- We've got a great show coming up for you on "American Black Journal."

It is Earth Month, and we've teamed up with "BridgeDetroit" for conversation about climate change and its impact on people of color.

We're gonna talk about the effects of heavy rains and extreme heat on Black Detroiters and low-income residents.

Plus, we'll explore strategies to address all of these issues.

Don't go away, "American Black Journal" starts right now.

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(upbeat music) - Welcome to "American Black Journal," I'm Stephen Henderson.

April is Earth Month, and today we have partnered with "BridgeDetroit" for a look at climate change and its disproportionate impact on people of color.

Two of the main concerns for Detroiters are extreme heat and heavy rains.

We wanna start with a report on how streets and basements are flooding on a regular basis in our city.

"One Detroit"'s Bill Kubota visited the hard-hit Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood on the East side to examine the problem and explore some solutions.

- [Bill] Blake Grannum lives on a canal down by the Detroit River, the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood on the Lower East side.

- And I've been over here my whole life.

Jefferson-Chalmers has been a secret, and it's now not a secret anymore.

It was just a little gem in the city where the canals run behind these houses, and you have such a diverse neighborhood.

- [Bill] But every time it rains, Grannum documents what goes on in the streets.

- This is an ongoing problem and it needs to be resolved because of all the water that we're getting.

- [Bill] Flood insurance in this low-lying area?

Expensive.

The flooding?

It wasn't always this way.

- You know, we get basement backups, and then we get streams in the- - [Bill] So you're talking right here?

- Right here, in front of our house.

- [Bill] The fight is on to save Jefferson Chalmers.

Jake Juergensen, one of its leaders.

Is this neighborhood at risk?

- Very much so.

Yeah, I would say that we are at a critical point in our neighborhood's trajectory and its history.

If we don't fix the problems that are happening now, our neighborhood will go the way of the dinosaur.

There's no question about it.

- Then the water receded and- - [Bill] We first met John Myers back in 2019.

It was record-high water on the Great Lakes, the Detroit River, causing the canals to overflow.

- The Army Corps and the city volunteers sandbag this, which is good because I did breach the cap by an inch or so.

- [Bill] With the heavy rains, the attention now, what goes on down below?

- This was just rebuilt in October, and it was collapsed from the construction.

They ran a truck over and then it just caved in.

And so they rebuilt it, all cement and bricks and such, and ever since then it hasn't drained, so...

There were some serious mistakes made about 100 years ago when they filled this piece of land in.

I mean, this is all the Grand Marais or the Great Marsh.

Basically this was a village called Fairview Village, it went from Waterworks Park to Cadieux in Grosse Pointe.

But there were six automobile manufacturers right in this neighborhood, Chalmers, Continental, Hudson.

And they wanted the tax base.

So they said, "Look, we'll suck you into Detroit, and you can go into our sewer system."

- [Bill] A historic neighborhood with a historic combined sewer system, where sewage water mixes with storm water.

Too much rain?

You get combined sewer overflow.

- When you try to throw everything into pipes underground, they fill up, and once they get to a certain point, the city goes down to the Fox Creek and they remove the log jams and they let it go right out the canal.

And that's to keep it out of the basements.

But 2014, 2016, 2019, and then 2021, I had a swimming pool in my basement along with a lot of other people.

- [Bill] It trashed basements across Detroit, especially the East side.

- So I'll tell you, when the flood came, everybody on that side of the street lost their car.

'Cause every time it rains here we get flooding.

We get flooding in the streets, and that's eroding things, things are swelling and going down and swelling and going down.

My house is moving about right there.

- [Bill] Well, it just looks like it's damp.

- Yeah.

- Probably all the time it looks damp, huh?

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Bill] Along the canals, tiger dams, intended to ward off high water, although lake levels have been receding of late.

- That orange thing, yeah.

- [Bill] Now has that been there a while?

- It was put there after 2016.

That was the solution.

- [Bill] That's not a permanent solution, isn't it?

- [Myrtle] No, no.

- [Bill] Well, it's not going away anytime soon is it?

- I hope it goes away, it's not doing anything now, but junking up the place.

That, and all the sandbags that went down.

- [Bill] Waterfront estates with boat docks, that's nice.

But the tiger dams?

And it'd be better without sewage in the water.

- It's only supposed to be utilized in emergency situations.

But of course, more than twice a year for the last dozen years, we've had discharges into the canal.

- [Bill] Greg Sawyer wants better notification when the sewage discharges happen.

