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'Long overdue' — Detroit's controversial trash-burning incinerator shuts down

DOUG SCHMIDT, WINDSOR STAR / Updated: March 28, 2019

Just days before environmentalists were to file a lawsuit over repeated excessive pollution emissions from the Detroit Incinerator, the owners of the controversial facility pulled the plug on its operations this week after 30 years.

“It was long overdue,” said Derek Coronado, executive director with Citizens Environment Alliance. Cause for celebration on this side of the border? “Absolutely,” he said.

Three thousand tons of municipal waste, some of it trucked down Highway 401 from Toronto, were fed daily into the incinerator in east Detroit. The stench at times was overwhelming for those who lived in the poorer neighbourhoods in its vicinity, and some days its air emissions could be seen from Windsor.

“It’s good news for everybody in the region — people are going to be able to breathe easier,” said Kathryn Savoie, Detroit community health director with the Ann Arbor-based Ecology Center.

When it opened in 1989 near the Interstate 94 and 75 exchange, it was one of the world’s largest urban incinerators.

But even before it was built by the City of Detroit, using nearly a half-billion dollars in borrowed funds, it faced widespread opposition, including from politicians of all political stripes representing Windsor, the province and Ottawa. Windsor-Walkerville MP Howard McCurdy of the NDP warned that Detroit’s incinerator represented “a serious threat to the health of the citizens of Windsor,” and the federal Tories and provincial Liberals who were then in power agreed to fight the proposal.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lost its initial fight to force the owner to implement tougher pollution controls for its emissions. Environmental and health authorities said the Detroit Incinerator was a major contributing factor in the area’s higher-than-average rates of asthma and hospitalizations. It spewed thousands of tons of pollutants into the local air annually, and its operations exceeded pollution standards on hundreds of occasions over the past several years.

“Today is a good day,” long-time opponents with Breathe Free Detroit said in a media release. “We celebrate the closure of one of the world’s largest incinerators, a facility that has been a bad neighbor for over 30 years.”

On hot and sunny days, Coronado said the Detroit Incinerator’s normal activities were enough to push air pollution levels to the point where Windsor and Essex County authorities had to issue health advisories.

“Regionally, that was a big source of pollution,” he said, adding it was probably also the single biggest regional source for the types of human-made greenhouse gas emissions blamed for accelerated climate change.

In a report last year by Breathe Free Detroit and the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, the incinerator was cited as having exceeded air emission limits more than 750 times over the previous five years. In a petition last May to Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan, a coalition of advocacy organizations pointed to the nearly 50 times the facility’s owners had been penalized for emissions violations over the previous five years, and they demanded its closure.

Savoie, whose non-profit organization works with Breathe Free Detroit and Zero Waste Detroit, said the end came unexpectedly quick. Detroit Renewable Energy, a holding company, purchased the facility two years ago for US$200 million and then spent about US$23 million on upgrades. But with the incinerator not performing to the new owner’s satisfaction, the facility’s 150 workers were given less than two days notice that its operations would end on Wednesday.

“As far as future use of this site, it is my strong preference that this site never again be used as a waste incinerator,” Duggan said in a statement. “We will be pursuing our legal options to make sure this remains the case.”

The plant recovered heat from the garbage incineration process, and steam from boilers was used to generate electricity to power tens of thousands of Detroit homes, as well as supply heating and cooling to over 100 buildings in the downtown, including the Renaissance Center and Cobo Center, government buildings, schools and hotels.

“There will be no smell this summer,” Detroit Renewable Power CEO Todd Grzech told the Detroit News Wednesday.