Does MDEQ put economic growth ahead of people?
Keith Matheny,
Detroit Free Press 11:55 p.m. EDT March 26, 2016
635946332172124032-RUCK-NICE-LEAD-Marathon-010416-014-rb-2-.jpgBuy Photo
The Marathon refinery in Detroit on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016.(Photo: Romain
Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)Buy Photo
In the public health crisis over the lead contamination of the City of Flint's
drinking water, a cascade of culpability has been leveled at federal, state
and local officials. But, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality has
borne much of the blame.
In his testimony before a congressional committee on March 17, Gov. Rick Snyder
said his administration's investigations into the crisis, "uncovered systemic
failures" at the DEQ.
"The fact is, bureaucrats created a culture that valued technical compliance
over common sense — and the result was that lead was leaching into residents’
water," Snyder said.
But Flint wasn't the first time the DEQ took that approach. And as public anger
and outcry over the crisis continues to grow, more scrutiny is being heaped
on to the DEQ and its processes and mission, which critics say values business
over people.
Records reviewed by the Free Press show that on a number of high-profile
environmental matters in recent years — as in Flint — DEQ officials seemingly
have
downplayed public health concerns in the name of economic development; and how
attempts to follow exactly and only what was required under state and federal
regulations trumped protective action.
From petroleum coke piles along the Detroit River, to approved hikes in
industrial air pollution in Detroit's worst air zones — among the worst in the
state
and nationally — to a planned tenfold increase in the size of a Detroit
hazardous waste processing plant, critics say they see a pattern in how the DEQ
operates: rarely saying no to industrial polluters, and with affected neighbors
unable to influence environmental outcomes directly impacting the quality
of their lives.
As he took office in January 2011, Snyder's first executive order was to
return the state departments of Natural Resources and Environmental Quality to
two separate agencies, two years after Gov. Jennifer Granholm had merged them.
But something else changed with Snyder's re-creation of the DEQ; a difference
in tone, philosophy and practice for the state's environmental regulator.
In a rewritten mission statement, under a list of three guiding principles for
the DEQ, the second item was: "Be full partners in Michigan's economic
development."
When Snyder's now-former DEQ director, Dan Wyant, would use that phrase, "It
always made us cringe," said James Clift, policy director for the nonprofit
Michigan Environmental Council.
Dan WyantBuy Photo
Dan Wyant (Photo: Ryan Garza, Detroit Free Press)
"We want you to focus on protecting natural resources and public health."
Added Guy Williams, president and CEO of the nonprofit Detroiters Working for
Environmental Justice: "They've certainly been living it out as written:
Minimizing
enforcement, maximizing any perceived smooth sailing for business. That is
really coming back to haunt us."
Even as the Flint water crisis unfolded, a business-first attitude seemed to
pervade: As Wyant resigned over the scandal in late December, Snyder's then
chief of staff, Dennis Muchmore — who, at the time, also had announced he was
leaving the governor's administration for private business — lamented Wyant's
departure in a Dec. 29 e-mail to Snyder's incoming chief of staff, Jarrod Agen.
"I'm not sure why this decision was made, but if it's only optics, keep in mind
that finding a replacement who has the trust of the business community will
be very difficult," Muchmore said.
His e-mail did not mention the trust of thousands of potentially lead-poisoned
Flint residents.
A panel appointed by Snyder Oct. 21 to look into the Flint water crisis issued
a scathing report Wednesday, stating: "The Flint water crisis is a story
of government failure, intransigence, unpreparedness, delay, inaction and
environmental injustice... MDEQ caused this crisis to happen. Moreover, when
confronted with evidence of its failures, MDEQ responded publicly through
formal communications with a degree of intransigence and belligerence that has
no place in government."
Wyant and DEQ public information officer Brad Wurfel both resigned in late
December after it was revealed the DEQ had, for more than a year and a half,
misinterpreted required federal water treatment standards and failed to require
necessary lead control treatments to Flint's water after the city switched
from Lake Huron water treated by the Detroit water system to more corrosive
Flint River water treated at the Flint water plant. Wurfel, on at least two
occasions, publicly attacked the credibility of those raising red flags as
water in an increasing number of Flint homes — and children's blood — showed
elevated lead levels.
Now, in the wake of Flint,
with three out of four Michigan residents surveyed saying Snyder has handled
the Flint crisis poorly,
a contrite governor — while still defending economic success as one of the
DEQ's goals — recognizes something wasn't right.
