Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit) discusses reintroduced legislation requiring state regulators to look at the cumulative impact of pollutants when issuing environmental permits. July 29, 2025 | Photo by Kyle Davidson/Michigan Advance
Community and environmental justice advocates from all across the state gathered in Lansing on Tuesday as lawmakers from the state House and Senate discussed revived legislation intended to address the cumulative impacts of pollution in communities with high concentrations of industry.
Several speakers argued the Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s process for evaluating air pollution is broken, and fails to consider the combined health impacts on community health.
However, Senate Bill 479 and House Bill 4742, put forth by Sen. Stephanie Chang (D-Detroit) and Rep. Donavan McKinney (D-Detroit) respectively, would require EGLE to consider the full impact of these pollutants on the community, rather than evaluating them individually.
“We breathe pollution from all the sources around us, not one at a time,” said Kathryn Savoie, director of equity and environmental justice at the Ecology Center, noting that communities of color and communities with lower-levels of income bear a disproportionate burden from pollution.
Alongside requiring the state to consider the cumulative impacts of multiple pollutant types, the act would require the agency to take into account social and economic factors that put communities at greater risk of harm, Chang said.
EGLE would have clear authority under this law to deny an environmental permit application if there is a negative impact on overburdened communities and there’s no compelling need for the project, Chang said, with the agency utilizing its environmental justice screening tool in making such a determination.
Additionally, the policy would require permit applicants to publish information about the permit’s public hearing in at least two newspapers within a community, including a local non-English paper, giving the community 60-days notice about the hearing and information about the project’s impact.
While Southwest Detroit is often used as an example of the impacts of cumulative pollution due to the large number of industrial facilities in the area, alongside pollution from vehicle traffic, Raquel Garcia, executive director of Southwest Detroit Environmental Vision, noted that these issues are present in several other Michigan communities, including Waterford in Oakland County, and Wyandotte and Flat Rock in Wayne County.
Deirdre Nieves, director of climate solutions and justice for the West Michigan Environmental Action Council, called attention to federal efforts to roll back pollution protections, including limits on mercury and air pollution and the good neighbor rule, which is intended to limit smog in communities located downwind from power plants and industrial facilities.
President Donald Trump’s administration has also offered a variety of polluters exemptions from Clean Air Act regulations.
While there’s nothing that can be done at the state level to completely alleviate the harm brought on by these federal rollbacks, Chris Gilmer-Hill, policy associate for the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition said the state at least has a lot of power to say no to pollution
“Even though that [federal] backstop is gone, this bill would let us say that we’re still going to protect our communities from those overlapping sources. And certainly anything that now gets allowed at the federal level would and must be taken into account,” Gilmer-Hill said.
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