DETROIT – Residents and health experts protested Friday morning near the Kronos concrete mixing plant on East 6 Mile and MacDougall, saying it has not only destroyed a substantial part of their community but is also making people sick.
“We don’t want it,” Diana Tucker Morris, who has lived in this neighborhood for nearly 50 years, said and remembers when it was sprawling with stores and businesses. “We had plans for our area. We didn’t have plans for a concrete crushing business.”
Morris, 64, was part of the protest, which was held by the Detroit-Hamtramck Coalition for Advancing Healthy Environments, and demanded that the city shut it down.
The mixing plant is owned by Crown Enterprises, which is run by the Moroun family, which owns the Ambassador Bridge along with numerous properties in Southwest Detroit. They also owned the Michigan Central Station for more than 30 years, during which time the building collapsed into blighted disrepair.
“I think that we should be prioritizing people’s health, and a concrete facility should not be in the neighborhood,” State Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit, said. “They actually started illegally without the proper permits from the city.”
In 2022, Crown Enterprises began construction on what would become Kronos without the proper environmental clearances. At the time, BSEED, Detroit’s Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department, issued a violation notice, ordering crown to stop work on the plant.
Despite this, the city later granted a permit for Kronos to be built, angering residents and a number of city and state officials.
“I’m very concerned, as someone who represents this area,” Chang said. “Because I think that we should be prioritizing people’s health and a concrete facility should not be in the neighborhood.”
When reached for comment, BSEED said:
“Kronos is operating legally in an area that is zoned industrial, and we do not have the legal authority to shut it down.
An Environmental Specialist visits the site three times a week and has not observed a violation related to fugitive dust. Kronos has provided a fugitive dust plan, which it appears to be following.
An air monitor near the facility has shown no elevated levels.”
Local 4 also reached out to Detroit City Councilman Scott Benson, who represents the third district. Calls to his office were not returned.
The last three years have seen an increase in truck traffic, as well as the visible dust that kicks up from the mixing that has been making people sick.
“You can see it when you look at the sun,” Dr. Abdul el-Sayed, the former Wayne County Health Director, said. He said while hardened concrete is largely harmless, it’s long-term exposure to the microparticles in the dust that can cause breathing issues such as asthma, COPD, and potentially lung cancer.
“It’s kind of like when we had those wildfires,” he said. “People living in this community, they’re exposed to that all day, every day, because of this facility and your body can’t cough it out.”
That explanation doesn’t set well with Morris, who is already starting to experience the effects of the dust.
“It’s getting bad,” she said. “I didn’t have all these issues that I’m having now, the shortness of breath, being awakened out of sleep because I can’t breathe.”