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The largest solid waste incinerator in the United States, the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Facility incinerator burns an estimated 2800 tons of commercial and household waste each day. Built in 1986 during Mayor Coleman A. Young's tenure, it has had a troubled financial and political history which is captured in Ron Allen's poem, "Incinerator."

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The City of Detroit financed the incinerator with $440 million in bonds, but when faced with a budget deficit and a requirement from the State of Michigan's Department of Environmental Quality to improve the incinerator's pollution controls, the city sold the facility to Philip Morris and Aviation Services both of which were attracted by tax credits associated with the facility (Collins). In "Incinerator" Allen references the current owner: "...Hey! How bout a poly chlorinated/dibenzo-p-dioxyns cigarette?" (38). The city pays rent to the incinerator's owners and management and operation fees to Michigan Waste Energy, a subsidiary of Covanta Energy-a company currently in bankruptcy (Covanta). The consequence of its thorny financial history is that it costs about $120 per ton to incinerate Detroit's waste, in contrast to a national average of about $57 per ton (Collins).

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Since its inception, the incinerator has also been the source of local and international political protest about its environmental impact. Protesters have included groups such as Evergreen Alliance, Detroiters for Environmental Justice, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Ann Arbor's Ecology Center, and the Citizens Environment Alliance of Southwestern Ontario and Southeast Michigan. "Incinerator" captures the political rage this "waste crematorium" (Collins) has generated: "Gotta suck Coleman's world through / a Hydrogen chloride straw" (38). Allen uses strong scatological sexual language and imagery to confront the personal impact of the incinerator's emissions on individuals. He captures the ultimate concern of organized protests:

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Death don't suck away this smoke
of stench stolid polysyllabic compounds
that eradicate life.... (40)

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Using the Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EP A), the Chemical Scorecard-a community education tool developed by the National Resource Defense Council-ranks the air pollution releases from the incinerator. Although its air releases-except for carbon monoxide-are within the EPA limits, it still emits approximately 1800 tons of pollutants annually ("News Hits" 10). In the Introduction to Allen's Neon Jawbone Riot poet Jim Perkinson characterizes Allen's poetry: "Those at the raw end of the market will find their groan articulate here" (6). Of the "permitted" pollutants Allen thunders:

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It emits unmitigated insufferable
if unchallenged chromium fists
stuck in the malleable throats
of an innocent breath.... (40)

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In discussing modern environmental degradation, the nature writing of today's conservation movement has joined forces with the protest tradition in literature. With "Incinerator" Allen serves as an angered witness to the physical impact of the pollution of waste disposal in a major urban center.

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Postscript: In March 2019, after over three decades of generating pollution, odor, protest, and litigation, the incinerator finally shut down. See Tom Perkins’s Metro Times article for the latest and for links to the paper’s coverage of incinerator-related issues.

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Jane Hammang-Buhl is Professor Emerita of Business and former Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Professional Studies Division at Marygrove College. As a Marygrove professor, she specialized in business ethics and taught an interdisciplinary seminar on environmental issues.

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Works Cited

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Boyd, Melba Joyce. and M. L. Liebler, eds. Abandon Automobile. Wayne State University Press, 2000.

Collins, Lisa. “Ill Wind: The Huge Smokestack Burns Big bucks and Spews Bad Fumes.” Detroit Metro Times, 20 March

2002, 17 July 2003.

“About Our Restructuring.” Covanta, 17 July 2003.

"News Hits." Detroit Metro Times, 13 September 2002,  17 July 2003.

Perkinson, James. "Introduction," in Allen, R. Neon Jawbone Riot. Weightless Language, 2000.

Perkins, Tom. “Updated: Detroit's Garbage Incinerator Is About To Belch Its Final Cloud of Toxic Gas.” Detroit Metro

Times, 27 Mar. 2019,  https://www.metrotimes.com/news-hits/archives/2019/03/27/detroits-garbage-incinerator-is-about-to-belch-its-final-cloud-of-toxic-gas.  Accessed September 2019. 

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Photos by Anna Fedor

Originally posted September 2003; updated September 2019.