Michigan’s environmental regulator holds east side workshop after civil rights complaint on Stellantis permit

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When Jameella Grant moved into her home on Detroit’s east side a few years ago, she said she was happy to find a quiet and affordable place to rent. 

What she didn’t expect was the lingering cough she developed. 

On Wednesday, Grant and other east side residents listened as staff members from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy’s Air Quality Division broke down the state agency’s air quality enforcement, monitoring, and permitting processes in a community learning session.

The event comes nearly a year after an informal resolution with the Environmental Protection Agency of a 2021 civil rights complaint against the state regulator that found EGLE violated the EPA’s Title VI protections when it approved a permit for the Stellantis Detroit Assembly Complex – Mack.

As part of the resolution, EGLE said it would hold several discussions, including an informational meeting with the community surrounding the Stellantis facility.

The agreement does not include an admission of wrongdoing or future actions beyond holding conversations and providing summaries of the conversations to the EPA. 

EGLE staff told Planet Detroit ahead of Wednesday’s meeting at the Wayne County Community College District’s Eastern Campus that it is one of many steps the agency has planned to improve communication and transparency with residents and advocacy groups. 

“Although it’s tied with some of these Title VI events that happened in the past, we are looking at this through the lens of how we can actually make this productive for us here at EGLE, but mostly for community members,” said Jenifer Dixon, planning and policy coordinator at EGLE’s Air Quality Division. 

Air quality info ‘something I can take back to my community’

Grant, who lives on Beniteau Street, directly across from the Stellantis Mack plant, said she gained some useful information from the session.

“It was very detailed,” she told Planet Detroit. “I didn’t know what to expect, but once I got here, I was like, ‘OK, I needed this, and this is something I can take back to my community and my block club.’”

The community event included resource tables run by community organizations such as JustAir and Detroit Area Disaster Recovery Group, as well as representatives from Detroit’s Office of Sustainability and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

Grant said she didn’t know much about the air quality issues on the east side. Before moving to Beniteau, she lived for nearly two decades in Warren.

“When you’re living across Eight Mile, you don’t think about that kind of stuff,” she said. “They do talk about it, but I really didn’t pay attention.”

When she developed a persistent cough, Grant said she started seeing an ear, nose, and throat doctor.

“At first I was like, it’s allergies, and that’s what they kept saying,” said Grant. “But I’m like, it’s three years later, I am still coughing, what is wrong?”

Most of the Stellantis Mack plant’s violations are for odors, which can cause headaches, nausea, and irritation, and can suggest there may be harmful airborne chemicals. The facility has received eight violations from EGLE since it began operation as an assembly plant in 2021.

For other attendees, such as Duane Daniels, the EGLE meeting didn’t offer much new information. The disabled combat veteran has lived on Bewick Street, less than 1 mile from the Stellantis plant, for more than a decade. 

Daniels came to the meeting with concerns around the city’s community benefits agreement with Stellantis. The automaker is providing roughly $5 million in home repair grants for residents living near the Mack Avenue facility, but some residents like Daniels were excluded due to an income requirement, he said.

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Every resident, Daniels said, is paying the price for the automaker’s emissions.

“If a person comes down with an injury from the polluter, from Stellantis, they have to pay with their own health insurance. They’re not getting reimbursed. So how come they don’t have a fund for the people in the impact zone?”

Robert Shobe, a longtime Beniteau Street resident, attended Wednesday’s meeting. He’s been a vocal advocate against Stellantis and the noxious fumes coming from its factory, but in the months since the Title VI resolution between the EPA and EGLE, he said he’s mostly kept himself indoors.

“There’s more things going on with me than there had been, but I stay out of that air most of the time,” Shobe said. He has an air purifier in his house, and avoids doing too much yardwork in the summer, but said he still finds himself experiencing “issues with my eyes and my throat on a daily basis” on top of living with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder.

“They haven’t resolved the situation,” he said. “The only thing they’ve done is create more pollution, and they’re allowing them to put something in the stack like Febreze, to keep you from smelling the actual scent.”

Stellantis spokesperson Jodi Tinson told Planet Detroit that numerous local, state, and federal agencies tested the air in the neighborhood and found it “meets all health-based screening standards and is well below the levels that are considered harmful” in federal standards and Michigan Air Toxics Screening Levels. 

Ambient air data collected at an onsite monitoring station shows the neighborhood’s air is “consistent with other areas of the city,” Tinson said. 

A second regenerative thermal oxidizer was installed at the auto plant in 2023, Tinson said, adding that EGLE has conducted inspections based on odor complaints and has not confirmed a nuisance odor. 

“The company is monitoring for odors to confirm the system is addressing this concern and also has not detected any nuisance odors.” 

The neighborhood is being disregarded, Shobe told Planet Detroit. 

“This neighborhood has been starved of city support and things of that nature for years.”

Zero Waste Detroit director: East side air quality needs attention

During a Q&A session, attendees asked about EGLE’s staffing numbers as well as the status of supplemental environmental projects on Detroit’s east side.The projects are voluntary agreements made between the state and a facility after an air quality violation is issued.

Jenine Camilleri, air quality enforcement supervisor at EGLE, said a project is in the works in Southeast Michigan at Southeastern High School, and agreements are being negotiated with Edward C. Levy Co.’s plant in Southwest Detroit and a cremation facility in the suburbs.

“I think it really does come down to when we start those negotiations, if a company is interested in doing a supplemental environment project,” said Camilleri. “We’re seeing that that is happening probably just as much now as ever.”

As a teenager, Deb Stewart Anderson attended Southeastern. Now she’s partnering with Henry Ford Health and Wayne State University’s Center for Urban Responses to Environmental Stressors to install air monitoring sensors in the vicinity of her alma mater.

“I don’t think that the east side gets the attention that Southwest and other parts of the city get, but it’s a Detroit problem,” said Stewart Anderson, executive director of Zero Waste Detroit, a coalition of community organizations advocating for waste reduction and universal curbside recycling.

“We’re trying to come together to get some solutions and to advocate for better air.”

EGLE’s Air Quality Division is approved by the Michigan Legislature to have as many as 225 full-time employees, up from 190 a few years ago, said Dixon, planning coordinator for the division. The extra staff is especially important, she said, for engaging local communities like Detroit, where the local team as of this year is fully staffed.

“There’s a lot going on here, and we need more staff to do this work,” said Dixon.

“When that (Detroit) office was not fully staffed, we were not able to do the work that we needed to do to be responsive to the community. When they had complaints, when they had concerns, doing inspections was harder.”