Lawsuit says state agency discriminated

Despite protests from the public a state environmental agency is allowing a nearby recycling center to handle thousands of tons of toxic and radioactive waste.

By Charles Sercombe
Despite protests against allowing a recycling center located just outside of Hamtramck to handle radioactive waste, the state cleared the way for the company.
Protestors are still fighting back.
Recently, the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center filed a lawsuit against the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) for giving the US Ecology North facility the go-ahead.
The facility is located about a mile east of Hamtramck.
The law center noted that these types of facilities are usually located near neighborhoods where a large percentage of the population consists of minorities.
According to the law center, seven out of eight such facilities in the state that handle hazardous and toxic waste are located in predominantly minority areas.
The lawsuit seeks to end this practice, and “seeks not only to ensure compliance with the federal civil rights law to which it is bound but also to aid EGLE in achieving its mission of assuring environmental justice for all Michiganders,” the law center said in a press release.
The law center also pointed out that the state agency “granted a license alteration that allows the facility to expand its storage capacity from 76,118 tons to 676,939 tons, a nearly 9-fold increase. Additionally, the license enables U.S. Ecology to convert three 30,000-gallon pits for the treatment of hazardous waste.”
People who protested against the facility included several Hamtramck residents. Former state Representative Isaac Robinson, who died in office from COVID-19, had led the charge against the facility.
Hamtramck resident Sharon Buttry is one of several complainants in the lawsuit.
“I decided to sign on as a complainant because cancer and asthma are life and death matters, as I well know in my own family. I hope that my participation will save lives in the future, and make environmental justice a hallmark of our state,” Buttry said.
She said that the state agency ignored complaints about the location of the facility. Buttry said the decision to allow the plant to operate here was “discriminatory.”
“Michigan has the worst possible record of any state for allowing hazardous waste processing in communities of color,” Buttry said.
With this lawsuit, the law center said it seeks “to be one step closer to standing side-by-side with EGLE and state leadership in unwaveringly putting into practice a deeply held belief that black and brown lives do matter.”
Posted Aug. 14, 2020