by Dimitri Michalakis

She has also been endorsed by a wide spectrum of supporters from the Sierra Club to the Chicago Tribune, which said, “Newcomer Mariyana Spyropoulos would bring to the board not only her legal background and MBA degree, but hands-on experience in conservation groups and as a restoration worker in county forest preserves. She has smart proposals for educating citizens about water issues and nudging municipalities to adopt greater storm-water management ordinances.”

What could be more encouraging than that for her election in the fall?

But as a former criminal prosecutor, Spyropoulos takes nothing for granted.

“It looks good,” she concedes. “I was the number one vote-getter in the primary. But I’ll still work hard for the general election and we’ll get in high gear again with the campaign in the fall.”

Being thorough may be part of her background and part of why she was chosen by Governor Quinn to serve on the board, but it may also reflect the overlooked responsibility of managing an agency that has an annual $1.6 billion budget and over 2000 employees and that literally keeps Chicago from going underwater.

“We channel storm water and also treat waste water through seven filtration plants throughout Cook County,” she says. “And through all of these filtration plants we treat about 1.5 billion gallons of waste water per day. We’re also one of the largest landowners in Cook County and have a lot of buildings.”

Unfortunately, some of these facilities date back to the 1930s and part of what she considers her mandate as a commissioner is to make them more eco-friendly.

“So what we’re trying to do, for example, is have more permeable surfaces so that water can absorb into the ground,” she says. “And we’re trying to have green roofs so the water can be absorbed into green roofs. We also go out to various communities and the commissioners try to talk about the environment and water.”

This can often be a hard sell to the public: “Well, (talking about waste) is a challenge, that’s for sure. You can tell when their eyes glaze over and then you try to throw in a little joke here and there to make it more interesting. But if you tie it in with the environment, everybody knows the environment is not something we can just sort of forget and it’ll fix itself. I think people are aware that this kind of thing is something we need to pay attention to.”

In fact, though she was always active with the Sierra Club and the Illinois League of Conservation Voters, it was the dumping in Lake Michigan by British Petroleum which came to a head in 2007 that made her step up her activism and run for the district board.

“BP wanted to increase the chemicals that it was dumping into Lake Michigan and agencies such as the Water Reclamation District were not taking a position at that time,” she says. “This was a huge agency and it could have taken a greater stand: its motto is protecting water quality and the water environment. So I wanted to get involved and make sure that this agency becomes the leader in terms of the environment that it can be.”

Spyropoulos’ commitment is certainly homegrown: she’s a Chicago native who grew up on the South Side. But she was always interested in government and politics, so she attended Trinity College in Washington, DC and did her graduate work in American government at Georgetown University.

“And then I lived in London after that for about three years. I worked at a Japanese bank called Nomura. Nomura is the Merrill Lynch of Japan, or was, at that time. And around that time, everyone was interested in Eastern Europe and Nomura was looking at privatizations in Eastern European countries like Poland and Hungary, who were trying to convert from a communist system to capitalism. I was part of the research team and it was a bit like being in the Wild West, but it was a very interesting time to be involved.”

She later came back to Chicago and got her law degree from John Marshall Law School, worked in the Cook County State Attorney’s office for three years, and as a hearing officer for the Illinois Secretary of State, before finally getting her MBA from Loyola and also opening up her own law practice.

And she always found the time for politics: “You find the time if you’re interested. People who are involved in politics, I think, have the disease of politics. They’ve been bit by the bug and live off of it. They want to know everything that’s going on; they want to be involved in one aspect or another.”

She worked on the campaigns of Kerry and Obama, of Mayor Richard Daley and State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias, and a number of others, before she finally struck out on her own with her bid for the commissioner’s job in 2008 and coming out in her maiden run among the top vote-getters.

“‘I like the people interaction, I like going door to door and talking to people,” she admits. “That is actually the best part of campaigning: talking to the voters, talking to the citizens and hearing what they had to say and what their concerns are.”

She’s married and lives in Lincoln Park and attends Saint George Church, and she relishes her memories of growing up in Chicago. “I had a great time. I grew up in an area where there’s not a lot of Greeks. It was mostly Irish Catholics. But I didn’t feel it was any kind of hindrance or felt any ostracism. My parents (Mr. and Mrs. Ted G. Spyropoulos) were always proud of their heritage and always stressed that you should be proud of where you’re from.”

She’s also proud of being in the growing tide of Greeks entering politics in Chicago and is always grateful for the support of the Greek community.

“And if they can’t vote for you, they are supportive in other ways,” she says. “I think our community does come together to support the Greek candidates: we rally around the people who do run and we’re very proud when people get involved in the process.”