Emma Lockridge grabbed her keys and then a surgical mask off the table before opening the front door of her southwest Detroit home.

Lockridge, a longtime resident in the Boynton neighborhood near Schaefer Highway, rarely goes outside without a mask or a scarf to cover her face, which she says protects her from a repugnant odor that regularly wafts through her neighborhood from the nearby Marathon Petroleum Corp. refinery.

Lockridge has lived in Boynton for 30 years. She is now an environmental organizer for the group Michigan United, and said she also sleeps with the surgical mask on, mostly on the weekends when the smell is unbearable.

"I went to the doctor today and they told me I have bronchitis," Lockridge said while coughing and noting that she also is battling non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. "Now that the weather is cold, the smell is coming straight over into our neighborhood. It just blankets the community. ...I have to get out of here. I have to get out and go some place where I can breathe. But I want to finish this fight. We have to fight because we have to protect them, the children in the community. I just don't understand ... aren't we humans, too?"

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Lockridge, 64, and some of her neighbors are hopeful that an ordinance set to be considered at a 10 a.m. meeting Tuesday by the Detroit City Council that would regulate certain hazardous materials, is the start of a more conscious effort to improve air quality in neighborhoods impacted by industrial factors.

But some industry officials have pushed back against the ordinance, saying it adds an unnecessary layer or regulation for companies who follow standards already in place.

Jamal Kheiry, spokesman for Marathon, said the Detroit refinery "does not have a position" on the proposed ordinance but the company has reduced its emissions by 76% over the last 15 years, and that 97% of the emissions within a 2-mile radius of the facility come from other industry.

"The Detroit refinery is only 3% of the emissions in this area," Kheiry said in a statement to the Free Press. Kheiry said the refinery has produced fuel-grade petroleum coke since 2012 and the company has a "comprehensive system" in place regarding storage and transportation of the fuel.

But some residents disagree and believe the issue has gotten worse within the past several years.

"I barely even open my windows sometimes especially in the summertime because the smell is so heavy that it's just unbearable to breathe," said Boynton resident John Atkins, 59, adding that he lives in his childhood home. "I've been there pretty much over 45 years. Seven of us grew up in that house, so there's a lot of memories there because that's all my mother and father had. I would hate to just walk away from it and I would hate to give up fighting but I'm tired."

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The long-stalled ordinance, which is more than three years in the making, was initially introduced by council member Raquel Castañeda-Lopez, whose district includes the Boynton neighborhood.

Specifically, the ordinance would regulate the storage and transportation of carbonaceous materials and reduce dust from bulk solid material storage facilities by requiring companies to sweep the streets and clean trucks before entering neighborhoods.

It would also give the city's Building Safety, Engineering and Environmental department the authority to enforce and ensure compliance. Castañeda- Lopez said that while the state has its own fugitive dust regulations, she said she believes Detroit is unique because there is a high concentration of bulk solid facilities in close

proximity to residences.

"This would be essentially really making sure that people can breathe and have access to clean air," Castañeda-Lopez said.

The ordinance comes nearly four years after piles of petroleum coke were found stored by a company along the Detroit River.

Pet coke storage has long been a concern, particularly for southwest Detroit residents.

The ordinance comes after an uproar in 2013 about black pet coke — a by-product of oil refining — dust blowing off piles at another riverfront site and into and around their homes in 2013. Nearby residents complained of black soot in their homes and a video shot in Windsor showed a swirling black cloud of pet coke dust pollution over the Detroit River.

The piles were later removed following the complaints.

But a group of industry representatives, at the time, cautioned Detroit that the ordinance cast too broad a net. Representatives from the shipping, construction material and scrap metal processing industries contended the ordinance would impose "a very broad, strict, prescriptive and costly approach to regulating facilities that store virtually any material outdoors."

In addition to pet coke, the ordinance would also regulate met-coke, coke breeze and fugitive dust, which is a dust that leaves bulk solid material facilities and is blown into neighboring houses and is tracked into communities via trucks or by seeping into the waterways.

Castañeda-López told the Free Press the bill has stalled so long in the council's public health committee, partially because of industry pushback on the potential regulation. In addition to petroleum coke, companies that handle asphalt millings, ores, iron and steel slag, gravel, sand and limestone would be impacted. It does not include salt, grains, commercial solid waste or garbage.

The ordinance was voted out of committee Monday, but not before several industry officials spoke against it.

In a compiled list of statements against the ordinance sent to the Free Press, Jason Puscas, director of Government Relations for the Detroit Regional Chamber, said member companies have expressed concern that the revised ordinance does not reflect the feedback of health and environmental experts.

“The draft, as presented, could have an unnecessarily negative impact on job creation, business climate, and the cost of city projects at taxpayer expense, all while failing to reach its true potential of protecting the public health of Detroit’s residents," Puscas said.

The ordinance, if approved, would also establish a public health fund that impacted communities would have access to. If a company were to violate the ordinance, whatever fine is issued would subsequently go into the fund once it's paid by the company. According to a summary of the ordinance, BSEED has also committed to hiring an air quality specialist and purchasing new technology to conduct an air quality study.

"That money could be used in the impacted neighborhoods to install additional monitors ... retrofitting homes or green buffer space to help reduce and mitigate further impacts and emissions in the future," Castañeda-Lopez said.

Atkins said he believes something needs to be done soon or he and others will leave the neighborhood. Atkins said he's mainly concerned about his 11-year-old grandson who lives with him.

Just last week, a U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal district judge's dismissal of a class-action brought by neighbors of the Marathon Detroit Refinery, who are suing the petroleum company over claims its pollution is harming their lives.

"I'm worried," Atkins said. "He doesn’t complain about it but sometimes he says, 'Papa, what's that smell?' My mother died of lung cancer, my father had emphysema and liver cancer. I don't know if it's all related but it just seems like the big companies have all the people in their favor and we're just basically nobody to them. Some people can't afford to leave but it isn't even worth the fight anymore."

Contact Katrease Stafford: kstafford@freepress.com or 313-223-4759.