Detroit is a city under
siege - the posterchild of dirty industry gone awry. Southwest Detroit is home
to 10,000 families, but also an oil refinery, a steel mill, a waste water
treatment plant, a salt mine and several other industrial facilities. The
Marathon refinery is of special concern since it is expanding in order to
refine dirtier tar sands crude oil.
Southwest Detroit,
blanketed with chemical odors, has some of the worst asthma rates and small
particulate emission levels in the state.
Working with Global Community
Monitor since 2009, residents of Detroit led by the Environmental Justice
Office of the Sierra Club and residents of the Fort/Schaffer neighborhood –
Save 48217 Community are using the bucket methodology to monitor for toxic
gases and particulates. Already testing by the Southwest
Detroit Bucket Brigade has revealed the presence of several toxic substances.
Now the community is broadening
their fight for environmental health and justice by bringing their demands to
the US EPA, calling for a moratorium on new industrial development and
gathering a more comprehensive body of evidence of industrial polluters.
