Arab American residents from Dearborn’s Southend (L) Abdo Bapacker and Ahmed Alwahaishi at Wednesday’s hearing.

DEARBORN — AK Steel plans to address air quality issues at Salina Elementary School and Salina Intermediate School. The schools are both located in the area of Wayne County failing to meet federal air quality standards for sulfur dioxide. 

According to Nasser Beydoun, the vice president of multicultural marketing for Detroit-based Bassett and Bassett Communication Managers and Counselors, the steel company plans on spending more than $300,000 on an air filtration system. Beydoun said Salina Intermediate School’s auditorium lacks an air conditioning unit and that the company plans on installing it. 

In January, The Arab American News reported that Salina Intermediate School did not have air conditioning in every room and windows were left open during school hours in the summer. The school district’s superintendent said it would cost more money to instill an air conditioning system than it would to build a new school. 

Beydoun said AK Steel has also given more than $50,000 to local organizations, including ACCESS, the Arab American Community Center for Economic and Social Services, the Yemeni American Benevolent Association, Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision  and Friends of the Rouge, in an effort to give back to the community. 

David Mustonen, a spokesman for the Dearborn Public Schools, said that while AK Steel has announced plans to invest $300,000 in the air filtration system, nothing has been confirmed. 

“We look forward to the opportunity to work with them,” Mustonen said. “The schools will benefit from this.” 

Mustonen attended a meeting on Tuesday that also included a few community members and a representative from AK Steel, who announced that the company had been approved to invest the money into the schools. 

Abdo Bapacker, a resident of Dearborn’s Southend and board member of the South Dearborn Environmental Improvement Association (SDEIA), said he is concerned that the public wasn’t invited to attend the meeting. He said only a few Arab Americans were present. 

He said more community members should have been notified about the meeting, since the health of students in the area has been a longtime concern for residents. 

Bapacker was one of the Arab Americans from Dearborn’s Southend who participated in a public hearing at River Rouge High School on Wednesday, March 11 to urge the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to hold the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (MDEQ) accountable for curbing longstanding sulfur dioxide pollution that exceed state and federal standards. 

Sulfur dioxide is known to trigger respiratory symptoms like asthma attacks and cardiovascular problems like chest pain. 

Detroit-based DTE Energy is responsible for at least 85 percent of Wayne County’s sulfur dioxide pollution, with the River Rouge and Trenton Channel coal plants being the major contributors.  

According to the Sierra Club’s Detroit chapter, the MDEQ’s draft permits for River Rouge and Trenton Channel require relatively little reduction in the amounts of sulfur dioxide those plants have been emitting; and MDEQ’s own analysis acknowledges that the proposed limits would be inadequate to bring Wayne County into compliance with the air quality standards.

The Sierra Club said a previous draft plan issued by MDEQ last summer could have, with some minor improvements, brought Wayne County into compliance, but MDEQ abandoned that plan in favor of the inadequate limits proposed here.

 “MDEQ has apparently folded to pressure from DTE and other corporate polluters,” said Shannon Fisk, managing attorney at Earthjustice, representing the Sierra Club.  “If MDEQ is unwilling to take the steps needed to protect public health and comply with the law, then the U.S. EPA can and must expeditiously step in to clean up the air that residents of Detroit and downriver communities breathe.”

“Childhood asthma rates in Wayne County are through the roof and DTE coal plants are the county’s biggest source of air pollution linked to asthma,” said Mary Anne Hitt, Director of the Beyond Coal Campaign for the Sierra Club. “Cleaning up this dangerous air pollution is long overdue. We need the federal EPA to make sure MDEQ does the right thing. The people of Wayne County deserve a strong plan to cut this dirty sulfur dioxide pollution.”