Category: News

Originally published Aug. 13, 2026, by Belleville News-Democrat

Months after Cahokia Heights residents found E. coli in water from their kitchen taps, the community’s water providers have been cited by the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency for deficient disinfection methods.

When the Illinois EPA conducted testing over three days last week, water inside residents’ homes from both the city and private water company Illinois American Water had low levels of chlorine, a common disinfectant utilities use to kill germs as water travels through pipes to homes.

The state’s regulatory standard is 1.0 milligram per liter. The deficient results in Cahokia Heights ranged from 0.03 to 0.64, according to documents provided by the Illinois EPA.

Community-organized testing from June to December also found low chlorine levels in tap water, in addition to E. coli in some samples.

“This is a health hazard to our community,” longtime resident Yvette Lyles said at a news conference Wednesday.

Continue reading After E. coli found, metro-east water providers cited for low disinfectant

Originally published March 17, 2026, by Belleville News-Democrat

Illinois’ two U.S. senators and a metro-east congresswoman are calling on water providers in Cahokia Heights to increase drinking water monitoring through additional testing after residents found E. coli in samples they collected from their kitchen taps.

The calls for action from U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski are in response to recent community-organized testing results first reported by the Belleville News-Democrat and its partners, St. Louis Public Radio and the Illinois Answers Project.

Continue reading Lawmakers call for expanded testing after E. coli found in Cahokia Heights water

Originally published March 9, 2026, by Belleville News-Democrat

Cahokia Heights residents have found E. coli in their drinking water through community-organized testing of samples from kitchen taps. The results raise new questions about infrastructure in a community plagued by sewage spills and flooding.

The findings contradict test results from the city’s two water providers — private company Illinois American Water and the city of Cahokia Heights — whose own sampling outside homes has not detected E. coli in treated drinking water, according to public records from the past 15 years.

The difference between what residents are finding at their faucets and what utilities are reporting has intensified longstanding worries about water quality, public health and whether state and federal regulators are doing enough to protect the community.

Continue reading E. coli found in drinking water of metro-east city that floods with sewage

 

Originally published March 17, 2025, by Belleville News-Democrat

For local farmer Ben Stumpf, the steady stream of income from a new federal grant allowed him to quit his second job working nights for UPS in Belleville and focus full-time on his small Monroe County vegetable farm.

He even hired his first employee and started breaking more ground to expand Rumblin’ Ernie Farm’s production from a half acre to an acre in Columbia.

“I had all these big plans in my head,” Stumpf said.

But now, about a year after the grant money became available to farmers, the federal funding has been terminated — one of the many cuts under President Donald Trump’s administration. Stumpf and other family farmers now face abrupt uncertainty about how to fund plans they made for their growing businesses.

They say the loss will affect their communities, too. The grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture paid local farmers to send their fresh produce, meat and other products to people in need through regional food banks.

Continue reading Illinois family farmers hoped new federal grant would grow their business. Now it’s cut

Originally published Dec. 16, 2024, by Belleville News-Democrat

As resident Patty Totty walked through her mobile home community this fall, she reminisced about how things used to be when she moved in 19 years ago so that her daughters could go to Belleville East High School.

She lives at Greenmount Station, just off of Mascoutah Avenue near the old Belle Valley South school.

“It’s sad. … This place used to be very nice,” Totty said, recalling trimmed lawns, quick repairs and compassion from the landlord when tenants fell on hard times.

“I didn’t expect to live here that long,” she said. “I thought I would move.”

She stayed because she likes her neighbors and because she does not want to live in an apartment. But now her bathroom floor is caving in, a hole has formed in the utility room flooring, windows and a door let water into her home, and vacant trailers sit around her. So she’s thinking about leaving.

“I don’t think they know how to do this,” Totty said of Homes of America LLC, the company that took ownership of the park two years ago.

Residents of multiple local mobile home parks purchased by Homes of America have been living with leaking roofs, mold and pests and going without heating or cooling because they say the company is deferring needed maintenance and leaving tenants feeling ignored, while also raising the costs to live in what were once affordable homes. Their complaints and living conditions were detailed in interviews, as well as a number of lawsuits and government inspection reports.

