It’s considered a significant victory for some residents in southwest suburban Willowbrook, after a yearlong battle with Sterigenics and its cancer-causing agent.

The Oak Brook-based company failed to broker a deal on a new lease; it’ll now be shifting its Chicago-area business to its other facilities.

Sterigenics has been operating in Willowbrook since 1984.

In a statement, the company says the inaccurate and unfounded claims regarding it created an environment that's not prudent to maintain operations there.

The announcement comes after the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency gave the company a new permit that would have reduced the amount of ethylene oxide, a cancer-causing gas, released into nearby communities.

In other words, the company would have to install new emission capture and control equipment.

Annually, the EPA would limit emissions to 85 pounds instead of the 4,600 released in 2017.

Throughout the year, community activists in Chicago’s western suburbs protested and fought to get Sterigenics out of Willowbrook.

Governor J.B. Pritzker had signed two bills in June, which applied pressure on companies that used ethylene oxide.

He required facilities to capture 100 percent of the emission and reduce them by 99.9 percent.

After Sterigenics' announcement, the governor released a statement saying in part, “From shutting down their operations in February to enacting the nation's strongest law regulating ethylene oxide, we sent a clear, unified message that we will take all possible steps to protect residents' health."