"Clearly there’s a problem with the DEQ that we’ve tried to reconcile," he told
the Free Press on Feb. 22. "We’re trying to work through that."
Both DEQ and Flint water officials, Snyder said, displayed "a culture of,
'Here’s a regulation; let’s just apply the regulation,' rather than saying,
'Let’s
worry about someone’s health.' That’s why it’s frustrating. It just makes you
mad."
Pet coke piles
A public outcry erupted in late winter and early spring of 2013 in southwest
Detroit neighborhoods near the Detroit River, after four-story mounds of
petroleum
coke — a dirty byproduct of tar sands oil refinery used as a fuel commodity —
suddenly showed up stored on the river's banks near the Ambassador Bridge.
Former locations of petroleum coke moundsBuy Photo
Former locations of petroleum coke mounds (Photo: Martha Thierry Detroit Free
Press)
The DEQ did require some relatively quick action from the company storing the
piles, Detroit Bulk Storage. Storm drains near the piles that drained directly
into the Detroit River were closed, and a crusting agent was required on the
piles to help prevent "fugitive dust" from blowing off them.
Detroit Bulk Storage has applied for a permit withBuy Photo
Detroit Bulk Storage has applied for a permit with the Michigan Department of
Environmental Quality to store petroleum coke (pet coke) at its headquarters
in River Rouge. (Photo: Romain Blanquart, Detroit Free Press)
It didn't work. Soon, nearby residents were complaining of black soot inside
their homes that they suspected was blowing off of the pet coke piles.
The DEQ, however, expressed no great concerns. That March, Andrew Hartz, the
DEQ’s district coordinator for its southeast Michigan office in Warren, said
his agency had not found any discharge or dust problems at the Ambassador
Bridge pet coke pile site, or a second pile later removed from the Detroit/Wayne
County Port Authority property southwest of the bridge. A DEQ evaluation of the
piles had found that they “do not pose a significant public health risk
for inhalation exposure.”
Jeff Korniski, a senior environmental engineer with the DEQ’s Air Quality
Division in Detroit, later that spring said, “there have been visual
observations
of dust leaving the site” of the pet coke piles. Following a complaint from a
resident of the Hudson Lofts apartment complex off Fort Street, only about
two blocks from the piles, the DEQ took a sample that May that was found to
contain the potentially hazardous metal vanadium “consistent with petroleum
coke,” Korniski said.
For respiratory problems, the “minimum risk level” for vanadium — a daily level
of exposure above which a person could expect to experience health impacts
— is a scant 0.0008 milligrams of the metal per cubic meter of air, according
to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. But vanadium levels in air samples
near the pet coke piles weren't monitored by the DEQ, only fine particulate
levels.
That concerned Jeff Gearhart, research director at the Ann Arbor-based
environmental nonprofit Ecology Center. The center performed a laboratory
analysis
on soot the Free Press obtained from inside the apartment of a resident within
one block of the pet coke piles, who wiped it off her counters with a new
sponge. The black soot contained the unmistakable fingerprint of pet coke,
according to Gearhart's lab analysis.
“The DEQ has unnecessarily claimed that they don’t see any hazards associated
with this site, when they simply don’t have the data to support that,” Gearhart
said at the time.
Even knowing the dust was blowing off the piles and into nearby residences,
Korniski told the Free Press in July 2013 that the DEQ would not necessarily
intervene.
“Our regulations do not prohibit all fugitive dust or any fugitive dust from
leaving a site,” he said. “It’s a matter of degree.”
The DEQ takes into account the toxicity of the dust, as well as whether fine
particles pass certain regulatory average concentration levels over a 24-hour
or annual period, Korniski said.
“To my knowledge, we have not found a violation of either standard” with the
pet coke piles, he said then.
But because the dust was causing a nuisance to the surrounding community, DEQ
officials asked Detroit Bulk Storage, the company housing the pet coke pile,
to take additional control measures.
It was a YouTube video only days later, of a swirling black cloud of pet coke
dust over the Detroit River, shot from Windsor, that led to further outrage
and prompted an order to remove the pet coke piles — by the City of Detroit,
not the DEQ.
When a company sought DEQ permission to store pet coke along the river again in
2014, the state agency denied permission.
