It’s a sad story.”. 734-692-7689. "We don't know where we're going if we don't know where we are.". Creating an assessment tool like the graduate students' was one of the group's recommendations. Of the top 10 with the highest (worst) environmental justice scores, five are in and around Grand Rapids, three around Detroit, two around Kalamazoo Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Government officials and many citizens were excited about it as well: an incinerator, then thought of as a safe, cost-effective waste disposal method, could attract new industries. In the 1950s the lake was disconnected from the Detroit River, preventing Great Lakes fish from utilizing the lake for habitat. “I speak for the little kids growing up who don’t know that they’re going to have to deal with these issues in the future.”, Available for everyone, funded by readers. Photo Credit: Friends of the Detroit RiverCeleron Island is 68 acres of uninhabited forests and wetlands, located at the south end of the Detroit River and is near the end of the Detroit River AOC boundary. Lea en Español. 33.33. The vintage year (e.g., V2019) refers to the final year of the series (2010 thru 2019). In 2014, a partnership between the Friends of the Detroit River, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and Michigan Department of Natural Resources began designing the project to reconnect Lake Okonoka and the Detroit River by installing culverts and channels. These stories are common in the 48217. It also makes the divisions in Detroit’s segregated geography, created by redlining and white flight, starkly plain. Completion of the project will advance efforts toward the An aerial view showing the construction of emergent shoals off Celeron Island. Wilkins, driven by the knowledge “that it was my people who live in the shadows of factories and are impacted by all of these environmental injustices”, lobbied to shut down the incinerator for decades. The people involved in building the incinerator, mostly white men, saw it as an opportunity for a new construction job, she says. In the 1980s, Wilkins was an occupational safety worker who became part of a conversation to erect a new solid waste incinerator in the middle of the city. Access to clean water, like clean air, is not a given in Detroit. It made plain with data what many already knew anecdotally: Michigan zip codes with higher concentrations of people of color and poverty levels, lower educational attainment, and other indicators of social disadvantage bore the greatest pollution-related burdens in the state.