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Photo: Wikimedia Commons
You can kiss the summer stench of rotten eggs good-bye, Detroit. The outdated trash incinerator that has for decades loomed over the center of the city, a potent symbol of its backwardsness, is finally shutting down.
The good news broke this afternoon. From The Detroit News:
The Detroit Renewable Power facility near Interstates 94 and 75 was too old and that the cost of eliminating its odor issues was too high, said Todd Grzech CEO of Detroit Renewable Energy on Wednesday. Renewable Energy is the holding company for the waste-to-energy plant. The company bought the facility for $200 million two years ago and invested an estimated $23 million to upgrade it.
For years, the incinerator has been scorned — and, to a lesser extent, penalized — for the pollutants it emits. Heaps of trash waiting to be burned produce hydrogen sulfide, the culprit behind the rotten-egg stench that sometimes hangs in the Midtown air on a hot summer day. Others pollutants, released in excess of state standards, included sulfur dioxide, carbon monoxide, and particulate matter, which critics blamed for extraordinarily high asthma rates in the zip codes downwind.
The News reports the incinerator exceeded pollution emissions standards more than 750 times over the last five years, according to a report by environmentalists and community members fighting to close it. It was under two consent decrees with the state.
But critics complained the penalties for the violations were a slap on the wrist. For example, a 2017 consent decree over numerous air quality violations required the incinerator's operator to pay only a $149,000 fine. And amazingly, because the facility generated the steam used to power some businesses, it was praised by some as a renewable energy source.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan never called for its shutdown, despite pleas from community members who lived nearby. As of 2017, the city was sending the incinerator more that 70 percent of its trash, under a contract that was to be in effect through 2021. When news of its closure came Wednesday, he issued this statement:
"The City of Detroit has been pushing Detroit Renewable Energy to address neighborhood concerns about the incinerator for nearly a year. Now that the company has decided to close the incinerator, the City will soon have the ability to influence the future use of this property.
"The City of Detroit’s trash contract with Detroit Renewable Energy will be transferred to another company and our rates are locked in through the remainder of the contract, therefore, we expect there will be no added costs to taxpayers.
"The City of Detroit and Detroit At Work will work with the company in its effort to help their current employees find new jobs. As far as future use of this site, it is my strong preference that this site never again be used as a waste incinerator. We will be pursuing our legal options to make sure this remains the case."
In the end, the incinerator looks to have been done in by the threat of yet another lawsuit, plus an unusually strong regulatory move by former Republican Attorney General Bill Schuette, back when he was trying to woo voters in his bid for governor:
The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center gave the owners a required 60-day notice in late January that they planned to sue over the emission violations under the Clean Air Act.
And last summer, the state Attorney General's Office told the owners the facility needed upgrades to its odor control systems before it could be released from a 2014 consent judgment.
As for the garbage and steam:
The 300 tons of daily trash will now be delivered to other area landfills, Grzech said. And the energy provided from the facility will now be handled by the Detroit Thermal facility near Ford Field. That facility is also owned by Detroit Renewable Energy.
On Twitter, people and political leaders rejoiced:
Lived a half mile from that SOB for two years, thought the pollution would kill me at times, was hospitalized once with asthma issues that appeared suddenly, many days bedridden... Good riddance.
— half assed skit.jpg (@RancorTweets) March 27, 2019
The surrounding are has 4x time rate of asthma hospitalizations as the michigan average. This thing was killing all of us... those in the immediate 1 mile radius particularly quickly (easily verifiable based on past studies).
— half assed skit.jpg (@RancorTweets) March 27, 2019
After years of hard work and grassroots organizing by some of Detroit's most committed activists and environmental warriors, the incinerator is shutting down! Celebrate this victory, and BREATHE FREE DETROIT! https://t.co/PynjpXjxVY
— Rashida Tlaib (@RashidaTlaib) March 27, 2019
Residents of Detroit can now breathe easier knowing the infamous Detroit Incinerator will no longer spew dangerous pollution into their air and water.
— Michigan LCV (@MichiganLCV) March 27, 2019
Amazing news for clean air and public health in Detroit! Congrats to all the organizations and individuals who have been working so hard for decades to get this horrible incinerator shut down https://t.co/UTb97m0Zen
— Charlotte Jameson (@CharJameson) March 27, 2019
