June 11, 2026

Meeting the Moment: ELPC’s 2026 Gala

ELPC's 2026 Gala was a big success. Hundreds of friends and colleagues celebrating all we've done together to protect the Midwest's environment.

By Howard A. Learner, Chief Executive Officer & President

We had an incredible evening celebrating ELPC’s achievements in 2026 with a few hundred of our closest friends on the rooftop of Navy Pier. I want to extend a big thank you to our featured speaker, Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton who was our featured guest.

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Good evening! It’s great to see everyone here on Lake Michigan. Take a look around you. Our Great Lake. With clean beaches to enjoy. Safe water to drink. ELPC is fighting every day to protect our Great Lakes and the Midwest’s forests, wetlands and wildlands, healthier clean air and safe clean water, and communities where people don’t face toxic threats. We’re working to accelerate renewable energy to save money and advance climate solutions.

Mother Nature isn’t pausing climate change just because President Trump is in denial.

We are Getting Stuff Done

Tonight, we’re honored to be joined by Lt. Governor Juliana Stratton and many other dedicated public officials who believe, as we do, that protecting clean water, safe air, and pristine open spaces is our shared responsibility. We are all in this together.

We are now 16 months into President Trump’s assault on core environmental values. We were prepared. We developed a Plan A and a Plan B in advance.

Five days after the November 2024 election, the ELPC Board and Staff moved forward with our five-point Plan B action strategy.

Since Trump took office, ELPC has hired over a dozen new talented staff members and we’re looking to hire another six more. ELPC is getting both bigger and better.  We are meeting the moment.

Here are the five points of the Plan, and what ELPC is doing:

First, we’re stepping up in the federal courts, litigating to defend our core environmental laws. ELPC public interest attorneys are in more than 20 federal court cases right now. For example, we’re in the DC Circuit fighting to overturn the Trump EPA’s repeal of the endangerment finding. We’re suing to stop them from evading the scientific reality that carbon pollution drives climate change, threatens our health, and must be regulated.

The Trump Department of Energy declared phony emergencies to stop long-planned retirements of old, uneconomic coal plants in Indiana and Michigan. ELPC is in court challenging those illegal orders. Let’s be clear about what that phony emergency means. Keeping the old Campbell coal plant in Western Michigan running is costing ratepayers $621,000 each day. ELPC is fighting back – for cleaner air, for lower costs, and for cleaner, modern energy. It makes no economic or environmental sense to force these old coal plants to keep running. So much for small government.

Second, ELPC never just plays defense. We’re playing offense in the Midwest states to get stuff done. Public transit funding and reform, and energy storage legislation in Illinois.  Protecting clean, safe drinking water from agricultural pollution in Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and Ohio. Helping protect sacred tribal lands in South Dakota against a badly sited graphite mine.

Third, ELPC played offense building on strong Congressional bipartisan support for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding. $369 million is appropriated for the fiscal year. The Trump administration supported this – ELPC, the Alliance for the Great Lakes, Healing Our Waters and our other partners made it radioactive for Pres. Trump to again zero-out Great Lakes funding. We are getting stuff done.

Fourth, the ELPC Clean Energy Team is before seven state public utility commissions. That’s where the rubber hits the road to protect energy affordability, accelerate renewable energy, and deal fairly and effectively with data centers. Residential and other business ratepayers shouldn’t subsidize these data centers, and their electricity supply should be clean and renewable, not polluting.

ELPC attorneys are also representing Michigan conservation groups challenging Consumers Energy’s proposal to sell 13 hydro dams in Michigan to a private equity firm. If approved, that will increase electricity bills and create a ticking time bomb of 100-year old dams crumbling from flooding. We’re advocating here for much better solutions.

Fifth, we’re using state laws to protect communities and our vital natural resources while the federal laws are being pulled back. For example, ELPC attorneys and our community clients, the Alliance of the Southeast and Friends of the Parks achieved a tremendous victory. We stopped the Army Corps of Engineers’ misguided proposal to build a new toxic waste landfill on the Lake Michigan shoreline in the Southeast Side environmental justice community. The key pivot point in that litigation was that the Illinois EPA denied three required state water quality permits. Using state laws.

A huge victory. You’ve heard me say this before and I’ll say it again:

Chicago’s lakefront is for people and parks, not toxic waste dumps.

This is what stepping up looks like. It’s what this moment demands.

Across the states, ELPC is advancing real, concrete solutions.

We are getting stuff done. And my summary this evening is just the tip of the iceberg.

Tonight, please talk with ELPC’s amazing staff and learn more. Our Staff is working hard and delivering real results. Please join me in thanking them.

Folks, the stakes have never been higher. Our environment, our civil society, and our democracy is under attack.

ELPC is meeting the moment during these extraordinary challenges. We are stepping forward with urgency and with purpose. Our Great Lakes, our Midwest communities, our vital natural resources, and the future of our planet deserve nothing less.

Thank you all for being here, and for the many ways that you’re making a difference. We are all in this together.