Overview:

- Detroit City Council's new ordinance aims to cut industrial dust pollution, mandating businesses to submit control plans and adhere to stricter rules for public health.
- Relying on visual inspections over real-time monitoring, its effectiveness is questioned.
- Residents worry about enforcement and impacts on nearby properties. The city plans to set up an air monitor network and educate businesses on the ordinance.

Southwest Detroit residents may be one step closer to cleaner air as city officials begin implementing a new dust ordinance designed to reduce industrial dust pollution. 

The fugitive dust ordinance, approved last May, requires businesses like scrapyards and concrete plants to submit dust control plans and follow stricter rules aimed at protecting public health. 

However, enforcement will rely on visual inspections rather than real-time air monitoring, leaving some residents concerned about its effectiveness.

The Detroit Department of Neighborhoods held a virtual meeting Monday to share information about the ordinance and answer residents’ questions, which aims to expand air quality protections. 

Fugitive dust is particulate matter suspended in the air that becomes airborne when kicked up into the air by wind or vehicles. When inhaled, particles can cause or worsen respiratory issues and increase the risk of heart disease, harm plant life and reduce visibility. 

The ordinance as approved does not require dust-generating facilities to install real-time air monitors as requested by the community. Instead, enforcement will rely on visual opacity tests recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

Residents expressed concerns centered around the enforcement mechanisms, application to certain industries and impacts on neighboring properties. Residents were also concerned that those who can afford to pay repeated fines won’t keep their dust generation in check. 

City Councilmember Santiago Romero, who introduced the ordinance, acknowledged that enforcement may be weaker than some residents wanted. 

“It was very difficult to actually get the fugitive dust ordinance passed…because of the kinds of stringency that we wanted versus what was going to be enforced,” Santiago-Romero, told Planet Detroit. “So this was our compromise to be able to get an ordinance through.” 

Santiago-Romero said her office is working with the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environment Department and Wayne County to establish an air monitoring network. 

“We’re just gonna keep pushing for air monitors anyways, and for some kind of data collection to happen so that we know how we’re being impacted by industry,” she said. 

The ordinance specifically mentions track out, in which trucks driving off an unpaved property track wet mud onto streets that eventually dries up. 

“And then when the next car drives over it, what do you get? Fugitive dust off site,” Rogers said. 

Southfield resident George Purdue who lives near a concrete crusher, is thankful for the ordinance. 

“What we’ve experienced has just been an atrocity,” he said at the meeting.  “This is up front in our face, concrete crushing to the first degree. This boils down to health and safety.”

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What’s in the dust ordinance

Under the new ordinance, businesses are required to submit a fugitive dust plan as part of their certificate of compliance required of them every two years, Crystal Rogers, Detroit’s general manager for environmental affairs, said. She said the department will conduct an educational campaign “so that we’re not just hitting them with a bunch of fines.”

“We’re not looking to shut down businesses,” Rogers said, “but we are looking to protect our residents from excessive fugitive dust. 

The ordinance applies to any dust-generating community business, who will for the first time be required to submit dust control plans and adhere to monitoring and mitigation measures.

These include freight and truck yards, scrap yards, concrete batching plants, construction sites, high-impact manufacturing and processing facilities and outdoor storage sites larger than five acres. 

A community business is defined in the ordinance as all businesses, nonprofit organizations, churches, governmental agencies and residential structures containing five or more household units. 

“So yes, apartment buildings, no, two-family flat. Yes, the city of Detroit, no to the one person outside cutting their grass,” Rogers said. 

She explained businesses can generate dust up to 5% opacity on site, which is barely visible, “but absolutely none of it can migrate off the site.” 

If a city inspector confirms a fugitive dust issue, they will issue a 14-day correction order requiring the establishment to implement an updated fugitive dust plan or submit a plan if one was not in place. 

If the issue is not resolved within 14 days, the city can require the establishment to submit and get approval of a new fugitive dust plan before they can resume operations. If they fail to comply, Environmental Affairs can order the business to be shut down until the establishment submits an approved fugitive dust plan. 

Rogers explained that repeated violations would not automatically lead to a shut down, but that the city would evaluate on a case-by-case basis. The funds generated from the fines go to the city’s general fund, Rogers said. 

Businesses could be fined between $500 to $2,000 for violations based on visual opacity tests conducted by city inspectors through BSEED. 

Fines are the same no matter the size of the business. Violators are fined $1,000 on the first offense for failure to cease fugitive dust-creating operations. The fines increase by $500 for each subsequent offense. 

Tickets will be heard at the Department of Appeals and Hearings. 

Enforcement relies on community

Community members will play an important role in the enforcement process. Residents can report fugitive dust issues through a dedicated phone number at 313-628-9994 or email address: dust@detroit.mi.gov. The city is also working to integrate a reporting system for dust into the Improve Detroit app.

Detroit resident Carolyn Catmos asked if it would be helpful for residents to include photos when reporting fugitive dust issues. Rogers said that while photos can be helpful evidence, they cannot be used as the only basis for a violation, and that person would need to be willing to testify at a hearing.

Kristy Allen, project manager with Detroit-based air monitoring company Just Air, said she’d like to see use of sensors in the enforcement process. 

To enforce the ordinance, BSEED inspectors will make visual observations and estimate the opacity of emissions expressed as a percentage. It measures opacity, not particulate matter levels. 

“It’s within EPA standards for now, but certainly could be more innovative,” Allen said. 

But the amount of time that passes between when a violation notification is triggered and when an inspector gets on site could be a concern, she said. 

“That’s where fixed monitoring could be more helpful with a sensor, because then there’d actually be a point in time to say, at this time there was a piece of data measuring what’s going on,” she said.

Allen said the air monitors Just Air uses monitor PM 2.5 and PM 1, which are quite a bit smaller than fugitive dust – which is why inspectors can see it with a visual opacity test, she said. 

“It would be exciting to see the city develop a more well-rounded approach to enforcement, but they’re clearly starting to invest in this,” Allen said.  

Rogers said the city currently has four environmental specialists trained in the EPA protocol for conducting visual opacity measurements, and has two open positions for additional environmental specialists to assist with enforcement.

The ordinance is a “pretty huge step” in the right direction, according to Allen.

“I think it’s easy to…. not recognize that we are now asking businesses to have processes on some of the stuff, which we didn’t have before,” Allen said.

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Isabelle Tavares covers environmental and public health impacts in Southwest Detroit for Planet Detroit with Report for America. Working in text, film and audio, she is a Dominican-American storyteller who is concerned with identity, generational time, and ecology.