Steel plant pollution
On three occasions in 2012 and 2013, the DEQ was set to reject the Severstal
Dearborn steel plant’s request to increase its allowed pollution, citing the
steel plant’s many ongoing pollution violations, shifting data and the
“abhorrent” state of its pollution control equipment.
But each time, intervention by high-level officials at both the DEQ and the
Michigan Economic Development Corp. — Snyder’s business-promoting agency —
helped
resurrect the permit process, until its ultimate approval by the DEQ in May
2014, e-mails obtained through the state Freedom of Information Act showed.
Over a year-and-a-half, through e-mails, meetings and conversations, the DEQ,
MEDC and Severstal devised a plan that ultimately led to the steel factory
receiving a permit that turned its routine pollution violations into acceptable
contaminant levels. It also allowed the plant to operate under 8-year-old
rules that wouldn’t trigger requirements to install more effective — and
expensive — pollution technologies.
The state DEQ is proposing to revise the emissionsBuy Photo
The state DEQ is proposing to revise the emissions permit for Severstal Steel
in Dearborn to allow for some toxic pollutants such as lead, carbon monoxide,
and PM10 (fine dust) to be doubled, tripled, quadrupled, even increased by more
than 7200 percent. (Photo: Mandi Wright, Detroit Free Press)
The public did not participate in, nor was it informed of, the ongoing process.
That is, until February 2013, when the DEQ presented documents related to
Severstal’s request, announced a hearing and the DEQ's intention of approving
the factory’s revised pollution permit.
The turnaround in the DEQ’s position was significant: In a July 3, 2012, letter
from then-DEQ Air Quality Division Chief G. Vinson Hellwig to Severstal
Environmental Engineering Manager James Earl, Hellwig pointed to recent test
results showing Severstal’s manganese emissions far in excess of its permit.
A study from DEQ’s Air Quality Division three months earlier found that
elevated manganese levels in the atmosphere “represent a health concern” in
southeast
Michigan and that “the vast majority” of regional manganese emissions emanate
from two local steel plants, Severstal and U.S. Steel.
“As manganese is a pollutant of concern, simply increasing your allowed
emission rates is not an acceptable solution of your recent exceedance,” Hellwig
stated to Earl in his letter that July.
But the permit the DEQ approved in May 2014 allowed a 1,985% increase to
Severstal’s hourly manganese emissions.
Even with large hikes in Severstal's allowed releases of manganese, lead,
carbon monoxide and fine dust, they didn't rise to levels that violated state
and federal air regulations, DEQ officials said. That the regulations allowed
such increases only points out their inadequacy, a nearby resident said as
the permits were approved.
"I have a problem with it," said Latrice Sims, who lived in the Village Park
Apartments complex with three children less than a half-mile from the Severstal
plant.
"You have to dust your house daily because there is so much dust coming from
these factories, especially at night," she said. "Sometimes we find black stuff
on our cars; it's terrible. If these particles are on the car, what am I
breathing every day?"
Sims said her then-6-year-old son "is in the hospital it seems like every month
because his asthma is acting up." She had recently received guardianship
of a friend's 7-year-old son. "Now he has a breathing problem living out here,"
she said.
Wayne County has a juvenile asthma hospitalization rate that is 50% higher than
the statewide average, according to state public health statistics.
From July 2010 to May 2012, at one of the times the DEQ was preparing to reject
Severstal's permit request to increase its allowed air pollutants, e-mails
note there were 117 citizen complaints of air pollution from the Severstal
factory; 76 on-site visits from the DEQ in addition to routine surveillance,
and more than 20 violation notices sent to the company.
But on Sept. 14, 2012, a meeting of Michigan Economic Development Corp., DEQ
and Severstal officials kept the permit alive. Meeting notes taken by MEDC
state business ombudsman Amy Banninga, obtained through the Freedom of
Information Act, showed attendees included DEQ Deputy Director Jim Sygo, Hellwig
and then-assistant Air Quality Division Chief Lynn Fiedler, who now heads that
DEQ division.
They discussed a new "tolling agreement" that would set conditions and
deadlines for Severstal to correct problems, while allowing it to go past
deadlines
for action on its permit.
"Tolling — no basis in law — so comment period may be required," Banninga's
notes stated.
The notes also showed talk centering on Michigan air pollution Rule 207, which
states that the DEQ shall deny a permit application if the department judges
the equipment for which the permit is sought won't comply with federal or state
air quality rules and laws, including the U.S. Clean Air Act.