Continue reading Metro-east mobile home parks bought by outside investment firm leave tenants ‘suffering’

Originally published Dec. 11, 2023, by Belleville News-Democrat

Illinois’ two U.S. senators and a metro-east congresswoman have asked the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate how decades of flooding and exposure to sewage have affected Cahokia Heights residents’ health.

U.S. Sens. Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin and U.S. Rep. Nikki Budzinski made the request for a public health assessment Monday in a letter to the federal agency in response to BND reporting. Hazardous Homes, a special report the BND published in November, revealed local and state health agencies failed to provide essential health services after residents’ homes repeatedly flooded with sewage.

Continue reading U.S. lawmakers ask CDC to assess health risks in Illinois city where sewage floods homes

Originally published Dec. 11, 2023, by Belleville News-Democrat

State Rep. Kevin Schmidt has called on the Illinois Department of Public Health to investigate the health risks of sewage regularly spilling into homes in Cahokia Heights.

“I urge you to make the health of this community the priority it needs to be,” Schmidt wrote in a Nov. 14 letter to Illinois Department of Public Health Director Sameer Vohra.

Schmidt, who represents Cahokia Heights in the Illinois General Assembly, requested the investigation a day after publication of Hazardous Homes, a special report from the BND that revealed local and state health agencies failed to provide essential health services after residents’ homes flooded with sewage.

Continue reading IL lawmaker calls for investigation of health risks from sewage exposure in Cahokia Heights

Originally published Nov. 13, 2023, by Belleville News-Democrat

CAHOKIA HEIGHTS —  Yvette Lyles has twice been infected with a bacteria more common in developing countries that lack basic sanitation. But she hasn’t traveled.

Her son has had the same infection. So have over a dozen other people in Cahokia Heights, where residents have been exposed to sewage for decades.

If it doesn’t back up in a toilet, sink or bathtub, floodwater brings it inside. Sewage-contaminated water saturates crawl spaces and basements, inundates HVAC systems and soaks the floors and walls of living rooms, kitchens and bedrooms.

Some, like Lyles, are sure these living conditions made them sick.

The water brings the threat of mold, as well as bacteria, parasites and viruses from human waste into homes.

But the local and state agencies responsible for handling serious public health threats like exposure to sewage have done little to nothing for residents over the years, a BND investigation found.

Continue reading Illinois health officials fail to help desperate residents as sewage floods their homes

Originally published Jan. 2, 2022, by Belleville News-Democrat

It was common knowledge in the nursing home business, but perhaps not to the families trusting those facilities with a loved one’s care.

For years before the coronavirus pandemic, the industry and government regulators knew that nursing home workers repeatedly made errors that could potentially spread germs and cause infections among their patients.

In the metro-east, 40% of the nursing homes had been cited multiple times since 2017 for the same errors during inspections, and they continued to make those mistakes during the pandemic, a BND investigation found.

Local workers struggled with what regulators describe as the fundamentals of “infection prevention and control” requirements. They didn’t always clean their hands, put on personal protective equipment like gloves and face masks or change out of gear that could have been contaminated.

And the mistakes persisted despite rules dictating how workers should act to prevent infections and state inspections that were supposed to hold them accountable for failure.

Continue reading Southwest Illinois nursing homes with COVID infection errors had same issues for years

Originally published Jan. 27, 2020, by Belleville News-Democrat

GRANITE CITY — An 83-year-old man was in the hospital with lung cancer when he learned he could be kicked out of his apartment.

It was early 2017, a few days after Laurence Madden’s 19-year-old grandson was arrested for disorderly conduct at Madden’s Granite City apartment. He received a letter from the police officer who enforces the crime-free housing policy, the city’s rules for renters.

The message said the apartment complex’s owner had to evict Madden over his grandson’s criminal charge or else the city could revoke the business license the owner needed to rent out apartments in the future.

About a month later, the charge against Madden’s grandson was dismissed. But the eviction case against Madden continued.

Like Madden, nearly half of the more than 500 people who faced eviction under Granite City’s crime-free housing rules over a five-year period weren’t accused of a crime, a Belleville News-Democrat investigation found.

Continue reading Granite City crime-free housing rules displace hundreds — even those not accused of crime