Detroit Renewable Power waste incinerator pollutes. Is DEQ doing enough?

Detroit Renewable Power, the large, long-standing solid waste incinerator just off I-94 and I-75, has exceeded pollution emissions standards more than 750 times over the last five years, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality records show.

Most of the incidents were not considered violations by the DEQ, however. They were dismissed because the pollution event was a minimal percentage of the incinerator's overall emissions or occurred during startup or shutdown, when environmental regulations provide more leeway for emitters.

The DEQ, in a negotiation with Detroit Renewable Power and Michigan Attorney General's Office, agreed last June to a consent order citing the company for only eight pollution incidents from 2015 and 2016. The total penalty was $149,000.

"That's really the tool we have to try to bring them into compliance," said Todd Zynda, the DEQ's inspector of the incinerator.

He acknowledged the bureaucratic, regulatory process, at least to-date, isn't reducing Detroit Renewable Power's odor and pollution incidents. "It's not going too well right now," he said.

Kathryn Savoie, Detroit community health director for the nonprofit The Ecology Center in Ann Arbor, concurs with that assessment.

"It's kind of mind-boggling — people are just blown away," she said. "They violate the law; then they get to sit and negotiate how much they should be fined."

Detroit Renewable Power officials did not answer the Free Press' specific questions, instead responding via email with a statement.

"Detroit Renewable Power operates in full compliance with stringent federal, state and local operating and performance permits and regulations," company officials stated. "We regret, however, that since January 1, 2015, the facility has received 18 violation notices for emissions and 22 violation notices for odor. We are working to be better and seeking opportunities to improve our practices to be a good neighbor in our community."

The Free Press, however, in a review of DEQ reports, found almost 200 instances since 2015 where the DEQ found the facility "noncompliant," exceeding pollution limits on a variety of harmful chemicals, with the regulator issuing notices of violation at least 29 times. Additionally, the records show there were 52 instances since 2015 where DEQ staff investigated area resident complaints of odors, or did their own, independent odor reviews, and found Detroit Renewable Power out of compliance with state standards.

The trash burned at Detroit Renewable Power is used to create electricity — up to 68 megawatts (one megawatt hour can power about 650 homes) — and steam used by numerous buildings downtown, including the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, multiple Detroit Medical Center hospitals and two towers of the GM Renaissance Center.

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The company, on its website, says it's not an incinerator.

"Modern EFW (energy from waste) facilities such as DRP work very differently from old-fashioned municipal 'incinerators' that were primarily built to reduce waste volume," the company states in a frequently asked questions section on its website.

"Old incinerators burned trash inefficiently, had minimal (if any) air emission control systems, produced smoke, and did not recover any of the energy released during the combustion process. Our EFW facility produces steam and electricity that reduces burdens on landfills, recycles waste metals, doesn't smoke, and cuts greenhouse gas emissions."

The facility operates in an area of Detroit where industrial air pollution abounds from a variety of industrial sources and motor vehicle exhaust, and juvenile asthma rates and hospitalizations far exceed those in other parts of Michigan. The pollutants under scrutiny at the incinerator — carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, particulate matter or fine dust pollution, and nitrogen oxides — are considered "criteria pollutants" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — priority pollutants with the potential to harm human health and damage the environment.

The lack of complete enforcement of violations by DEQ raises the ire of Detroit residents who've sought to get the incinerator out of their neighborhood since before the city opened it in 1986.

"It's a classic environmental injustice," said Nicholas Leonard, a staff attorney with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center who has dug into Detroit Renewable Power's emissions records and DEQ's corresponding enforcement of air quality regulations for Breathe Free Detroit, a nonprofit coalition of environmental and community groups that seeks the shutdown of the incinerator.

"Most of the trash being burned there is not only being brought in from outside the city of Detroit, the City of Detroit is paying more to burn its trash there," he said. "And the residents of the city are being saddled with exceedances of pollutants and odors on summer days — an unfair interference with the use of their property."

Where does it come from?

Leonard said only about 25% of the waste the facility takes in comes from Detroit, and city residents pay more per ton — $25 — to dispose of their waste there than the Grosse Pointes or Warren (about $15 per ton).

"That was obviously something the community cared about and talked about," he said.

