Fighting For
Environmental Justice

The Opportunity

Concentrations of heavy industry, municipal waste facilities and transportation hubs are clustered in low-income sections of Michigan’s core cities – a historical legacy that continues to plague nearby residential neighborhoods. There is growing recognition of the injustice of saddling these residents – many of whom lack the means to move elsewhere – with a disproportionate share of the pollution that is the byproduct of these facilities.

The Challenge

But it will take strong and broad community backing, major public and private investments and comprehensive public policy reforms in areas such as clean energy, public transit, land-use planning and brownfield remediation and redevelopment. Wise and forward-looking changes on these and other key environmental issues have the power to make these neighborhoods dramatically healthier places to raise families; pull people back into the city by offering a better quality of life; and drive an economic rebirth. In all of those areas, jobs can be created and wealth generated while simultaneously advancing environmental health and social justice goals.

MEC Environmental Justice Priorities

• Pursue and ensure completion and implementation of the state’s environmental justice plan, which was ordered by the governor as part of her 2007 EJ executive directive on environmental justice.
• Ensure that the state’s Department of Environmental Quality follows through with a plan to incorporate the principles of fairness and equality to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws.
• Assist in planning a transition from the trash burning incinerator in Detroit to a plan that more adequately protects residents’ health through recycling and waste reduction.
• Assist in turning contaminated brownfields in core cities into green economic development opportunities that provide jobs and better health for nearby neighborhoods.
• Support enlightened food policies that help farmers and grocers to provide residents with access to local foods.
• Promote parks and other safe, healthy open spaces to help keep local air and water clean and make neighborhoods an attractive place for people to live and raise their families.