“I am up against people higher than the president,” said Rhonda Anderson in an exasperated voice, typical of much of her conversation. Anderson is the busy one-woman operation of the Detroit chapter of the Sierra Club’s environmental justice branch. She is currently fighting both the Detroit International Bridge Company (DIBC), which operates the Ambassador Bridge, and its owner, Manuel Moroun. Together with the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), Moroun is planning to build an entirely new bridge, in the southwest side of Detroit, a mile from its present location. President Bush, she said, has already signed off on the proposed construction.

The current bridge, built in 1929, is one of the busiest transnational passageways in the world, and the most common conduit for the annual $400 billion in trade moving between the United States and Canada. Yet according to Anderson, neither MDOT nor Moroun have given sufficient evidence that expansion is necessary. “They want to build all the way to the property line of Southwestern High School, already designated a hot spot for toxins,” she said. Three of the five sites now considered are in close proximity to Southwestern.

While there were a number of projected sites, including Grosse Ile and Grosse Pointe, where Moroun resides, Anderson said she believes this is a classic case of environmental injustice. “Everyone says ‘build it over there.’ It’s just a given,” she said. “Put it in that poor neighborhood.”

Both DIBC and MDOT, in a meeting during late autumn at Southwest HS, claimed that the construction would not be accompanied by adverse affects to the immediately surrounding community.

Environmental justice issues are rarely on the radar, said Anderson, even in a city rife with issues of poverty and segregation, “and all of those environmental concerns common of a post-industrial city.” While she works closely with policy-makers at the city and state level, “the people that I work most closely with are the community members. For the most part my support comes from them.”

Anderson has also worked closely with Donele Wilkins, co-founder of Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice (DWEJ). Last fall, these groups publicized their collective participation in the nationwide Environmental Justice For All Tour, coordinated to raise awareness of the issues before the elections. Traveling from Detroit to Saginaw, Flint, and Grand Rapids, the tour brought environmental quality issues, such as lead and dioxin contamination, into harsh focus for participants.

According to the Environ-mental Protection Agency, nearly six billion pounds of toxic chemicals are discharged by industry into the country’s environment each year. Seventy five million pounds of those are known carcinogens.

While members of pioneering groups such as DWEJ and the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) have been working for a decade toward cleaner air, water, and soil in areas hardest hit by harmful industrial practices, they now wait to see whether a public policy initiative on the desk of Governor Jennifer Granholm will help them to gain a greater level of public legitimacy.

DWEJ, in conjunction with the Sierra Club, ACCESS, and other groups, began drafting the initiative two years ago, and presented it to Granholm last February. Similar to one passed in New Mexico last year, the document asks that Granholm recognize the existence of environmental injustices across the state, and provide the organizations most knowledgeable of the communities the power to advocate on key legislation directly on their behalf.

According to Kathryn Savoie, environmental program director for ACCESS, local governments largely determine the environmental state of their community. They decide which permits are granted, whether to waive land use restrictions, and decide zoning issues key to the creation—or destruction—of neighborhoods. The order would balance that equation, granting citizens greater input into what bridges, incinerators, or steel plants are present in their area.

The timing of the toxic tour was calculated, and got Granholm’s attention, according to Wilkins. She met with Granholm last spring, and “was assured that everything was in order, and that she would sign off on the order after the election.”

“I received a call from one of her aides just before the tour,” said Wilkins, “and he really wanted us to cancel it, to wait until after the election. Well we went ahead with it, and are still waiting to hear about the directive. We set out to have the governor act to establish an executive order for the state of Michigan which in our opinion would have greater weight” than if the groups rallied in Lansing themselves, said Wilkins.

Anderson, in a meeting last month of the Detroit NAACP, spoke with Linda Parker, a lawyer with the state, who insisted that Granholm had the directive in mind. Both Anderson and Wilkins acknowledged that the recent passage of Proposal 2 to ban affirmative action may hinder the movement of the proposal.”

The initiative now before the governor had been revised numerous times throughout the past two years, according to Wilkins. While there have been no new developments in the recent past, aside from the potentially damaging passage of Proposal 2, Savoie noted an unprecedented consensus on the issue. In a twist of irony, industrial representatives across the state, as well as the powerful Michigan Manufacturers Association, are in favor of the initiative. What the executive order would cost industry in clean-up efforts is unclear, but the willingness to find out indicates a possible change for Michigan’s low-income areas.

Detroit is now part of a national study using strategies to reduce asthma-related illnessed and school absences, according to Southwestern principal Robert Hodge. “A lot of our kids have allergies and a lot have asthma,” said Hodge. Bringing the bridge into their backyard, he said, will only exacerbate existing health concerns. “It’s going to be a lot of commercial traffic, diesel exhaust. This part of the city is really an area that in the future that we’re going to be concerned about.” Hodge agrees with Anderson that the health of the students and community members is paramount to any economic gains brought by the bridge.

This issue, said Hodge, has the community divided even after more than two years of public meetings held at Southwestern. A study was recently conducted on soil pilings behind the school and their support of the new foundation. This is just one in a long line of studies that do not, however, include the consideration of health impacts to the community. The final decision will come at the end of the year, and will be made by the school district at large. The next meeting on the issue will be held January 31.

Elizabeth Wahl is a student at UM studying English and the Environment. She recently returned to Michigan and plans to stay indefinitely, and to live in and work toward a better Detroit.