Detroit residents battle against neighborhood concrete crusher

Detroit building officials are waging a court fight to shut down a concrete crushing operation on the city’s west side that has been covering a majority Black neighborhood in dust.

The city issued nearly 300 blight tickets to Grand Rapids-based Green Valley Properties over two years, according to a BridgeDetroit analysis of online city records. In 2022, the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department submitted a notice to revoke the company’s 2018 land use permit for allegedly failing to secure permits for an expansion, not following its dust mitigation plan and other offenses. But the city’s blight court overruled the notice.

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The court agreed Green Valley was noncompliant with some property maintenance codes, but determined BSEED failed to provide sufficient evidence to back its claims and determined that there was “no reasonable basis” to revoke the permit. The court ruled that the crusher wasn’t posing a nuisance to surrounding property owners.

BSEED appealed the decision and the case is now before the Wayne County Circuit Court.

Green Valley’s concrete crusher, Dino-Mite Crushing and Recycling, operates on 12.3 acres in an industrial zone of the Schoolcraft Southfield neighborhood. The facility crushes stones and old concrete and creates new concrete that it stores in 45-foot-high piles. The property is owned by Anthony Calo, who is also owner of Calo and Sons Construction: Trucking, and Greenfield Landscape Supply Center, which both operate out of the Detroit site.

Calo and his attorney did not respond to BridgeDetroit’s requests for comment.

Despite the court decision, residents say they have been negatively impacted by the operation.

Dabreda Allen has lived on Mettetal Street for 50 years and occasionally used an inhaler for her seasonal allergies until, she said, Dino-Mite opened, caking the windows of her house and car in dust. Now, the 60-year-old said she frequently needs the inhaler to breathe, while her older brother has developed a persistent cough.

“There’s a lot of dust in our house,” she said. “A lot of dust – it comes in through the windows, however it can get in.”

In 2019, Dino-Mite received a permit from the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) to crush up to 600,000 tons of concrete each year at its Greenfield Road site, across from residents like Allen. The crushing creates silica dust, which can “irreversibly damage the lungs,” according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as particulate matter, microscopic particles that can enter the lungs and bloodstream and cause health issues.

Neighbors say the concrete crusher also brings heavy traffic and idling trucks that emit exhaust.

Dino-Mite representatives have said that the concrete crusher is a “direct benefit to the city of Detroit,” providing 30 full-time jobs and repurposing vacant land to recycle concrete.

Detroit Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallett declined to discuss the city’s appeal, noting the law department does not comment on pending litigation.

A feature of Black neighborhoods

Allen said the only cause she can think of for her worsened asthma is the Dino-Mite operation and its piles of concrete, which sometimes rise higher than her house.

“It’s just a mess,” she said. “It’s a hazard and I feel like it’s not being addressed because of the area being a predominantly Black area.” The surrounding census tract, comprising roughly 3,320 residents, is 99% Black or African American, according to U.S. Census data.

In Detroit as a whole, Black residents account for 76.6% of the population, according to census data.

Some advocates claim concrete crushing operations are proliferating in the city because low-income Black residents may be less likely to fight back. A handful of proposals in the last few years have sought to operate concrete and asphalt facilities in Detroit neighborhoods where the population is between 92-99% Black.

In 2021, Pontiac-based Asphalt Specialists Inc. sought a permit to construct an asphalt mixing plant in North Rosedale Park, which was denied, appealed and denied again, due to pollution concerns. The surrounding census tract, comprising roughly 4,150 residents, is 92.3% Black.

The following year, Crown Enterprises, a subsidiary of the Moroun family, constructed a concrete plant in Cadillac Heights across from a 99% Black community and conducted door-to-door visits, residents said, allegedly pressuring them to take buyouts.

Later that year, Troy-based ProVisions LLC sought a permit to crush concrete in Core City, which was denied. However, the owner kept illegally using the site in the 96.3% Black community. In April 2023, the city filed a lawsuit.

In a 2022 opinion piece in the Detroit Free Press, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans opposed the construction of a concrete crusher in Core City, and another along the Detroit Riverwalk between two parks.

