In Detroit, a ‘magic wand’ makes dirty air look clean – and lets polluters off the hook

THE GUARDIAN

In south-east Detroit, the Environmental Protection Agency says, the air is clean.

Robert Shobe’s lungs tell a different story.

Like a lot of Detroiters, Shobe suffers from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, also known as COPD, a long-term lung ailment that flares up when the air is smoggy or smokey. On those days, Shobe said: “I probably am low on energy, and I feel like I’m seeing a haze in the air.”

Traffic, industrial sources and meteorological conditions often worsen pollution in his part of town. One of Shobe’s closest neighbors is the Stellantis Mack Assembly Plant, where Jeep Wagoneers roll off the line. Since opening a paint shop on the property just over two years ago, it has racked up eight air pollution violations and fines.

So Shobe was baffled when he heard in May 2023 that Detroit had three years of clean air data, and that according to the EPA, the region met strict federal air-quality standards.

Regulators for Wayne county, where Detroit is located, accomplished that feat by removing two of the highest-ozone days from their calculations. They could do that because they had identified a surprising source of dirty air: wildfires burning across the border, in other states and in Canada.

Using a little-known loophole in the Clean Air Act, the Michigan environment, Great Lakes and energy department had made the case to the EPA that pollution on those days stemmed from an exceptional event, defined as something uncontrollable, unlikely to recur and, often, natural: wildfires.

The “exceptional events rule” allows the EPA to strike pollution caused by these events from the record, allowing regulators to meet clean-air goals on paper, without forcing local industry to comply with tighter pollution controls.

In Michigan, a regulator referred to the process as a “magic wand”.

That wand is regularly, if quietly, being waved. An investigation by The California Newsroom, MuckRock and the Guardian found that state and local air-quality managers across the US increasingly rely on the rule to meet air-quality goals because of wildfires.

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