- I mean, we've had people, we've caught people fishing in the water the day after the discharge, and nobody's informed them that that is not the appropriate thing to do.

We have people that swim in the canal.

- We do know that raw sewage is being dumped into the canals.

So what we wanna do is test the toxicity.

- [Male Speaker] Grab the handle so you don't lose it all.

- And we decided to tap our local teens, who are in an environmental science class at King High School, and take it to the lab and see what the results are.

- We wanna be below that line, but above the second line.

- [Bill] Has there been a lot of testing in the water here?

- I don't think so.

So this is something that we're doing, grassroots on our own.

- And so we're gonna get a reference point of the bacteriological load, as well as the chemical load, so that when there is an event, we can have a team out here within 24 to 36 hours to take a sample and compare the two.

So we can say, "This is what happens when we have a global climate event in the city."

- [Bill] There's federal money to upgrade the region's infrastructure.

Jefferson-Chalmers will need a lot of it.

- We gotta look at all the options, we've gotta work with the federal government.

We've gotta understand how climate is changing and shifting, and what that means when you live along any major body of water.

So we've got to understand everything, and how are you now going to live in that area?

- [Bill] One proposed fixed?

Install locks separating the canals from the river.

- It would be a permanent situation, until they got the crane back out there to pull it back out, it would not- - [Bill] But why, what would that do?

And what did you think about it?

- Well, it's not the answer.

Closing off waterways doesn't stop water.

- [Bill] Blocking the canals?

Rejected by the residents.

Some who want consideration for other bigger, bolder ideas.

- What we're talking about is a demonstration project.

A demonstration project takes a look at a variety of technologies and said, how can we deploy these different technologies?

- [Bill] Not new technologies, really, just not seen so much in these parts.

- If we take a look at this, this plastic device is driven into the soil and it allows for infiltration to happen more quickly.

- [Bill] More than that, Juergensen suggesting underground storm water holding tanks installed under vacant fields and city streets.

A lot of digging, better the water there than in people's basements.

- I don't know if that can be successful, but those are the type of things that need to come together so we can have all the facts.

And say what is going to be successful and the reason why.

And also, what's the cost associated with that?

That was a pretty ambitious plan from what I saw.

- [Bill] And who's offering up all the property where these takes might go?

Even if there are the many, many millions of dollars it'd take to do it.

- [Bill] And if the water's a problem, maybe you oughta move.

- (laughs) Well, that's one option.

You have to think about affordability.

Not everybody has that option unfortunately.

So what you can do is just work together as citizens and organize ourselves, educate ourselves, and figure out some solutions.

- [Bill] Why do you stay here with all this water?

- I was born and raised in Detroit.

I'm a lifelong Detroiter, and most of my, all my children live here.

I really like, who doesn't like living off the water?

- Given what climate change is, and water levels rising, changes, we're all gonna have to adapt.

Not to say that they can't have what they have, it's just going to have to change is probably more accurate.

And we don't know what that change is unless we work together.

- [Blake] We already know what the problem is, we don't need to investigate a million other things.

We know what the issue is.

We just need to now find a solution of how to fix our infrastructure.

And I know that costs a lot of money, but I mean, our neighborhood and the people in this community, we're worth it.

We're worth you guys spending the money.

- We've gotta solve these problems, or the residents in our neighborhood, and not just our neighborhood, Dearborn, the Detroit Aviation Sub, Morningside, the areas that are plagued with these chronic infrastructure problems will continue to see their property values go down.

'Cause they won't have the resources to invest in their homes, to improve their value, and have them appreciate over time.

So we have to solve these, we don't have a choice.

Or like I said, our neighborhood will go the way of the dinosaurs.

- From flooding to heat waves and air quality issues, Detroiters really face a lot of threats to their safety and their health.

I sat down for a frank conversation about climate change with "BridgeDetroit" environmental reporter, Jena Brooker, Jamesa Johnson Greer from the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, and Laprisha Berry Daniels from Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice.

So Jamesa, I'm gonna start with you.

How do we know that the things that we're experiencing here in Detroit, that Detroiters are experiencing in particular, and that Black Detroiters are disproportionately affected by, how do we know this is about climate change?

How do we know that there's a connection between the way that, you know, the environment has altered, and been altered, and the hardship that we see in cities like Detroit?

- Yeah, we can definitely see it.

We see it every single year through the flooding events.

We can see it through our health even.

