The Geiger group integrates its scientific activities centered on environmental interfaces with an Education and Public Outreach (EPO) plan. We hold annual meetings at the Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC), the Midwest’s largest organization of its kind, where the PhD students learn how their laboratory work connects to environmental policy decisions while providing scientific primers to the lawyers, thus expanding ELPC’s scientific knowledge base and deepening our insight into the shaping of environmental political and legislative strategies.

 

An important outcome from this interaction is the Village of DePue superfund site project, which involves the NU Law Clinic of ELPC Board member Nancy Loeb and Jennifer Amdur Spitz and Jeff Spitz at Chicago’s Columbia College and Amdur Spitz Associates, Inc., who run Groundswell Educational Films. Watch the 5-min short on the project here.

We hypothesize that web-posting government-certified environmental pollution data that is otherwise only accessible via the freedom of information act is a catalyst for affecting environmental action. We test this hypothesis at the Village of DePue, IL, superfund site (1,790 residents in 2012), some 110 miles SW of Chicago. The context of this environmental tragedy, and our ongoing activities with the case, are described at cleanupdepue.org, which we built by commissioning Chicago-based Amdur Spitz Associates, Inc. and Groundswell Educational Films. A team of DePue high school, NU undergraduate, and NU PhD students analyze how many water samples exceed one or more EPA MCL and Illinois EPA soil background (TACO) levels. Moreover, we use the website as an online educational tool in a virtual general chemistry lab by posting online the statistics of contaminated samples exceeding the MCL and TACO values with the goal of promoting cleanup of the site.