Wyandotte Crowd Speaks Clearly: Don't Send Clouds of Pet Coke Dust Downriver

More than 150 people showed up at a town hall meeting in Wyandotte Wednesday to tell officials what they think about a plan to locate stories-high piles of black coal-like material, known as petroleum coke, or pet coke, in Downriver communities:

Don’t do it.Most of those speaking at the meeting opposed the plan, the Detroit News reports.

Residents and officials in southwest Detroit were successful in beating back Detroit Bulk Storage’s plan to store pet coke, the byproduct of the coal refinery process, along the banks of the Detroit River.

Now, the company wants to move the the storage facilities eight miles downstream in Wayne County to the River Rouge-Ecorse area.

In comments on Patch.com, readers have decried the plan.

“No way anywhere in Downriver!” commented Joann Alexanders. “Send it to Detroit!”

“Great … leave it where it is at,” wrote another reader. “Don’t move someone else’s issue Downriver. If they don’t want it, we don’t either.”

The hearing by the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality occurred on the same day that two Democratic congressmen, U.S. Reps. Gary Peters of Michigan’s Bloomfield Township Mike Quigley of llinois asked for a federal investigation to find “best practices for transporting and storing petroleum coke” and to study its effects on human health.

The angry crowd accused the DEQ of not taking their concerns seriously or answering their questions.

“It was a waste of time,” Mary Duenas of Wayndotte said. “What I wanted to ask was: Why are they dumping it Downriver when they had so many problems in southwest Detroit?”