Since the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts were passed in the mid 1970s, several environmental agencies have been monitoring the air and water quality of Chicago’s densely populated urban environment.   Multiple agencies maintain multiple databases that use different methodologies and store data in different units of measurement making it very difficult to use the data in a comprehensive manner.  In addition, emerging environmental threats such as pharmaceuticals, antibiotics, endocrine disruptors and plasticizers, are not currently regulated by the USEPA or monitored by many of the collective agencies in Chicago even though urban metropolitan areas are thought to have them in higher concentrations.

In order to address these issues, CUERP's Clean Air, Clean Water Program aims to:

• Develop a comprehensive and publicly accessible web-based database that allows users to view and interact with standardized parameter measurements, methods of measurement, and units of reporting
• Implement a small-scale observatory to monitor emerging threats to Chicago’s air and water systems
• Conduct multidisciplinary research to investigate questions of environmental and human health pertaining to new emerging threats
• Develop a partnership with the public and K-12 students for neighborhood monitoring or air and water quality
• Develop a partnership with local decision makers, policy makers, and air and water quality managers to help inform new policies that will require regulation of new emerging environmental toxins

CUERP has an interdisciplinary research team of aquatic ecologists, atmospheric chemists, analytical chemists and an analytical chemistry lab under development, a GIS specialist and facility, computer scientists, education specialists, and political scientists.  This team includes:

David Treering, CUERP GIS Specialist

Lane Vail, CUERP Research Associate

George Thiruvathukal, Associate Professor of Computer Science at LUC

Konstantin Laufer, Professor of Computer Science at LUC

Pamela Geddes, Assistant Professor of Biology at Northeastern Illinois University

CUERP also has an experimental stream facility where faculty and students conduct experiments looking at biological effects of emerging threats, campus air quality monitoring stations, the enthusiasm of graduate and undergraduate research students, and connections with Chicago Public Schools.