We know that from 2017 to 2019, 16.2% of Detroit adults and 11.11% of Michigan adults had asthma.

And that means that the asthma rates in Detroit were 46% higher for, you know, for those Detroiters, than Michigan residents as a whole.

So the fact that that's happening means that people are being impacted by air quality issues, pretty predominantly in areas where Black and Brown folks are living.

And that directly relates to climate change, and how folks are impacted by air quality.

Specifically when we think about greenhouse gases that we're trying to particularly get a handle on, as we're trying to mitigate those impacts.

- Yeah, yeah.

Jena, in a lot of your reporting at "BridgeDetroit," there's this evidence of the things that we do and tolerate in Detroit, that already make it difficult for people who live here.

I mean, we create our own hardships with the amount of industry that we have, the lack of controls over air quality and things.

But this idea that climate is kind of adding to that makes it even more urgent.

That we're seeing more of the consequences than we even would see in a city that was already really dirty.

- Yeah, I think it's hard because industry has helped build Detroit.

And, you know, we're the motor city, and Detroiters have a close connection to that legacy.

And it's that same legacy that, like you said, is polluting primarily Black neighborhoods in Detroit and exacerbating the climate crisis.

- Yeah, talk about, so some of the reporting that you've done, Jena, and what it shows.

And how this plays out in people's lives.

- I think that my reporting has shown that climate change is impacting, like, every aspect of Detroiter's lives.

From worsening their allergies to, you know, increased asthma rates, to basement flooding, extreme heat, average, just increased temperatures.

Winter activities like ice fishing or skiing.

You know, I think the first Black ski club was founded in the Metro Detroit area or Detroit area.

So it's impacting every aspect of Detroiter's lives, from their health to their cultural experiences and their work, just everything.

- Laprisha, your group is dedicated to trying to make this better, to push back against the, you know, the dirty quality of air and water and things here, but also of course to account for climate change.

Talk about what this looks like from your vantage point, the things you see and the opportunities you think we have to make it better.

- So Detroiters Working for Environmental Justice is specifically focusing on reducing environmental health disparities.

And some of that Jamesa and Jena have already touched on.

So specifically we are focused on reducing asthma and other respiratory illness, lead poisoning, lead exposure, as well as cardiovascular disease.

And so there's a direct connection between poor air quality, poor soil quality, poor water quality or access to water, and those health disparities.

Jamesa started talking about the flooding events or the heavy rain events that we've had in Detroit.

And there are specific ways that that impacts the health and wellbeing of Detroiters for lots of reasons.

One reason is because there's not enough relief.

When there are emergencies like that in the city, we know that we have lots of renters, and the relief is not available to renters.

So there are ways that having these heavy flooding events exacerbate asthma because of mold now, that can be present in the home, from the water being in the home, water intrusion in the home.

But there are other ways that this impacts folks that we may not think about as much.

One example is increase in lead poisoning among children.

When we find that there's not relief from these flooding events, then folks are left to their own devices to figure out how to dry out their homes.

One of those ways is, beyond having neighbors and friends help to come and clean up, you also are opening and closing your windows to try to air out your home.

And so that is introducing more lead dust into the air.

80% of our homes in Detroit are pre-1978.

And so there's a lot of lead paint still existing in a lot of our homes.

And so it's not just what happens from the rain, right?

It's also what happens from residents being left to their own devices to try to solve the problems that come along with climate change.

- The kind of cascading effect of one thing leading to lots of other things that make everything much harder to manage.

Jena, I wanna come back to you for a second.

You worked on a story recently that talked about the truck traffic near the Stellantis Plant, and then the neighborhood over on the East side of Detroit.

And one of the things that was really interesting about that story was the lack of response from the responsible agencies for regulating that traffic, the nuisance, the noise, the air pollution.

Talk about the ways in which we see government and government authority kind of failing to help out where it actually can.

- Yeah, I think that that instance is tricky, because trucks, to my understanding, are sort of this gray area where the state regulates air pollution.

And, you know, trucks cause air pollution, but aren't, I guess like a factory emitting air pollution.

But I think overall we do see the federal, state, and city government sort of punting the responsibility of addressing the climate crisis to other people.

Or even putting it on individuals, like reduce your carbon footprint, when really we need all areas of our governments to work together to, you know, pass policy.

You know, like the state could pass, the state or city, could create a tax credit for electric bikes to incentivize people to, you know, get out of their cars.

Which transportation and trucks is one of the leading contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.

