Dearborn’s ‘Greenbelt’ Strives to Reduce Pollution on City’s South End
During his recent State of the City address, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud detailed a plan to create a green buffer between Dearborn’s residential community and an industrial area on…
An overhead view of middle-class housing in Dearborn, where Ford’s headquarters are located. This city is home to many immigrants from the Middle East.
During his recent State of the City address, Dearborn Mayor Abdullah H. Hammoud detailed a plan to create a green buffer between Dearborn's residential community and an industrial area on the city's south end.
The Dearborn Industrial Greenbelt project endeavors to reduce air and noise pollution while slowing down traffic near homes and schools. The project is inspired by similar efforts in other U.S. cities, such as Atlanta's Beltline and Charlotte's Blue Line Rail Trail.
According to a Stateside media report, Dearborn's Industrial Greenbelt Project would address the problem of fugitive dust, the particulates from uncontrolled sources like construction sites and industrial facilities that become airborne. In April 2024, Dearborn's city council unanimously voted in favor of a bulk storage amendment, which would limit the height of piles of construction material for outdoor storage from 50 feet to 25 feet.
Ali Abazeed, the chief public health officer for the City of Dearborn, explained to Stateside that the Industrial Greenbelt Project is in a visioning stage, which will be followed by a regulatory stage.
During the visioning stage, the city is exploring what a vegetative buffer between residential communities and industrial communities could look like.
Abazeed said that Dearborn's south end has people who have the highest rates of asthma in the state. Through initiatives like the Industrial Greenbelt Project, the city's public health department is trying to correct this problem.
“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.”
