CHICAGO – Oscar Ortega likes to sit out on his porch in South Deering and watch cars go by. He did, at least, before the smell.

“When we moved here, my wife actually liked the scenery,” Ortega said. “It looks like a small-town scenery, you know, just a few houses, lots of trees. But then something just slapped us right in the face: the odor.”

His house is next to Pullman Innovations, a facility that creates ingredients used in animal feed. And since management changed a decade ago, Ortega, 59, said pungent smells on days the plant operates have prevented him from going outside or opening the windows.

On Aug. 5, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the city of Chicago sued A-F Acquisition LLC, which operates under the name Pullman Innovations. The lawsuit alleged that the company allowed excessive odors, caused illegal air pollution, constructed a boiler without a permit that could cause or contribute to air pollution, and violated certain conditions of the operating permit at its Chicago facility, according to a news release.

Two days later, the attorney general issued another news release announcing a lawsuit against three companies alleging they endangered the environment and public safety by allowing fires to break out at the Harbor View waste facility, a closed landfill site about 4 miles from Pullman Innovations.

The Southeast Side has long dealt with industrial pollution and environmental justice issues, but in recent years residents won two major victories.

Approval for a metal shredding plant in the community went back and forth in court before being blocked in 2024 amid outcry from residents and activists. After yearslong litigation with community groups and resistance from the state environmental agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers dropped its plan to expand a toxic waste dump along the Lake Michigan shoreline in 2025.

Gina Ramirez, director of Midwest environmental health at the Natural Resources Defense Council, lives in East Side, several miles away from the fires. Even so, she said it still smelled like a forest fire near her home and the community for about a week.

Ramirez said there’s a lot of “finger-pointing” by companies claiming they aren’t responsible for foul odors or soil pollution. The onus often seems to be on community members to prove otherwise, but she said this can be difficult for Southeast Side residents struggling to make ends meet and find the time for such efforts.

Ramirez said government entities need to step up. “It shouldn’t fall on the community to be constantly doing this,” she said.

The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency referred the defendants in both lawsuits. The agency declined to speak on Pullman Innovations, directing comments to the Illinois attorney general’s office. That office declined to answer questions regarding specifics of both cases, including why it took so long for the government to take action.

Mayor Brandon Johnson is also suing Pullman Innovations, according to the news release. In response to a Tribune inquiry, the office sent over a statement on behalf of Department of Environment Commissioner Angela Tovar. She wrote that the Bureau of Environmental Permitting and Inspection conducted routine inspections and issued violations to Pullman Innovations.

“The City is now taking legal action due to the facility’s continued failure to meet its responsibilities to the community,” Tovar wrote.

Representatives from Pullman Innovations did not respond to a request for comment.

Smells become a class action

The Southeast Side was once home to one of the largest concentrations of steel mills on Earth as well as significant labor rights movements in the 20th century. During World War I, Black Americans seeking economic opportunities formed a strong presence in the community, according to the Southeast Chicago Archive and Storytelling Project. The loss of industrial jobs hit many of these workers the hardest.

Today, a large portion of South Deering has an environmental justice index score of 98.6 on a scale that maxes out at 100, according to a map on the Chicago Health Atlas, a database created by the Chicago Department of Public Health and the University of Illinois Chicago. The composite score of cumulative impacts reflects communities in Chicago that are most burdened by pollution and most vulnerable to its effects.

According to the database, more than 60% of the neighborhood is Black and more than 30% Latino.

During a recent visit by the Tribune, East 100th Street outside Pullman Innovations smelled somewhere between rotten eggs and manure. This odor was faintly present outside Ortega’s house, although he said it’s much worse when the facility is active. That could be at any time of the day, any day of the week, Ortega said.

“On really bad days, it smells like a handful of everything: vomit, fish, dead animal, something that went sour,” he said. “I mean, it’s just an awful, awful smell.”

Ortega said he limits his time outside mostly to driving his wife to work. Many relying on the bus don’t have that luxury. Homeowners also can’t sell their houses, as Ortega said their property values have decreased due to the smell.

His two children, when still living with him, stayed locked inside or always hung out at a friend’s home, Ortega said.

“Being able to take advantage of a cookout, you know, together with friends, that doesn’t happen,” he said.

Odors from Pullman Innovations affected nearby schools and a church, according to the attorney general’s news release. This allegedly caused the cancellation of school recesses, and also ruining weddings and funerals.

Ortega said residents banded together and held community meetings for a few years at a neighborhood church, bringing in lawyers, activists and government representatives.

Liddle Sheets P.C., a Detroit-based law firm specializing in neighborhood environmental pollution, became involved in these meetings. Ortega said residents contacted the firm about five years ago hoping for legal action against Pullman Innovations, but several of them declined to take the role of lead plaintiff.

He accepted. “Maybe this is the opportunity that we, as a community, have been looking for,” he said.

Judge Caroline Kate Moreland granted a request to turn the lawsuit into a class action in October, according to a news release from Liddle Sheets P.C., the law firm representing Ortega. Class actions are a type of case where individuals or groups can sue on behalf of a much larger collection of people.

About 2,400 households are affected by Pullman Innovations, according to the news release.

“We believe that it wouldn’t be fair for one individual to (spearhead) the lawsuit without the community actually benefiting from it,” Ortega said, referring to why he wanted the case to be given class-action status. “We just wanted to fix whatever situation that they’re causing.”

A court date has not yet been set, he said.

Ortega said the attorney general’s lawsuit against A-F Acquisition LLC is “great,” even if it took over a decade for the government to take action.

Pullman Innovations’ lawyers say there’s no proof a legally significant amount of odors came from their facility, according to court documents. They took issue with the scope of individuals included in the class action and wrote Ortega’s allegations “are so exaggerated and idiosyncratic that he cannot adequately represent the class he purports to lead.”

Fires nearby

When Ramirez heard about fires at a closed landfill site in April, she drove to see it with her son. In a video sent by Ramirez to the Tribune, plumes of smoke can be seen spreading over fields next to a body of water and lifting into the sky.

“I was worried about my mom because she has asthma, and it was, you know, beautiful spring days,” Ramirez said. “I was eager to open up my windows, and I couldn’t do that.”

IEPA inspectors also surveyed the landfill site, which closed in 2003, according to the attorney general’s news release. The inspectors found large piles of waste and smoldering litter. There were also active fires near a well designed to remove methane, which is highly flammable.

The lawsuit names three defendants: Stony Island Reclamation Co., Land and Lakes Co. and J.L.W. Trucking LLC.

Land and Lakes oversees several waste management facilities, according to its website. Stony Island Reclamation is a subsidiary of Land and Lakes and oversees the Harbor View landfill.

In a written statement to the Tribune, Stony Island Reclamation wrote that J.L.W. Trucking was a tenant at the closed landfill. Stony Island Reclamation alleges in the statement that J.L.W. Trucking’s mismanagement “led to the conditions that may have caused the fires,” and it failed to notify both the company and local governments.

J.L.W. Trucking did not respond to a request for comment.

Ramirez said she doesn’t think people on Chicago’s North Side drive their children past landfill fires. But living on the Southeast Side, she said it’s the norm for her. That’s why she said the government needs to take action against polluters, as it has with the recent lawsuits.

“It’s a step in the right direction, long overdue, of course, because so many people have suffered for so long, but I hope to see more of that,” Ramirez said.

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