They could incentivize a tax credit for electric bicycles or add a stricter code for buildings to reduce their emissions.

So I think that we see all areas of our government punting the responsibility off.

And it's unfortunate because that's probably where we need a lot of the widespread solutions and policy changes to come from.

- Jamesa, talk about how your organization is kind of focused on, you know, increasing response to these kind of things.

And then talk about the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing.

I think that's an important part of this.

Yeah, we need government to do its job, but part of that is about us, as citizens, figuring out how to get government to be more responsive.

- Yeah, absolutely.

You know, part of this is also recognizing that there are more actors here than just government.

There are also corporate actors as well that are involved in this process.

And part of the work that we do with Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition is corporate accountability work.

And so recognizing that, you know, the floods that happen in 2021, that happened in 2022, that the frequency and intensity of storms that we're experiencing are not going away.

But it does require all of us, including our utilities, to step up to the occasion.

And that means that, you know, asking and requesting of them to invest in the infrastructure, so that doesn't cause further damage, to potentially life-threatening flood events like the one that Laprisha was just mentioning.

And so, you know, that is the kind of work that we're doing, is seeking out ways that we can hold our corporate actors accountable.

Even as we're asking our government entities to see to it that they're, you know, extending as much of their authority as possible to protect us.

And making sure that they're doing things like making sure that there aren't more power outages and downed power lines and flooded substations.

Things that we know put our communities at risk.

And are only, you know, set to exacerbate the climate crisis as as we know it.

And we've already experienced it as Detroiters the last few summers.

- Talk quickly about the Jemez Principles, this idea of democratic organizing, and how that plays into environmental justice.

- Absolutely, and so the Jemez Principles are really, really central to the way that we have chosen to organize.

Our goal for the critical decade really is to take on this issue of climate justice with broad alliances and bold and unapologetic vision for justice.

And it really requires us to understand how we can reclaim and take on our own power, right?

And so what does it look like for us to seek our own representation?

So that's looking for us to be able to speak for ourselves, to be able to speak directly to our government about the things that we want to see in our communities, as it relates to climate and our health.

And how do we work with other organizations as well in order to do that, other entities, in order to do that?

So working in mutuality for example.

So those are just a few of those Jemez Principles, but those are the ways that we, at MEJC, like to see our work done, and our guiding principles for the way that we'd like to do the work.

- Yeah, and that's a really wonderful tool for what we're talking about.

Laprisha, I wanna give you a chance, we've got a couple minutes left to talk about just some things that you think we can be doing, that make us safer in Detroit, that make the environment better for us, that protect us from these things that are changing that so many of them, we don't have a lot of control over.

- So thank you for this opportunity.

I would love to talk about what we do have control over and what we had a recent win with.

So Core City, a low-financial resourced community in Detroit, was being threatened with having a open-air concrete crusher in their community.

And they fought back and they organized.

I'm using some of the principles that Jamesa just talked about, and have had a huge win.

So the first thing they did is they spoke out against the permit that was going to be proposed.

That permit was denied to the developer.

And the next step for them was to ask that the concrete debris that was already in that location be cleaned up.

And so after blight tickets by the city, and a low-level of enforcement by the city, community members kept pushing back.

And we just found out today that the developer will be sued by the city for the nuisance that's in that community.

We just found out today that the mayor spoke out against this.

And so having that type of support from local government, having that type of support from local enforcement is really important.

But the way that that happened was through amplifying the voice of the community.

The community showing up and saying that we will not allow this in our community.

And so it sort of ties together everything that we've all been talking about in terms of enforcement and policy, and community mobilizing in order to get this work done.

- That's it for this week's show, produced in partnership with "BridgeDetroit."

Thanks so much for watching.

You can find out more about today's guests at americanblackjournal.org.

And you can connect with us anytime on Facebook and on Twitter.

Take care and we'll see you next time.

(upbeat music) - [Voiceover] From Delta faucets to Behr Paint, Masco Corporation is proud to deliver products that enhance the way consumers all over the world experience and enjoy their living spaces.

Masco, serving Michigan communities since 1929.

Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for Journalism at Detroit Public TV.

- [Voiceover] The DTE Foundation proudly supports 50 years of "American Black Journal," in covering African American history, culture, and politics.

The DTE Foundation and "American Black Journal" partners in presenting African American perspectives about our communities and in our world.

- [Voiceover] Also brought to you by Nissan Foundation and viewers like you.

Thank you.

(joyful piano)