"Still risk — legal challenge to going around Rule 207 — fallback will be
denial if challenged," Banninga's notes stated.
Sygo, in a July 2014 interview with the Free Press, denied there was specific
talk about helping Severstal get around a state air rule.
"I don't think we got around it; our interest was making sure we had an
agreement," he said.
The DEQ, with Snyder's economic development team often in the loop, continued
to provide concessions to Severstal, even as deadlines were missed and new
air violations were discovered.
The area near the Severstal factory is largely comprised of recent Arab
immigrants, with many not yet speaking English and not knowing how to have a
voice
in policy decisions affecting them.
"I'm angry about the situation," said William Ali, a resident of the
neighborhood, in 2014.
He then said words that would echo in Flint less than two years later: "There’s
many people in this community who feel the Michigan Department of Environmental
Quality is not doing what’s required of them to protect us. Businesses are
important, they are a foundation of our nation. But our residents are our bigger
foundation. Ensure our kids aren’t going to get sicker, and things aren’t going
to get worse.
"This is a responsibility of the state, the governor, everyone, to protect our
interests. As residents, as U.S. citizens, we deserve to live in a clean
environment. They are supposed to be protecting us."
The DEQ held a public hearing on the revised Severstal permit at Henry Ford
Community College in Dearborn that March. Scores of residents attended, often
angry and emotional, discussing the nuisances and health concerns of the air
they live in and urging rejection of the permit.
Paul Bruce, a teacher at Salina Intermediate School, a stone's throw away from
the Severstal plant, was among the attendees.
Members from the track team from Salina IntermediateBuy Photo
Members from the track team from Salina Intermediate workout at the school's
track field where you can see the Industrial zone in the background on Thursday,
April 23, 2014. (Photo: Jessica J. Trevino Detroit Free Press)
"It was terribly evident to us at the time we were at that meeting that this
was already a done deal," he said. "We observed how they reacted to the
community’s
comments. It was almost comical."
One DEQ official, Bruce recalled, sat with a legal pad and pen in front of him
at the meeting.
"He never once picked up the pen," he said.
The permit was approved less than two months later.
"The regulations allow it"
Two pending high-profile environmental matters highlight that the DEQ following
what's allowed in state and federal regulations doesn't always provide adequate
protections to impacted residents.
For four decades, residents off Mt. Elliott Street near I-94 in Detroit have
lived — somewhat uneasily — next to a hazardous waste processing facility
through
which tons of the most toxic chemicals from industry are treated and
temporarily stored. But the DEQ's plans last year to approve a permit allowing
the
US Ecology facility to increase its storage capabilities tenfold drew the ire
of many.
US Ecology hazardous waste facilityBuy Photo
US Ecology hazardous waste facility (Photo: Martha Thierry Detroit Free Press)
"No need to worry — that's what they say. But we don't know that. I'm not in
favor of this at all," Beverly Hayes, 48, said last September. Hayes lives
half a mile away from US Ecology's Georgia Street facility. She had six
children in her home, ages 9 to 15 years.
Hayes' neighbor, Deloris Golston, 70, also opposed the expansion plan.
"If they get bigger, there's a chance that if something were to happen, we'll
have more toxic waste we have to deal with," she said.
The DEQ announced its intention to approve a new license for the facility last
July that would allow it to increase hazardous waste storage there in tanks
and containers from 64,000 gallons to 666,000 gallons. The facility takes in
many of the region's most toxic chemicals from industrial processes, as well
as very low-level radioactive byproducts primarily from oil and gas hydraulic
fracturing, or fracking.
"These are the worst nightmare chemicals of American industry," said Ed
McArdle, conservation chair for the nonprofit Sierra Club's Southeast Michigan
group
last September. "This should be in some isolated place; not in the middle of a
city like this."
But Richard Conforti, a DEQ environmental engineer, said the area around the
facility is considered industrial.
"They are in substantial compliance and they do things well," he said in
September. "If they meet the requirements of federal and state laws and rules,
then we would have to grant them the permit."
Protesting residents were granted an extension of the public comment period.
Conforti, on March 2, said the agency is preparing responses to "extensive"
public comments, and will make a decision on US Ecology's license after that.
Also, the Marathon Detroit refinery is seeking a new air pollution permit from
the DEQ that would allow it to increase emissions of at least eight air
pollutants
at its southwest side facility, including sulfur dioxide, a pollutant for which
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency considers southeastern Wayne County
— including the neighborhoods near the refinery — "in non-attainment," or
exceeding federal guidelines.
