"Smoke stacks rise ominously behind the homes, and a strong odor permeates the area and irritates the throat. Residents say emissions from a tar sands refinery run by the Ohio-based Marathon Petroleum Corp. blow straight toward them most of the time."
Al Jazeera America's Renee Lewis pays a visit to Detroit's 48217 Zip Code, also known as the Boyton or Oakwood Heights neighborhood, where tar sands from Alberta enter the mammoth Marathon refinery and produce unusual odors and unknown consequences for those who breathe them.
Lifelong Boynton resident Denise Taylor has a clear view of the refinery’s flares from her bathroom window.
“We have watched them build a city over there. It used to be just a spot,” she said, referring to Marathon’s recent expansions, which the company says are necessary to cope with the increasing volume of tar sands oil from Canada’s Alberta province.
Taylor said that although the area’s air quality was never great, it got worse after Marathon switched from refining conventional oil to more tar sands oil, considered among the dirtiest fuel sources.
Lewis reports the Marathon refinery has reduced its emissions by more than 75 percent since 1999, and its emissions are only a small percentage of the total pollution in the area around Boynton, Marathon communications manager Jamal T. Kheiry told Al Jazeera in an email. Marathon, which monitors its own emissions and reports those results to state and government officials, said it is in compliance with federal regulations.
