On May 6, General Motors, Lansing residents, and the Ecology Center and MEC reached an agreement that calls for GM to limit new air pollution by linking emissions increases at its retooled Craft Centre facility to reductions at the neighboring Lansing Car Assembly plant.

The fight is part of a larger effort waged by the Ecology Center to require automotive painting facilities to incorporate best available control technology as required by the Clean Air Act. In this case, GM was asking Lansing residents to breathe an additional 200,000 pounds annually of dangerous pollutants (volatile organic compounds, or VOCs) known to cause cancer, eye, nose and throat irritation, headaches, loss of coordination, nausea, and damage to the liver, kidney and central nervous system.

Unfortunately, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) was a willing partner and issued GM an air permit that ignored the provisions of the CAA and placed public health at risk. MEC and the Ecology Center threatened to appeal the permit to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Appeals Board unless GM agreed to limit overall emissions into the neighborhood that had complained for decades of odors from the facilities.

The provisions of the Clean Air Act are simple. If a new facility or new process is being added to a current facility, the best affordable pollution control must be utilized to limit emissions. This process insures public health, but only if regulators are willing to follow the law.

In the next few months, the DEQ will be reissuing its permit for GM's Delta Township plant. MEC and Ecology Center appealed that permit last fall, and the EPA ruled we were correct, saying that DEQ's permit was "deficient" and that "it violated one of the primary principles" of the Clean Air Act. The EPA remanded that permit to the DEQ, which is expected to reissue the permit within the next few months. If the DEQ takes seriously the lessons learned, it will require further pollution controls on the paint shop there.

"Community members shouldn't be forced to silently suffer while their government lets a large company ignore the rules harming their families' health and degrading their quality of life. Lansing can have both clean air and good jobs," said Jeff Gearhart, Ecology Center Campaign Director. The negotiated solution at the Craft Centre achieved both, and we hope the same results can be achieved at the Delta Township facility.