In an area already considered polluted with unacceptable sulfur dioxide levels,
some have asked how the DEQ can even contemplate allowing the release of
tons more sulfur dioxide pollution into the air each year? The answer: state
and federal air regulations allow it.
The emissions would be the result of Marathon's plans to update its liquefied
petroleum storage tanks and to install equipment to meet a U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency mandate to produce lower-sulfur gasoline beginning in 2017 —
Marathon's so-called "Tier 3 project."
Marathon Petroleum refineryBuy Photo
Marathon Petroleum refinery (Photo: Martha Thierry Detroit Free Press)
Of the 22 tons of additional sulfur dioxide emissions each year mentioned in
Marathon's permit documents, only 5.5 tons is related to the refinery's facility
upgrades. The other 16.5 tons would come from projected increases in refinery
production, according to Andrew Drury, a senior environmental engineer with
the DEQ's Air Quality Division.
"If the Tier 3 project does not happen, Marathon is already allowed to emit the
roughly 16.5 tons under their existing permits," he said.
"I don't think it's fair," said Sharon Bell, 70, who lives less than a
quarter-mile from the refinery, on Edsel Street.
Bell said her 2-year-old great-grandson often comes to visit her, and she
worries about what the local air quality means for his health.
"There's a burning smell in the air sometimes, and when they're releasing
whatever, there's a fog," she said.
Michael Tate, 55, a lifelong resident of Annabelle Street, just blocks from the
Marathon refinery, was incredulous.
"They want to increase the pollutants in air that's already heavily polluted.
Wow ... wow," he said.
Drury said that under state and federal regulations, an increase in sulfur
dioxide has to be 40 tons per year or more before a "control technology review"
is required, in which regulatory agencies review a polluter's methods of
limiting air pollution and perhaps require updated technology. Marathon's
permits
allow it to emit 400 tons of sulfur dioxide per year, and the refinery emitted
only 211 tons in 2014, he said.
A decision on Marathon's permit is pending.
"If the regulations say they can do it, they need to change," Bell said.
Tate said: "So the regulations say it's OK to over-pollute an area. The DEQ are
spokespeople for the refinery."
The DEQ can't just cite allowable pollutant levels and call it a day, Clift at
the Michigan Environmental Council said. State regulations allow the DEQ
to act to stop general, nuisance odors. The Michigan Environmental Protection
Act states that the DEQ should not authorize any additional pollution "if
feasible and prudent alternatives exist," he said.
"There are a couple of different places where the department, if they wanted to
do something, they could do something," he said. "In the Marathon refinery
area, they should not be approving any increase of emissions."
Air quality regulations also have another flaw, Clift said.
"They look at one facility at a time, one pollutant at a time," he said.
"'We’ve looked at this pollutant, modeled the impact, and it won’t expose this
home to an unreasonable amount of this pollutant.' What they don’t look at is,
what is the cumulative impact on that house from the multiple sources?"
Different leadership at DEQ
Snyder's task force, in its final report released Wednesday, called for
implementing "a proactive, comprehensive cultural change program within MDEQ ...
to refocus the department on its primary mission to protect human health and
the environment."
Eleven environmental nonprofits in Michigan sent Snyder a letter Feb. 25,
discussing the DEQ's future and outlining qualities they wish to see in the
agency's
next permanent director.
"Moving forward, you must ensure that environmental protection decisions
prioritize human health above all other criteria," the letter states. "This
prioritization
is critical for the health of Michigan residents, viability of our economy, and
your legacy as governor."
The DEQ has lost its way, said Lisa Wozniak, executive director of the
nonprofit Michigan League of Conservation Voters and a signatory to the letter.
"Over the course of the last many years, the mission of the DEQ has been
obscured — I think it's been more than blurred," she said.
Williams, at Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, also signed the
letter.
"The state has the power to look at a situation and say, 'This is not
acceptable for our people, regardless of whether federal law allows it or
not,'" he
said. "And, so far, we have not had a state government that has the backbone
and the courage to stand up for the people who need that support the most."
Contact Keith Matheny: 313-222-5021 or kmatheny@xxxxxxxxxxxxx. Follow on
Twitter
Source:
@keithmatheny.
Source:
http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/flint-water-crisis/2016/03/26/michigan-deq-flint-water-environment/80525006/
