Environmental justice groups in Flint are demanding much-needed changes to a joint federal and state consent decree against RJ Torching, a scrap metal yard that routinely emits more harmful chemicals than is permitted by law.

“RJ Torching and other polluters have profited off the lungs of this community,” said Rev. Monica M. Villarreal of Michigan United. “We are eager to see polluters held accountable.”

The enforcement action comes a few months after Michigan’s environmental agency (EGLE) and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) weakened a Title VI civil rights agreement and left the predominantly Black and low-income community without meaningful protection from further over-pollution. Since then, groups including Flint Rising, Environmental Transformation Movement of Flint, St. Francis Prayer Center, Michigan United, and C.A.U.T.I.O.N. have asked the EPA to monitor the compliance of local polluters with the Clean Air Act and to step up enforcement against violators like RJ Torching.

“I’m glad our advocacy led the EPA to finally investigate this facility,” said Ted Zahrfeld, board chair of the St. Francis Prayer Center. “But the reality is that RJ Torching is just one of many polluters whose cumulative impacts seriously traumatize people. We need EPA and EGLE to go much further and protect Flint residents.”

RJ Torching’s environmental violations have been documented for over a decade, most recently this September for cutting and burning large pieces of scrap metal without the proper control equipment. Torch-cutting creates particulate matter, or tiny particles that can lodge themselves deep in our lungs and move into our bloodstream, increasing the risk of asthma, cancer, and heart attacks. The asthma hospitalization rate in Flint is over three times the state average.

“Cracking down on one polluter at a time is like plugging a hole in a leaky boat,” said Mona Munroe-Younis, executive director of the Environmental Transformation Movement of Flint. “We need more holistic reforms to end the pattern of racial discrimination that have led to these disparate outcomes.”

RJ Torching sits on the North Dort Highway alongside four recycling facilities, a concrete plant, a gas pipeline terminal, a waste disposal company, a freight railyard, and a pavement company. Close by, the infamous Dort-Carpenter Industrial Park lies across the street from two public housing developments that are home to nearly 400 families. Two facilities in the park — the Genesee Power Station and the Ajax asphalt plant — have prompted multiple legal challenges and federal civil rights investigations stretching several decades.

In fact, the industrial park has a history of pollution since the 90s, after Genesee Township officials decided to build it in the one census tract where most of its Black residents live. Over time, property values plummeted as the quiet and wooded neighborhood became filled with harmful emissions, dust, and noise, stripping Black families of their generational wealth in the process. In 2021, community groups represented by Earthjustice, Great Lakes Environmental Law Center, and the National Housing Law Project filed a Title VI federal Civil Rights Act complaint with the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and await a decision.

“This community deserves a healthy and thriving future, and to get there we have to dismantle this broken system that continues to perpetrate environmental racism in Flint,” said Nayyirah Shariff, director of Flint Rising.

There will be an opportunity for public comment on the RJ Torching action at an online public meeting on January 18. Advocates urge residents to learn more and take action by pushing for more transparency and accountability.