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.
