Detroit Bulk Storage has been denied a permit by the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to store petcoke on the banks of the Detroit River. As you may recall, they were storing giant piles of the toxic byproduct of tar sands oil refining by Koch Carbon, an energy company owned by the billionaire Koch brothers. Last year, the piles were […]

Funny how it’s never near a posh neighborhood of mansions… Cloud of petcoke dust rises over Detroit in the summer of 2013 This past summer, thanks to the hue and cry from Democrats in Michigan as well as Detroit Mayor Dave Bing, a group owned by the notorious Koch brothers was forced to take their noxious, toxic piles of petcoke […]

Just a totally harmless cloud of heavy metal-laden black dust, no problem at all The large piles of petcoke that have been stored on the banks of the Detroit River delivered a little surprise to the residents of Windsor across the border last weekend in the form of a thick black cloud of dust kicked up by a storm. Here’s […]

Nothing to see here, please hold your breath and move along As if they weren’t already dealing with enough in their daily lives, residents of downtown Detroit now have something else to contend with: exposure to toxic petroleum coke or “pet coke” dust. The Detroit Free Press is reporting that the state confirms that the dust is prevalent in the […]

What could possibly go wrong?

On the banks of the Detroit River, giant three-story tall mountains of black rock have been accumulating, quickly and quietly enough to take a lot of Detroiters and neighboring Canadians by surprise. The piles are petroleum coke or “pet coke”, a by-product of the processing of tar sands oil from Canada. A newly upgraded Marathon Petroleum refinery in Detroit now allows them to process the tar sands oil, producing copious amounts of the high-sulfur, high-carbon waste product.

A recent New York Times article shows that Michiganders and Canadians alike are concerned by the use of land directly on the Detroit River to store the potentially hazardous pet coke.

Click through for more.