Brandi Joy Crawford-Johnson moved her family out of Kalamazoo after learning the noxious odors that often stung her eyes and affected her breathing came from hydrogen sulfide — a toxic gas.
Now, she's suing on behalf of current residents for the city's failure to fix the problem, linked to the city's massive water treatment plant.
"We feel helpless, we feel defeated sometimes, we feel ignored," she said. "It's scary. Every home and police station and business I went to said they get headaches and burning eyes from the gas."
Crawford-Johnson said in 2009, Kalamazoo installed a number of air monitoring devices to get readings on the hydrogen sulfide emissions — without informing the public they were doing it.
She said the city appears to have taken no further action since the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services called the emissions a public health hazard in 2023, and recommended more extensive and sophisticated monitoring. The agency's report also advised people affected by the emissions to stay indoors.
The lawsuit was filed under a section of the Michigan Environmental Protection Act, which empowers any citizen to sue for the protection of Michigan's air, water, and natural resources from pollution, impairment, or destruction, and seek injunctions against harmful activities. Such lawsuits seek to enforce remediation of harms, but not financial damages.
Crawford-Johnson filed a motion for a preliminary injunction earlier this week, saying the city should be forced to take some actions to relieve residents' suffering while the lawsuit continues to be argued in the court, including installation of an independent, real-time air monitoring system in affected neighborhoods, and distribution of air filtration devices to affected homeowners, schools, businesses and agencies.
The city of Kalamazoo responded to our request for comment with this statement:
"The City of Kalamazoo considers the public’s concerns about air quality a top priority and is fully committed to addressing the presence of gasses and their odors in air readings throughout the city. The City of Kalamazoo will not provide further comment on the pending litigation."
