A group of South End surfers are part of this organization called Surfrider, which focuses on protecting water quality.

Judith and the Chicago Surfrider chapter decided to tap the environmental clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. See if they could figure out if the water was safe for surfing.

MILLER: We were so ignorant, you know, we just had no idea how complicated this was. What is it? You don't know what you don't know. 

KEENAN-KURGAN: The clinic was made up of law students who wanted to figure this kind of thing out. And it turned out a lot of the information the surfers wanted was already public, kind of. Judith’s colleague Mark Templeton was leading the clinic.

TEMPLETON: Every major emitter into the air or discharger into the water has to register with the government, right, get a permit. 

KEENAN-KURGAN: Permits to pollute, basically. Every permit is different, but they all set requirements for the companies to monitor and report what they’re putting into the waterways.

Mark and his team of students started going on a hunt to find out what each company was discharging, which meant finding all those permits on an Indiana state website that’s literally called the Virtual File Cabinet.

Read more at Interlochen Public Radio