Dearborn, Michigan

Dearborn, Michigan—especially the city’s South End—is widely recognized as an environmental justice hotspot in the Great Lakes region. Predominantly Arab American, immigrant, and low-income communities live alongside heavy industry, rail corridors, and truck routes that expose residents to high levels of air pollution and cumulative health risks. These conditions are not accidental. They are the result of decades of industrial zoning, redlining, and land-use decisions that concentrated pollution sources near communities with the least political power.

The South End of Dearborn sits near more than 40 industrial sites, including steel mills, auto manufacturing facilities, and petroleum infrastructure linked to the Ford Rouge complex. Air quality data show that Southeast Dearborn experiences higher fine particulate matter (PM₂.₅) exposure than approximately 98% of Michigan, alongside elevated sulfur dioxide (SO₂) levels. Residents report high rates of asthma, cardiovascular disease, and respiratory illness—patterns consistent with long-term exposure to industrial air pollution.

These exposures are intensified by a lack of protective infrastructure. Green space covers only about 10% of the South End, compared to roughly 70% in other parts of Southeast Michigan, limiting the neighborhood’s ability to buffer pollution through vegetation and open land. Heavy diesel truck traffic and rail activity further compound these risks.

Community Organizing and Activism

Environmental justice in Dearborn was driven by grassroots engagement, community science, youth leadership, and sustained advocacy by local residents and organizations. Over years of lived experience with industrial pollution and air quality concerns—especially in the city’s South End—community members have helped to build the evidence, political pressure, and policy frameworks that underpin Dearborn’s more recent regulatory responses.

One of the earliest examples of organized community engagement on environmental health in Dearborn is the Environmental Health Research-to-Action (EHRA) Academy. Founded in 2018 through a community–academic partnership with University of Michigan–Dearborn faculty and community groups, the EHRA Academy trained youth from predominantly Arab American and immigrant neighborhoods to monitor air and water quality, understand environmental health risks, and share their findings publicly. The program grew out of resident priorities about air pollution, truck traffic, and outdoor environmental safety, identified through community engagement and discussions led by local organizers and academic partners. These efforts helped equip young residents with skills in data collection, storytelling, and policy advocacy that have sustained local attention on environmental justice issues.

Planet Detroit reported that the EHRA program drew dozens of local high school students and helped build a cohort of alumni engaged in environmental justice work across Metro Detroit, stemming from community concerns about pollution in Dearborn and nearby Southwest Detroit, areas with some of the highest pollution exposures in the state. This youth-centered work helped bridge everyday lived experience with scientific practice, making the case for local monitoring and regulatory responsiveness.

Community activism also showed up in organized opposition to pollution permits and expansions. For example, state Representative Abdullah Hammoud, who would later become Mayor of Dearborn, encouraged residents to join petitions in 2018 to oppose permit increases that would have allowed major increases in air pollutants near Salina Elementary School and residential areas—an early instance of local political advocacy tied to environmental health concerns.

By the early 2020s, community voices were supported by broader municipal engagement. Dearborn was selected in 2024 as one of four U.S. cities to participate in a national environmental justice policy academy, bringing city leaders together with community partners to build capacity around environmental justice policy and public health strategies. Such partnerships likely grew out of accumulated demand from residents and activists that local government take a more proactive stance on pollution and cumulative harms.

These layers of community engagement—youth science programs, political petitions, public health partnerships, and organized calls for monitoring and data transparency—helped create the political and social conditions for the passage of stricter local ordinances and for the city’s efforts to expand community monitoring. For example, in 2024 Dearborn’s Department of Public Health launched a citywide air quality monitoring network in partnership with JustAir, deploying monitors throughout neighborhoods long identified by residents as suffering from poor air quality. These monitoring efforts are explicitly designed to empower residents with data they can use to influence local policy and daily decisions, addressing a longstanding gap between lived experience and regulatory attention.

Overall, community organizing in Dearborn has been multi-faceted, involving youth leadership, formal petitions, public health engagement, and partnerships with academic and advocacy organizations. This work has helped bring local environmental justice issues into the political mainstream, contributed to the city’s adoption of new monitoring infrastructure, and shaped debates that led to enforceable local ordinances. The activism of residents and their allies continues to reinforce the idea that environmental justice is not simply a matter of observation but of collective action for policy change.

Government Responses and Efforts: Local Ordinances, Lawsuits, and Enforcement Actions

Dearborn has taken a notably proactive approach to addressing air pollution and industrial dust exposure by combining local ordinance reform with direct legal action against polluting facilities. These efforts reflect years of organizing and complaints from residents—particularly in the city’s South End—who have long raised concerns about fugitive dust, diesel emissions, and particulate matter drifting into homes, schools, and public spaces. After about 18 months of discussion and revision, Dearborn passed a first-of-its-kind local ordinance to regulate fugitive dust in summer 2020 in response to persistent reports of haze, reduced visibility, odors, and dust settling on homes and vehicles that residents felt state enforcement was failing to address.

The ordinance was developed through multiple study sessions with residents, including at least 30 neighborhood participants who weighed in on drafts of the proposed law. Some community members wanted stronger language than what was ultimately adopted, but the broad involvement of residents helped make visible the everyday experiences of fugitive dust as a legitimate health and nuisance concern.

Local activists also played a direct role in documenting violations once the ordinance was in place. Following its adoption, residents submitted 16 complaints to the city through email, phone, and text, many accompanied by photos and videos showing dust issues in their neighborhoods. These reports led to nine citations issued by the city inspector, including repeated violations by scrapyards and truck operations. This pattern of community reporting illustrated how grassroots engagement and local monitoring could drive enforcement actions, even without a full complement of proactive inspections.

