Court Opinion

ID: 9739860
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 20:22:26.035321+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:24:14.344211
License: Public Domain

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WARD, also dissenting: I share the concern which Mr. Justices Underwood and Ryan have expressed. It is remarkable, as Mr. Justice Ryan observes, that the opinion of the majority imposes upon the Environmental Protection Agency an authority which not only the Village but the Agency itself and the Attorney General as well object to and correctly (to me) say the Agency has not been given by the legislature. I do not have the small confidence that Mr. Justice Underwood appears to have in the survival of our decision in City of Chicago v. Pollution Control Board, 59 Ill.2d 484, as to the power of home rule units to act concurrently with the State in the environmental regulatory area. It is clear to me, especially from the majority’s discussion' of the amicus curiae brief filed in behalf of the City of Chicago, that the question as to the exclusivity of the State’s authority has been settled by this opinion. The view expressed by this court in City of Chicago has been, in practical terms, interred, though it seems obvious to me that environmental pollution pertains to a municipality’s “government and affairs.”