Local Organizations Lead the Fight Against Industrial Air Pollution in Detroit

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Climate action is often a balancing act between competing needs and interests. This is something Sandra Turner-Handy knows all too well. As the interim executive director at the nonprofit Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, she’s tasked with fighting for better environmental and health standards in a city that relies heavily on manufacturing. Her methods are also a matter of balance — blending meetings with city leadership, the local energy utility and other organizations with protests, community action and educating the next generation of activists and organizers.

Holding polluters accountable while preserving jobs

“We have to look at the whole thing,” Turner-Handy said of Detroit’s auto assembly plants owned by the carmaker Stellantis. “Any time you have a place that is providing jobs for people in a low-income community, we don't want to take away the job. But we don't want to increase the death rate either.”

Detroit’s three remaining auto assembly plants are a major source of fumes and particulate matter — with eight state air quality violations issued from 2021 through November 2024, Bridge Detroit reports. State regulators were even investigated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for civil rights violations after approving a recent auto factory permit in a Black neighborhood that already suffers from heavy air pollution. Unfortunately, that investigation fell short of addressing residents’ concerns.

“Their paint department [releases] all these odors … in the community, impacting the respiratory illnesses of residents,” Turner-Handy said, referring to the release of volatile organic compounds from Detroit’s Stellantis plants. These compounds can cause a variety of symptoms, from headaches and dizziness to irritation of the eyes, nose, throat and lungs. They can impact various organs, and some are even associated with a higher risk of cancer. Volatile organic compounds can also aggravate respiratory conditions like asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) — a big deal in a city that is considered an “asthma capital” by the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.

Poor air quality mixed with hotter temperatures caused by Detroit’s heat island effect drives residents indoors — where they’re unable to open their windows or run air conditioners due to the danger of allowing the fumes inside, Turner-Handy said. That’s where Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice comes in: “We advocate with the city and with the state around, how do we mitigate these issues?” 

Organizers with the nonprofit aim to preserve jobs while holding industry accountable for reducing pollution in neighboring communities.

“Our car companies are big in our city,” she said. “But if you have a plant that is impairing the air quality in a community and residents are sick, they're going to the hospital, they have emergency breathing issues, we have to be able to set up standards in our city that allow for the health and well-being of our greatest asset, which is our residents.” 

Hard-won successes

Turner-Handy recognizes that enacting the kind of change residents need can be a drawn-out battle, but she’s in it for the long haul. It took years to bring curbside recycling to the city of Detroit, with the goal of shutting down the solid waste incinerator that was also a heavy contributor to air pollution in the city. Even after recycling was implemented, waste was trucked in from the suburbs to keep the incinerator running, she explained.

“The fight continued,” she said, until the incinerator was finally shuttered in 2019. “The fact that we shut down this incinerator was awesome.”

It wasn’t the only success for Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice: The nonprofit worked with the Detroit-based company DTE Energy to close their coal-fired power plants in the city, helped pass laws to combat fugitive dust at industrial sites, and pushed against a planned petroleum coke storage site along the Detroit River, which Michigan’s Department of Environmental Quality ultimately rejected.

Local organizations across Detroit team up to address pollution

These successes are the result of cooperation, with numerous environmental justice organizations working together, Turner-Handy said. They sit on boards, run campaigns and demonstrate together. And grants can have as many as 10 organizations represented.

“I speak at these hearings that the state is having on permits and different things like that. So I'm in my suit and tie, and I'm at the table,” she said. “One of the things that someone said to me a long time ago is: ‘If you're not at the table, you're on the menu.’ We have been on the menu way too long, and that's why we pick up our picket sign … I will pick up a picket sign and walk that picket line, and in the same token, I'm going to be at that table. Because I need to know what you're talking about, what you're thinking, and how it's going to impact us.” 

But the nonprofit’s work doesn’t stop there. Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice is also committed to community action through home repair, energy-efficiency assistance and more. It offers climate solutions, such as providing mutual aid support for residents affected by flooding — a persistent problem in Detroit that is getting worse along with the climate crisis — and working to inform residents about what to do during a major flood or storm event. 

The group also aims to help bring up the next generation of activists and organizers. “It is so important that we meet people where they are,” Turner-Handy said. “People don't realize, when we have these intense storms, that this isn't the way it used to be. And when we have these heat waves … this isn't the way it is supposed to be or the way it's been. This is coming, and it's so different, and it's impacting people’s everyday lives.”

Change may be slow in Detroit, but it is happening thanks to local environmental justice groups and climate leaders like Turner-Handy. She’s excited to see the city commit to lowering carbon emissions via neighborhood solar parks, something that she called a “complete turnaround” from the city’s previous lack of climate action.

“We are definitely moving toward more sustainable practices in the city,” she said. “People are beginning to listen. They’re beginning to understand that climate change is real in a city where the decision makers [were] more about big businesses.”