In his State of the City address, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud announced a plan to build a green buffer between the city’s growing residential community and an industrial stretch on the south end of the city.
The Dearborn Industrial Greenbelt project aims to reduce air and noise pollution while slowing traffic near schools and homes. The project is inspired by initiatives in other U.S. cities, like Atlanta’s Beltline project and Charlotte’s Blue Line Rail Trail.
Ali Abazeed, Dearborn’s chief health officer, took Stateside on a driving tour of the south end.
“This is the heaviest industrial part of the south end,” Abazeed said. “If you take a look at the left, you see stacks of carbonaceous material. If you look to the right, you'll see that as well.”
The area is known for its air pollution, but the fugitive dust is the larger issue, he said. Fugitive dust refers to airborne particulate matter that rises from uncontrolled sources, like construction sites and industrial facilities. It’s what makes air pollution mobile.
“The biggest issue with sort of industrial sites tends to be … how high are those stacks, but also how those stacks get from location to location,” Abazeed said.
The city has long worked to reduce the fugitive dust problem, according to Abazeed. In April 2024, the city council unanimously voted in support of the bulk storage amendment, which limited pile height for outdoor storage from 50 feet to 25 feet.
The industrial greenbelt project, which will continue to tackle the problem, is in its first of two stages, the visioning stage, which will be followed by the regulatory stage. So far, the city has acquired over 200,000 square feet of parcels and property.
As he drove toward the intersection of Industrial Street and Dix Avenue, the project’s central site, Abazeed pointed out the residential properties lining the streets. There’s a working class and first-generation immigrant demographic, Abazeed said.
“A lot of people don't know that the South End is actually the safest community in Dearborn and it has everything to do with who sort of composes the city. ... It's a tight-knit community, residents look out for one another here. While we're talking about all these things related to environmental contaminants and pollution, I think it's important to talk about the people that live here too, and the ways in which they've sort of sewn a fabric of society that's really close knit.”
In this visioning stage, the city is talking about what a vegetative buffer between residential communities and industrial communities looks like. A confluence of factors over history have mapped out why certain communities bear the brunt of certain environmental injustices, Abazeed said.
He added that the South End of Dearborn has among the highest rates of asthma in the state, and a public health department is obliged to try to reverse that trend through initiatives like the Greenbelt project.
“This is an attempt for us to put that buffer up that protects residents' health, that protects them from different contaminants, that protects their well-being, and also provides them opportunities to thrive,” Abazeed said. “Opportunities to thrive mean maybe we don't need a four-lane road between industry and residential. Maybe we can shrink that down to two or three lanes. Maybe we turn one of the lanes into a sidewalk for kids to be able to bike and skateboard or do whatever kids do these days.”
“I think the role of government is to cultivate a healthy fabric of society for all residents. That also includes those who travel and work and commute through Dearborn. That includes some of our corporate actors. But I think if the government was doing its job properly, it's often centering the people closest to the pain. And for us and for me, that includes the people in the south end of Dearborn," said Abazeed.
Currently, the city is working with engineers and architects at the University of Michigan to conduct environmental assessments. Abazeed said the city is still working on purchasing all the necessary parcels of land for the project.
