Our work with the Coming Clean Network Clean Power Lake County has been connected to Coming Clean since 2018 when they learned about the network through their local work around ethylene oxide (which is emitted from 2 facilities located within Lake County). Being a part of the Coming Clean network has allowed them to plug in their local work with what’s happening at the federal level. Celeste attended Coming Clean’s last general strategy meeting in 2019, and Leah has been an active participant in the Hazardous Facilities working group.

 

"We are working to ensure clean air, clean water, and healthy soil for every Lake County community member and to achieve the self-determination of those disproportionately impacted by environmental pollution. We have this vision of a sustainable community that's prospering, and that is really centered on and being led by those who are most vulnerable in our community: immigrants, low-income, and working class community members." — Celeste Flores

 

 

 

 

What has being a member of Coming Clean meant for your organization as you work towards your vision?

It's been amazing. It's been a blessing to be part of Coming Clean. We are an all-volunteer organization. We have at the moment two paid interns, because we believe in paying people if we can. But we're not a nonprofit — we're just a group of community members that realized that there was a coal plant in our community, and then from there realized, “oh, we're living in an environmental justice community and there's a lot of other pollution.” So being able to be part of Coming Clean and being able to be part of a national organization that's got all these members and just being able to know what's going on federally and plugging in if we need to has been great. We've been able to learn about different opportunities, including being able to testify at different EPA hearings. I, myself personally, have been able to travel to DC with Coming Clean and testify on behalf of my community. I don't think those connections would have been made possible if it hadn't been for being part of Coming Clean.

 

Do you have a favorite memory or story of your time working with Coming Clean so far?

I think in the retreat in Louisville in 2019, being able to meet so many people and, especially people of color, that are doing this work. I cut my teeth doing environmental organizing with Clean Power Lake County and Sierra Club, so I think I had an idea of what the environmental movement was. Clean Power Lake County becoming independent from Sierra Club and then joining Coming Clean as a member and meeting people from New Mexico, people from Louisiana, and them being BIPOC, and executive directors, as well — that I think for me, really showed me the depth of the environmental justice movements and knowing that we did have a place as a group in the movement.

 

What do you feel are the biggest opportunities to enact the kinds of change that your organization is working towards?

We have been working really hard not only to have all types of diversity, but specifically intergenerational diversity, and really working with folks in high school and college and getting them on board, because we are working to leave behind, hopefully, a better planet and a planet that they can live in and be sustainable in. Integrating and creating this internship program for college students has honestly been one of the highlights for me. I've always worked with youth — that's my background, youth ministry, personally — so I've always tried to have summer internships, but the dedication and the commitment from the steering committee to pay them and find that funding has been huge. I'm a first generation college student and a child of immigrant parents, so growing up free, unpaid internships were not a thing for me. My parents were like, “No, you're going to be working this summer. And you’re gonna be working winter vacation.” So being able to know that we can offer that opportunity to our students here in Lake County, and for them to be able to get paid for that experience whether or not they continue doing environmental justice organizing, while also compensating them for their time, has been amazing to see.

I think that's what we need: We need to bring in more of that youth, have more of that spirit. Sometimes as adults, we can just be jaded in what we've seen or the past administrations, and they don't have any of that historical baggage. They just want to try new things or try things that maybe we've done and haven't worked out. So really focusing on that has been great to see: their enthusiasm, their charisma for this, and their desire for change. Sometimes as adults, we kind of are like, “This is what we do,” or “This is the legislative cycle we have to follow.” And when we’re asked those questions like, “Wait, why are we doing this?” the answer of, “We've always done this like that,” does it go well with the youth. So it's been really great to see that flourish and really come to full fruition now this past year.

 

Are there any projects or campaigns other Coming Clean members should know about?

We always have a lot of campaigns. And hopefully we'll have some wins this summer. We have been trying to do a lot of state work when it comes to a just transition for the coal plant in Waukegan, Illinois. We're not there yet. Session is officially over, but it seems like legislators and lawmakers are going to be coming back to vote on a climate and energy bill. But what I'm really excited about is that we are opening up our summer internship to students. So we currently have two interns that are year-round, but we're going to do an eight week summer program to learn the basics about organizing and the campaign work that Clean Power Lake County is doing. We’re really excited to be able to bring on more students into the fold and have them be part of our network and be part of the youth that have gone through the internship program. And then something we're working on with Coming Clean is making sure that the new EPA is really listening to community members and making sure that everything that's going on there is getting funneled down. So for us, it's ethylene oxide, but there's a lot of other things that are going into our air, and we need to make sure that we have fenceline monitoring and everything else, and that we're collaborating with Coming Clean to make sure that we make comments and show up to those listening sessions that are going to be held this summer.

 

If the changes that you envision are realized what will be different in 20 years and how will you want to be able to say that your organization contributed?

It's so hard to sometimes even imagine when you're just thinking about not even a year from now where you're going to be. But I think we have this vision of this community that's self-sustaining, and is empowered, and part of a broader movement. And I think for us, part of that hopefully will bring rest as well. If we didn’t have to be concerned about the quality of the air that we're breathing, or the water that we're drinking, or the soil we're growing things in, I'm just really hoping that we are able to be in a world where those things are just standardized and we can just continue focusing on building our community up and being in a world where nonprofits are not something that we need, where our government is taking care of the people in the way it should be, and we don't need to be doing this advocacy work but rather being able to rest and be with each other in community.

 

"We need to bring in more of that youth, have more of that spirit. Sometimes as adults, we can just be jaded in what we've seen or the past administrations, and they don't have any of that historical baggage. They just want to try new things or try things that maybe we've done and haven't worked out. So really focusing on that has been great to see: their enthusiasm, their charisma for this, and their desire for change." — Celeste Flores