Residents involved in the development and enforcement of the ordinance expressed specific goals that went beyond the initial text. For example, community advocate Samraa Luqman told reporters that one key aim was to require bulk solids to be covered, similar to stronger provisions in Detroit’s earlier ordinance. Luqman and others also connected fugitive dust exposure to health harms, including respiratory issues and concerns about lead exposure in her own family, emphasizing that these impacts were directly tied to daily living conditions rather than distant concerns.

Throughout this process, residents and organizers repeatedly expressed that state and federal enforcement alone were inadequate, and they called for more proactive, routine inspections rather than relying on individual complaints to trigger action. State Representative Abdullah Hammoud, himself a longtime advocate for environmental justice in the region, reiterated this priority by advocating for more systematic local and state action on cumulative pollution impacts.

The experience of developing and first enforcing Dearborn’s fugitive dust ordinance underscores how community organizing was central not only to naming the problem but to the ordinance’s structure and execution. From study sessions during the drafting phase, to sustained complaint reporting after enactment, residents helped shape how the law was written and how it was put into practice — even as they continued to advocate for stronger, more proactive protections. The engagement of residents in these early enforcement experiences laid the groundwork for later, more stringent updates and helped solidify the relationship between community voice and municipal policy.

Strengthening Local Ordinances on Dust and Air Pollution

In July 2024, the Dearborn City Council unanimously adopted a major amendment to the city’s bulk storage ordinance aimed at reducing fugitive dust and particulate emissions from facilities that store, handle, or process solid materials such as scrap, aggregate, or industrial byproducts¹. The ordinance, which took effect on July 31, 2024, is widely described by city officials as among the most stringent bulk material regulations in Michigan. It applies to any facility maintaining material stockpiles and establishes enforceable standards for pile height, dust suppression methods, monitoring requirements, reporting, and limits on off-site dust migration. Covered facilities are required to install air quality monitors and submit quarterly compliance reports to the city.

This ordinance builds on existing provisions in Dearborn’s municipal code that directly regulate fugitive dust and visible emissions. Section 13-548 of the Dearborn Code of Ordinances prohibits facility owners or operators from allowing visible dust to cross property lines and establishes opacity limits at stockpiles, transfer points, roadways, and parking areas. By defining visible dust as a measurable and enforceable violation, the ordinance translates residents’ everyday experiences—such as black dust settling on cars, windows, and outdoor furniture—into concrete legal standards.

Additional safeguards appear in Section 13-5.3 of the municipal code, which governs fugitive dust control for paved, partially paved, unpaved, and storage lots. These provisions prohibit conditions that create nuisance emissions, including dust from vehicle traffic and material handling, and authorize the city to issue notices of violation and civil fines for noncompliance. Together, these local ordinances reflect an intentional shift toward municipal accountability for industrial pollution that directly affects neighborhood health and quality of life.

City-Led Lawsuits and Legal Accountability

Dearborn has complemented ordinance reform with direct enforcement through litigation when voluntary compliance proved insufficient. In April 2023, the city filed suit against Pro-V Enterprises, LLC, a trucking and scrap processing company, alleging repeated violations of local dust control ordinances. According to city officials, fugitive dust from Pro-V’s operations routinely spread into nearby residential areas, violating municipal standards and posing potential health risks to residents.

The lawsuit resulted in a settlement requiring Pro-V Enterprises to invest up to $4 million in pollution-control improvements. These measures included paving previously unpaved surfaces, upgrading stormwater infrastructure, planting screening vegetation, and enhancing long-term compliance monitoring—all directly tied to reducing dust emissions that residents had complained about for years. Prior to that settlement, earlier negotiations in 2023 had already produced an agreement requiring approximately $1 million in mitigation investments, demonstrating how sustained legal pressure by the city translated into escalating and enforceable commitments from an industrial operator.

Broader Legal Actions and Citizen-Driven Enforcement

Municipal enforcement has occurred alongside broader legal efforts led by community organizations and environmental advocates. Groups including the South Dearborn Environmental Improvement Association, Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice, Original United Citizens of Southwest Detroit, and the Sierra Club have pursued challenges against both industrial operators and state regulators. One prominent case, South Dearborn Environmental Improvement Ass’n, Inc. v. Department of Environmental Quality, reached the Michigan Supreme Court in 2018 and addressed the state’s permitting and oversight of industrial emissions affecting residential communities.

In parallel, environmental law organizations have pursued federal accountability mechanisms. In 2021, the National Environmental Law Center served a notice of intent to sue AK Steel (now Cleveland-Cliffs Dearborn Works) under the federal Clean Air Act, alleging repeated violations of emissions limits for particulate matter and hazardous air pollutants. Such notices are a required legal step before filing suit and reflect continued efforts by residents and advocates to use federal law when state or local enforcement proves inadequate.

Relevance and Lessons Learned

Dearborn’s experience offers important lessons for communities facing coal dust and bulk-material pollution elsewhere, including Hampton Roads. Together, Dearborn’s ordinances, lawsuits, and citizen-driven legal actions illustrate how local governments and impacted communities can push beyond complaint-based systems toward enforceable protections. While these measures do not eliminate industrial pollution overnight, they offer concrete examples of how political will and processes and legal tools can be mobilized to reduce exposure, demand accountability, and shift power toward residents living with the daily consequences of industrial dust. It demonstrates how community documentation, youth leadership, media attention, and local policy innovation can shift regulatory outcomes—even when state systems fall short. While Virginia’s Dillon Rule limits local authority more than Michigan’s home-rule structure, Dearborn shows how sustained advocacy and responsive elected officials can still reshape the terms of environmental governance.