Detroit’s riverfront safety law increased inspections. Now comes a push for transparency.

Five years after a Detroit River dock collapse prompted the city’s first river protection law, dozens of property owners along the waterway are operating under widespread maintenance requirements from city inspectors that aim to close regulatory gaps. 

Since the Waterbody Protection Ordinance went into effect in 2022, 42 parcels have registered to operate with the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department (BSEED) and are subject to inspections, reporting requirements and fines over failure to comply.

A BridgeDetroit analysis using the city’s Open Data Portal found that the 42 properties registered with BSEED have accumulated 239 violations since the law went into effect, for reasons including certificate compliance and registration issues, unlawful property rental or occupancy and failure to reduce unsafe conditions. The companies collectively have $27,970 of unpaid blight tickets. This marks a significant decrease since the 2019 collapse, when the same addresses racked up over 1,000 blight violations, according to records in the Open Data Portal.

In an email to BridgeDetroit, BSEED spokesperson Georgette Johnson said that the ordinance has enabled the department to more effectively enforce laws to ensure safety on all fronts. 

“Due to the ordinance going into effect, the city now has a comprehensive list of all properties along the shoreline,” Johnson wrote. “This has also allowed us to strictly enforce the ordinance, which makes our shorelines safer for the residents and business owners in the city.” 

Still, some argue the law is too restrictive. A state lawmaker from Detroit is renewing focus on waterway accountability, and city environmental advocacy groups say they plan to lobby the City Council for more transparent data and frequent public updates.

In an interview with BridgeDetroit, Raquel Garcia, executive director of Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, who had an active role in contributing to the ordinance, expressed frustration with the lack of updates on the ordinance’s progress.

“There should be ongoing dialogue with stakeholders in the same way that we get a yearly water quality report… or anything where you have to keep people accountable,” Garcia said. “There should be some sort of reporting, some sort of visibility… some public-facing information about it.”

‘Expensive and redundant’ 

The Waterbody Protection Ordinance, spearheaded by former District 6 City Council Member Raquel Castañeda-López, was prompted by a Nov. 26, 2019, dock collapse at the former Revere Copper site on Jefferson, which sent 40,000 tons of limestone aggregate into the river— for which the company did not have the permits to store.

The incident prompted fears of contamination since potentially dangerous materials, including uranium, were handled there in the 1940s to develop nuclear weapons. This shepherded an investigation by the City Council, which led to the discovery that no regulations existed to regularly monitor industries along the riverfront. Two years later, another portion of seawall collapsed at the same property. 

The legislation was approved by the City Council in September 2021 and went into effect in July 2022. Under the ordinance, BSEED monitors the registration and compliance of waterbody properties. 

Requirements include: 

• Property owners must obtain a Certification of Registration for the seawall along their property every two years.
• Inspection by a licensed engineering firm every two years
• Additional seawall condition report every five years, if the initial inspection passes
• A geotechnical report every five years
• Immediate notice of emergency conditions and the submission of a preliminary report about the incident within 48 hours

The adoption of the ordinance has resulted in closer monitoring of waterfront industries, but some remain critical of the elevated requirements. 

In an email to BridgeDetroit, Detroit/Wayne County Port Authority Executive Director Mark Schrupp explained that while the port authority supports the need for inspecting the conditions of the seawall, it believes some requirements outlined in the ordinance are unreasonable.

“We believe the frequency of requiring repeated engineering and geotechnical reports — every 5 years — is an expensive and redundant requirement,” Schrupp wrote. “Those inspections can run $50,000 or more… We believe the inspection cycle should be tailored to the engineering and design life of the dock wall. For example, a fifty-year design life seawall could have a reinspection at the fortieth year.”

Top violators

BSEED provided BridgeDetroit with a list of registered addresses along the river that have received blight violations since the ordinance went into effect. All property owners have received notification of violations and correction orders, but there have been no notifications of emergency conditions.

Of the 42 properties registered, River Terrace Apartments, now known as Beach Club Detroit Apartments, at 7700 E. Jefferson Ave., has received the most violations, with 70 tickets issued between 2022 and 2024. Reasons include failure to reduce unsafe conditions, improper maintenance and failure to obtain a certificate of compliance and registration. The company has been found responsible for 32 of the 70 violations, and currently has the overall largest balance due of $15,460. Representatives for the complex could not be reached for comment. 

Alden Towers Apartments, at 8100 E. Jefferson Ave., has received the second-most violations, with 43 tickets between 2022 and 2026, for failing to fix issues with ventilation, illumination, cleanliness or heating, and failure to obtain a certificate of compliance and registration. The company has been found responsible for 35 of the 43 violations, and currently has no outstanding fines. A representative of Alden Towers did return a request for comment. 

Push for transparency

Information regarding blight violations can be found in the city’s Open Data Portal, but longstanding environmental advocates note the site is challenging to navigate and that transparency could be improved. 

The call for expanded progress is echoed on the state level by state Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, who sponsored Senate Bill 948 of 2020, Senate Bill 949 of 2020, and Senate Bill 950 of 2020 in response to the 2019 collapse. While the bills did not pass, they included provisions that would require the state to develop and maintain a public database of waterfront properties and periodic inspection of high-risk docks. Chang told BridgeDetroit that she plans to revisit the idea of a statewide publicly transparent database and advises the city to look into ways to strengthen accountability efforts.

“It’s important because while there was an ordinance passed at the city level, at the state level,  it is super important to keep going on this front because there’s docks all across our state,” Chang said. “We’ve got a lot of major waterways that are all over our ‘Great Lakes State,’ and being able to have a publicly transparent database is super important.”

Garcia, from Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, told BridgeDetroit that she and her colleagues plan to communicate with the City Council to restart dialogue surrounding the ordinance, including a call for quarterly updates, accessible information and increased accountability for businesses with outstanding fines.

“There’s industries in our backyard who aren’t fixing something, aren’t following the rules — they’re in our space,” Garcia said. “This is where we have our homes, our investments, our families, our churches, our schools…we’re very conscientious about the space that we’re in together. These companies don’t have this emotional attachment, and it clearly shows.”

Aliana Ritter’s work is supported through a partnership between BridgeDetroit and the Detroit River Story Lab at the University of Michigan.