Company officials, however, in their statement, disputed those figures, saying "72% of the incoming waste comes from Detroit. In total, 80% of the incoming waste comes from Wayne County."

But public records don't back that up, Leonard said.

"DRP is required to submit annual reports to Wayne County detailing how much waste it receives from each county in Michigan, other states, and Canada," he said. "Those reports had consistently stated that most of the waste burned at the incinerator comes from outside of Wayne County, and specifically Oakland County.

"After we started making an issue of that, DRP retroactively changed their reports going back several years, and have subsequently changed their reporting moving forward to reflect what they've told you."

Leonard provided the Free Press with invoices for trash deliveries to the incinerator that the City of Detroit submitted to the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority, which is responsible for managing Detroit's garbage. Leonard obtained the records through the state's Freedom of Information Act. They show billing for just more than 200,000 tons of waste shipped to the incinerator from the city in 2016.

"What I can tell you with a high level of confidence is that the Great Detroit Resource Recovery Authority, which is the entity responsible for the disposal of municipal solid waste in Detroit, was invoiced for the disposal of 200,125 tons of solid waste in 2016. Additionally, DRP reported that it received 895,680 tons of solid waste in 2016. Therefore, I think we have reliable information that municipal solid waste generated within Detroit accounted for 22% of the solid waste received by the incinerator in 2016."

The higher "tipping fee" for Detroit than other communities accounts for "the priority status the city receives when it comes to receiving waste," Detroit Renewable Power officials said in their statement.

'The smell is horrible'

That priority status was of no consolation to Josh Brooks, 24, who lives less than a half-mile from the incinerator, and grew up and went to school in its shadow near Lafayette Park.

"It's infuriating to know that the majority of the trash that's burned in Detroit — that's going into our air, that I'm breathing, that children are breathing at the school I went to — isn't actually even our trash," he said.

According to a new report from Breathe Free Detroit, which cited EPA statistics, almost 22,000 people live within a 1½-mile radius of the incinerator. Of them, 76% are people of color, and 71% are low-income, the report found. Thirteen schools operate within that radius, with the playground of Golightly Elementary School approximately 1,300 feet from the incinerator.

Odale and Tennille Brown live on Theodore Street, less than a quarter-mile — and downwind — from the incinerator with four children, ages 21 to 12.

"The smell is horrible," said Tennille, 40. "In the summer it gets really bad. Sometimes it will be so thick you can almost taste it."

The couple doesn't move because they own their home, she said.

"That's why we don't have anything over here like family functions," Tennille Brown said. "Who wants to smell that?"

Across the street, Carol Barbee, 55, has lived in the neighborhood since August 1989. She never had lung problems before moving to Theodore Street, but since, she said, she has been diagnosed with sarcoidosis of her lungs and nasal passages, a medical condition in which inflamed cells collect in different parts of the body for reasons that aren't well understood.

Barbee suspects the air quality in the neighborhood has something to do with it.

With regard to Detroit Renewable Power, Barbee said in the summer, "you can smell it without the windows being open.

"A lot of times it smells like fish, feces, urine. You can't even sit outside and enjoy yourself."

Leon Tyler, 55, lives off Chene, and remembers when the area flourished with Polish and African-American families, with department stores just up the street. The stores are long gone, as are most of the Polish immigrant families. Ramshackle vacant houses and empty lots are as common as occupied homes.

"We had pear trees, apple trees, grape vines, but that all went away," Tyler said. "When that incinerator came up, our trees started dying."

Path to incinerator started in the '70s

The city formed a Resource Recovery Task Force in 1975 to begin looking for a waste incinerator site. Concerns about volatility in waste disposal prices, and a perception that landfill space was running out in the state, prompted a push for a publicly owned incinerator.

Economic conditions slowed the project until 1986, when $438 million in construction bonds was approved for the operation at 5700 Russell St.

The facility includes a massive, 4,000 ton tipping floor, or offloading area for garbage trucks, feeding to three processing lines, where the waste is shredded into a form that allows it to be burned. It then moves to a 3,600-ton refuse derived fuel storage area, and from there, it's moved on conveyor belts to one of three large boilers, where it's burned and a layer of water is converted to steam. The steam fuels a turbine generator to create electricity, and is also piped to downtown buildings in a steam loop for heating and cooling.

