Via Coudal, the Atlantic has a nice selection of photos from DOCUMERICA, an early 1970s documentary photography program launched by the Environmental Protection Agency that aimed to do for the environment what the FSA/OWI did for the Depression and World War II; the National Archives has a good selection on their Flickr site.

One of the photographers recruited for the project, but not in either of the above galleries, was longtime Sun-Times photographer John H. White, whose years of documenting the city—he won a Pulitzer in 1982—puts him in the ranks of the city's best journalists. White mostly documented the south and west sides of the city, bringing an economic-justice perspective to the environmentally focused project. Here's a selection of his work for DOCUMERICA, with a couple pictures by Danny Lyon and Paul Sequeira (who took one of the most famous photographs in Chicago history) that were too good not to include.

Tangentially related and highly recommended: "How Howard Got His History Back," about how a DJ reunited White's Sun-Times colleague Howard Simmons with a trove of extraordinary photographs from throughout Simmons's career.