Public Comment Period for US Ecology Expansion Nears Close

[Trene4000]

Story by:  ALEX MCLENON

April 9, 2019

 

The US Ecology hazardous waste management facility on Georgia Street.

 

The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) is weighing a request from US Ecology to renovate its hazardous waste management facility on Detroit’s east side.  The proposed expansion would allow the company to increase its capacity to store hazardous materials by about 1000%.

 

State officials are currently seeking feedback on the subject.  It’s the second time the proposal has been up for public comment — following an initial period in 2015.

 

Mark Covington is president of the Georgia Street Community Collective — a group comprised of residents who live in the neighborhood near the hazardous waste facility.  He says his group opposes the expansion.

 

“We need environmental justice,” explains Covington.  “They’re placing these facilities with in a poor areas — they want to increase this facility in a poor area.  It’s like 60-65% people of color.  81% live below a poverty level.”

 

Covington says he fears the City of Detroit is trying to turn his neighborhood into an industrial park.  The community around Georgia Street has welcomed a pair of large scale facilities in recent years, and some suspect another could be on the way.

However, Covington says he does feel state officials have done a good job listening to residents throughout the process.

 

A truck in transit to the US Ecology hazardous waste mangement facility on Detroit’s east side.

“It’s been four years since they announced the first public hearing for the permit to expand,” he says.  “So I’m hoping the delay has been [the MDEQ] doing their due diligence.”

 

The last public comment session did bring about a handful of changes to the proposed permit.  Rich Conforti is spearheading the public comment period for the MDEQ.

 

“In the original set of comments there was complaints about truck traffic,” says Conforti. “So we put conditions in the [US Ecology permit] to limit the number of trucks that would come out to the facility and which routes they had to take.”

 

Conforti adds that the 2015 comment period also led to the repeal of a waiver that exempted US Ecology from conducting soil monitoring tests.  That came when a resident pointed out that one of the truck offloading sites was not fully enclosed.

 

The company does hold a waiver that exempts it from conducting a groundwater monitoring program.  Conforti says that’s because a natural layer of clay that exists beneath the facility would hypothetically prevent any spills from entering the water table.

 

“We’re bound by certain things in the rules and statutes of what we can and cannot consider,”  says Conforti.  “We can’t change the rules — we can only enforce them.”

 

But that outcome wouldn’t satisfy Mark Covington.

 

“We would like it shut down,” says Covington.  “We know that by law they probably won’t go anywhere.  But I don’t care if it’s by law or not, they don’t have to let them increase their capacity.” 

 

Conforti says the MDEQ will collect public feedback on the proposed US Ecology expansion through the end of the week.  He says state officials will then begin a review of the comments, in order to formulate a response.

 

Story location:

https://wdet.org/posts/2019/04/09/88052-public-comment-period-for-us-ecology-expansion-nears-close/

[Trene4000]

What disturbs me about this is they want to increase their size from 64,000 to 660,000 gallons of storage with only a layer of clay beneath the entire facility protecting the water table.  As if it couldn't possibly leak.  They are not even required to test or monitor the area for such an incident meaning they could be poisoning the area and not even know it.  The environmental damage could be astronomical, especially since the facility is in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

 

Protests are being sent to:

Richard A Conforti at
Conforti@michigan.gov

or leave a voicemail at (517)284-6556

Edited April 11, 2019 by Trene4000
Sentence disappeared

[TronRP]

16 hours ago, Trene4000 said:

What disturbs me about this is they want to increase their size from 64,000 to 660,000 gallons of storage with only a layer of clay beneath the entire facility protecting the water table.  As if it couldn't possibly leak.  They are not even required to test or monitor the area for such an incident meaning they could be poisoning the area and not even know it.  The environmental damage could be astronomical, especially since the facility is in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

 

Protests are being sent to:

Richard A Conforti at
Conforti@michigan.gov

or leave a voicemail at (517)284-6556

~~~~~

That's why I liked your response that you sent in regards to this issue. 

Edited April 11, 2019 by TronRP

[Trene4000]

HERE IS MY RESPONSE:

In regards to the proposal from US Ecology to renovate its hazardous waste management facility on Detroit’s east side by increasing its capacity to store hazardous materials by about 1000%, refuse it.

The expansion may be a boon to US Ecology but an increased potential threat to the surrounding area.  Especially since US Ecology is also including a safety shortcut by hoping that the "natural layer of clay that exists beneath the facility would hypothetically prevent any spills from entering the water table".  Hypothetically being the operative word.  

If US Ecology can afford to expand their facility, why not build a larger one somewhere else, like, I don't know, Bloomfield Hills maybe?  Or how about down the street in their management's neighborhood?  After all, the air quality around them isn't affected by the facility's processing and there is no chance of hazardous waste possibly entering the water table as long as there is clay beneath it, right?

[Troy Spiral (13)]

The current administration usually makes the time period so short that its very difficult to even respond or doesn't have them at all.    I'll go respond.  (I do a lot of "letter to congress" and "sign this petition" type stuff) 

 

Right now, to make real change we have to actually get up and go to their offices or just an overwhelming public outcry which is hard since the billionaires have brainwashed a third of the country and have confused another third. 

 

Long term corporate money has no business in politics.  That should be the second highest priority for everyone in the country. (The first should be you know.. saving the planet from being uninhabitable by all but the super rich.  Money talks,  crying middle class and poor people cannot be heard very well over the huge piles of corporate billionaire money.  WHO COUNT AS SOME BETTER THAN HUMAN HUMANS.   You and I have a max of something like 44 hundred dollars per candidate per election.   Corporations 1 get to use their money to vote 2.  do not have to follow that same cap.   The bill they passed to vomit all over us was disgustingly called 'Citizens United"  (obviously having nothing to do with uniting citizens.) 

 

The Citizens United ruling, released in January 2010, tossed out the corporate and union ban on making independent expenditures and financing electioneering communications. It gave corporations and unions the green light to spend unlimited sums on ads and other political tools.