June 09, 2025

ELPC 2025 Gala – A Night to Remember

ELPC's 2025 Gala was a huge success. So many friends and colleagues celebrating all we've done together to protect the Midwest's environment.

By Howard A. Learner, Chief Executive Officer & Executive Director

What a night! We had an amazing evening celebrating the achievements of ELPC over this past year with a few hundred of our closest friends on the rooftop of Navy Pier. I want to say a big thank you to our featured guests, U.S. Senator Dick Durbin, Invenergy Founder  & CEO Michael Polsky, and WGN Chief Meteorologist Emeritus Tom Skilling.

For those of you who couldn’t make it, I wanted to share my speech in its entirety. There is so much we have done, and so much we need to do. I’m so proud of all we are doing together to protect the Midwest’s environment. We’re all in this together!

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Howard Learner’s ELPC 2025 Gala Speech

Good evening! It’s great to see everyone here by Lake Michigan. We’re grateful to be joined by Senator Durbin and so many other dedicated public officials.

ELPC is meeting the moment. We’re standing up. We’re fighting back. I’ll channel my best Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up, stand up for our rights.  Get up, stand up, stand up and fight.”

We have to stand up for our rights. Because what the Trump Administration is doing is wrong:

• They’ve launched over 150 attempts to undo environmental protections.
• They’ve declared an “energy emergency,” but are treating solar, wind and battery energy storage as the enemy.
• They’ve fired more than 1,000 EPA employees. They’re gutting environmental enforcement.
• They’re pretending climate change isn’t real, and cutting our national weather service.

ELPC saw it coming. I told you last year that we would have Plan A and Plan B strategies ready to go after the November election. We did. We’ve stepped up with Plan B, and we’re strategic about how we do it.

We’ve hired 10 new staff – experienced attorneys like Nancy Stoner and Brian Lynk and experienced policy advocates like Derrick James, who’ve all joined us since January.

We are meeting the moment by playing defense against the biggest assault on core environmental values this nation has ever seen. ELPC is standing up in federal courts to enforce our nation’s environmental laws.

• To stop mercury pollution from old coal plants in Illinois and North Dakota.
• To protect wetlands in Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas.
• To clean up Lake Erie by reducing manure pollution that causes toxic algae outbreaks every summer.

Doors have closed in Washington DC, but they’re open for progress here in the Midwest with Governors JB Pritzker, Tony Evers, Gretchen Whitmer, and Tim Walz. And with four Attorneys Generals to advance clean energy, sustainable transportation, and natural resource protection. And we have state Supreme Courts that are open to better environmental protections under state laws.

ELPC is achieving real progress. Here are four victories:

• First, the Army Corps of Engineers has now withdrawn its flawed Environmental Impact Statement for its misguided proposal to site a new toxic waste landfill along the Lake Michigan shoreline in Chicago’s Southeast Side environmental justice community. Litigation pressure combined with community pressure led to this big victory. What’s next?: Transform the site into a new lakefront park for people to use and enjoy. Make no mistake: Chicago’s lakefront is for people and parks, not toxic waste dumps. 

• Second, we’re on the verge of a settlement in the federal court litigation on behalf of vulnerable migrant farmworkers whose health was harmed by errant pesticide spraying in Central Illinois. ELPC and our co-attorneys have achieved better overall state regulatory protections as well as financial payments for the farmworkers.
• Third, we’re creating a thousand acres of new waterfront parkland for hiking, biking, fishing and swimming, and protecting a critical dunes area, on the site of an old retired coal plant in a deeply conservative area of Michigan.
• Fourth, building bipartisan support for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative is so far paying off with renewed federal funding. Which is great. But, let’s not sugarcoat the terrible overall US EPA budget cuts. That’s a dumpster fire.

I’ll leave you with one thought: This is our moment for action. Everything we hold dear – our environment, our civil society, and our democracy – is under attack. This is not the time for complacency.

ELPC is seizing this moment. Our Great Lakes, our Midwest communities and vital natural resources, and the future of our planet deserve nothing less.

Margaret Mead said it well: “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”

Thank you to ELPC’s dedicated Board of Directors. Thank you to our talented and working-harder-than-ever staff. And thank you to all of you here for making a difference.

We are all in this together.