The facility was initially built to process about 850,000 tons of municipal waste per year, well in excess of the 650,000 tons of waste Detroit was generating at the time.

"The thinking was, if you create this regional hub for incinerating waste, you're creating energy, and potentially, it could be profit-making," said Margaret Weber, a volunteer with Zero Waste Detroit, a coalition of local organizations advocating curbside recycling and opposed to the incinerator in the heart of the city.

Instead, the facility became a financial albatross for city residents. Financing of the incinerator over two decades cost Detroiters $1.2 billion in costs and debt servicing.

When the city sold the incinerator in 1991 to Phillip Morris and GE Capital, the city maintained the debt. What prompted such a raw deal? The need for cash, Weber said.

"The city needed money to balance its budget," she said. "It's like payday lending. Those extremely large percentages come off people's checks. But when you need it, you need it."

The incinerator has since changed hands multiple times and is now privately owned by Detroit Renewable Energy LLC, with the city retaining the land upon which the facility sits and leasing it to the company through the Resource Recovery Authority.

According to Zero Waste Detroit's report, most of Detroit Renewable Power's revenue comes from steam sales to 85 large customers downtown. Electricity sales are its next-highest revenue source, then waste disposal fees.

Incinerator noise an issue, too

It's not just the smells from Detroit Renewable Power, neighbors said. It's the noise as well.

"From Friday to Sunday, they kick out the steam," Tyler said. "It sounds like a train."

There's a phone number to call to alert DEQ officials about odors emanating from the facility, Brooks said. "But for noise complaints, they tell you, 'We can't handle that; you have to call a city number,' and you call it, and it's some secretary whose voice mail inbox is always full," he said.

"The noise from that is so bad. It sounds like helicopters overhead, or a jet engine. It can last for 30 minutes to an hour."

Why doesn't DEQ do more?

DEQ seeks to address every citizen odor complaint that comes in regarding the incinerator, Zynda said. In 2016, 231 citizen complaints resulted in 17 days of odor violations for the incinerator, he said. Last year, 240 complaints led to 11 days of odor violation notices to the facility, he said.



“A lot of times, they disagree that there is even an odor problem,” he said. “There are other odorous facilities in the area, but this facility really only has one type of odor and it’s sour garbage.”



Detroit Renewable Power agreed in a 2011 consent judgment to take numerous steps to eliminate odors by 2014. Seven years later, odor complaints still come in by the hundreds every year.



In last June’s consent judgment, Detroit Renewable Power promised not to exceed pollution limits going forward. By the end of the year, the company had exceeded limits on carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides at least seven times. The DEQ also found that company officials “failed to report all excess emissions for the Third Quarter 2017 and the Fourth Quarter 2017.”



It remains to be seen whether the incinerator will now face more penalties.



The community wants to see more done, Savoie said.



“We would like to see a much stronger and much more urgent action to protect public health,” she said.

On Friday, Breathe Free Detroit delivered 15,000 signatures to Mayor Mike Duggan's office, calling for the city to shut down the incinerator.

City officials told the Free Press that Detroit has no authority to shut down the incinerator or power to regulate air pollution control.

"That all falls completely under the MDEQ," the city said in a statement. "So they really should be delivering their petition signatures to Lansing."

The DEQ's $149,000 fine to Detroit Renewable Power last year “is kind of the cost of doing business,” to the facility, Savoie said.



“You can see they haven’t come into compliance. They just continue to operate in violation of the law.”



The incinerator “is absolutely an impediment to becoming a more sustainable city, and to become a cleaner, greener, healthier place to live,” she said.



“An incinerator creates twice as much climate-changing carbon dioxide as a coal plant,” Savoie said. “If we’re burning trash, it’s really hard to get people to recycle.”



Tyler said he remembers the citizen protests as the incinerator was considered and constructed. Their concerns have all come to pass, he said.



“It seems like that place should be in the middle of nowhere,” he said.



“For them to come into this neighborhood and do this type of (stuff)? This neighborhood don’t deserve that.”



Contact Keith Matheny: 313-222-5021 or kmatheny@freepress.com. Follow on Twitter @keithmatheny.