DETROIT — The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will investigate Michigan's environment department to determine whether it racially discriminated against a lower-income, majority-Black neighborhood in approving an emissions permit for a new Jeep plant in Detroit.
The EPA is acting after five residents whose properties now back up to the Mack Assembly Plant on the city's east side filed a civil rights complaint in November against the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy.
It failed to do its diligence, the Beniteau Street residents argued, by not conducting a cumulative impact analysis of the plant owned by Stellantis NV before approving its permit. The result, they say, is discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in violation of federal law.
