The Chicago's Southeast Side was once the gateway to Big Steel. Industrial work near the convergence of Lake Michigan and the Calumet River produced jobs and prosperity from the South Side to Gary until their slow grinding halt in the 1980s. Despite a long period of decline that followed the loss of mill jobs, the area remains home to numerous industrial jobs and shuttered mills and factories, some on contaminated land. Now a new generation of Southeast Side residents, some the descendants of mill workers who arrived a century ago, are demanding a cleaner future free of the industrial pollutants that they say have caused chronic health problems.
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