“We can’t afford to jeopardize Wayne County’s quality of life, and we certainly cannot sacrifice the health and safety of our community’s most vulnerable populations by poisoning the air they breathe for the benefit of two cement factories trying to save money,” he wrote.

Jeff Gearhart, research director at the Ecology Center, a nonprofit environmental organization, said he “100% guarantees” that Dino-Mite crusher emissions are impacting the neighborhood, emphasizing that the permit allows it.

“The plant is allowed to impair opacity (visible dust and particulate matter) up to 5-12%. So this permit allows impact on the neighborhood,” he said in an email.

Another special land use request

Separate from the ongoing litigation, Dino-Mite submitted a special land use application to BSEED to pave the site and make other changes.

Multiple residents and city officials expressed concerns about the permit application during a hearing last October. After a recommendation from the Planning and Development Department, the application was denied on Dec.19.

Chris Jackson, Green Valley’s land use consultant for the project, argued at the fall hearing that the company was a benefit to the community.

“This site was previously an abandoned industrial site that Mr. Calo has turned into a very viable business,” he said. Jackson added that recycling concrete cuts the cost to taxpayers for demolitions and road construction in Detroit, which, combined with property tax revenue, provides “a direct benefit to the city of Detroit.”

The company applied for the permit, Jackson said, to mitigate the dust issues.

The city denied the application because the high-impact nature of the plan was not in line with the city’s Master Plan. The denial also noted that the dust plan had not been fully implemented and that the company’s concrete piles were visible from rights-of-ways, a violation of their land use grant. Screening materials were also noncompliant with the zoning ordinance, posing a threat to residents, the document stated.

Multiple residents spoke out against Green Valley during the fall hearing, and the city received 29 letters in opposition, according to the hearing officer, Jayda Philson. No one spoke in support, but nine letters of support were submitted.

George Purdue, a resident and president of the Schoolcraft Improvement Association, said the community had doubts that the company’s plans to mitigate dust would address the issues after failing to see any changes in the past.

“There’s some level of distrust that what they say, what they’re proposing, is actually going to make a difference,” he said. “It’s been a problem for a while now.”

Audrey Moses, who lives on Mansfield across from one of the concrete mounds, said at the hearing that she was very concerned for her son, who has asthma.

“I drive my son to school,” she said. “It’s so dusty going up the hill it’s like riding through a cloud of dust.”

Trucks pass by her house all day long, and every morning her car is dusty when she wakes up, she said. “I can’t even sit on my front porch because of the dust. I have a son who lives on a breathing machine.”

The fight ahead

The special land use permit denial is wonderful news, said Liz Jacob, a staff attorney at the Sugar Law Center for Social and Economic Justice and the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition. It’s a way to “slow down” the company, she said.

In its proposal, Green Valley simply re-submitted measures in its dust mitigation plan already included in the original permit, things “they should have been doing all along,” Jacob said.

Green Valley filed an appeal with the Board of Zoning Appeals in response to the special land use permit denial, according to BSEED spokesperson Georgette Johnson.

Jacob is working with residents to see both the BSEED legal action and the permit appeal to the end. She said residents might also consider escalating the issue to EGLE, which so far has not issued any air permit violations.

Jill Greenberg, EGLE spokesperson, said that EGLE typically receives one or two complaints per year regarding the site, but that the department hasn’t seen the dust migrating to neighbors’ properties in violation of the nuisance rule.

The last time EGLE inspected the site was in August, Greenberg said.

“At the time of the visit, water was being applied to the equipment, materials, storage yard and plant roadways in sufficient quantities to minimize dust and to comply with the visible emissions limitations within the permit,” she said by email.

Greenberg said the permit does not limit the amount of silica the dust can contain so the department doesn’t test for it.

Purdue, whose dad worked in a foundry and died of complications related to silica dust exposure, has seen the damaging effects firsthand. He wants EGLE to ascertain the amount of silica in the air.

“You get these huge clouds of dust,” Purdue said, “then the wind comes along and blows into our community.”