Planet Detroit Candidate Survey
What are the three most pressing environmental issues facing the communities you seek to serve? Please rank them in order of priority and briefly explain why you chose each.
1. Environmental Justice — Legacy Industrial Contamination and Soil/Water Pollution
Detroit’s history as a manufacturing hub les to decades of toxic exposure. Lead-contaminated soil, brownfield sites, and polluted groundwater that disproportionately burden lower-income and majority-Black neighborhoods. Remediation and equitable land reuse should be the foundation of any serious environmental agenda because the harm is already present and ongoing.
2. Air Quality — And Respiratory Health
Southwest Detroit and other fence-line communities live with elevated particulate matter, diesel emissions, and industrial air pollution that drive asthma rates far above state and national averages. The correlation between environmental exposure and health outcomes here is not random. It shows up in emergency rooms and death certificates.
3. Water Infrastructure — Detroit’s aging combined sewer system routinely fails during heavy rain events, flooding basements and releasing raw sewage. As precipitation intensity increases with climate change, this becomes a compounding public health and housing stability crisis. It effects renters and lower-income homeowners hardest. Green infrastructure investment and targeted drainage upgrades are both an environmental and an equity issue.
Michigan law requires utilities to reach 100% clean energy by 2040. If elected, would you support maintaining this law, or would you support revising or repealing it? Please explain your position.
Maintain the current law and timeline
Climate Chane is the greatest threat to human existence and food scarcity. It is my position that we need to meet the deadline if not exceed it. Protecting our natural resources and citizens from pollution is most vital. Lastly, preventing the proliferation of data centers is apart of pollution prevention not only because of their water use but also the infrasound frequencies that still effect people, as reported in Ohio and Tennessee
More than two dozen Michigan communities are considering or have approved large-scale data center developments. These facilities can consume as much electricity as a small city and place significant demands on local water and energy infrastructure. What role should state government play in overseeing data center development, and what guardrails should the state legislature enact to protect communities where data centers are proposed?
Data centers today are what mainframe computers were in the 1960s and 70s: enormous facilities that advancing technology will eventually make obsolete. Michigan’s rush to approve these developments risks leaving communities stuck with stranded infrastructure and degraded resources within a decade.
The state should impose a moratorium on new data center approvals until the industry and the technology stabilize. The permanent job creation argument used to justify these projects is overstated, and communities deserve more than promises before surrendering land, water, and grid capacity.
When development does proceed, state guardrails should require environmental impact assessments covering water and energy demands, enforceable community benefit agreements, and decommissioning clauses that hold developers financially responsible for site cleanup. Local governments should not be the only check on decisions with regional consequences.
PFAS contamination has been detected in drinking water, groundwater, and surface water across Michigan. Cleanup efforts are underway, but many affected communities are still waiting for action. What is the single most important step the officeholder in this position should take on PFAS in the next term?
One of most important steps is full funding and aggressive enforcement of polluter-pay liability. Communities have waited long enough while the corporations responsible for PFAS contamination face limited financial consequences. The state must compel manufacturers and dischargers to bear the full cost of remediation rather than shifting that burden to taxpayers and the people already harmed.
Michigan residents in some communities face disproportionate exposure to air pollution, contaminated water, and industrial waste. Do you support requiring Michigan regulators to assess cumulative environmental and health impacts on overburdened communities before approving new permits for polluting facilities?
Yes
Communities like those in southwest Detroit are already carrying more than their share of industrial burden, and regulators cannot responsibly add to that load without first accounting for what is already there. Cumulative impact assessment is not a barrier to development, it is basic due diligence.
Utility rate cases directly affect what Michigan residents pay for electricity and gas. DTE and Consumers Energy have requested frequent significant rate increases in recent years. Should elected officials play a greater role in holding utility companies accountable for rate hikes and rising energy costs?
Yes. The legislature should strengthen the standards and transparency requirements the MPSC must apply when evaluating rate requests, and create more meaningful intervention rights for ratepayers in those proceedings. DTE and Consumers Energy operate as regulated monopolies, and the current oversight structure has not kept pace with the frequency or scale of their rate increase requests. Legislators have both the authority and the obligation to close that gap.
Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline runs through the Straits of Mackinac and carries crude oil and natural gas liquids between Wisconsin and Ontario. A proposed tunnel beneath the lakebed to house a replacement pipeline has faced legal and regulatory challenges for years. What is your position on the future of Line 5?
Line 5 should be decommissioned in its current form and replaced only through the tunnel. Operating an aging pipeline directly on the lakebed of the Straits of Mackinac is an unacceptable risk to the Great Lakes. If this infrastructure is going to continue serving regional energy needs during the transition away from fossil fuels, it has to be housed in a properly engineered tunnel, not left exposed on the floor of one of the most ecologically significant bodies of freshwater on earth.
Drinking water is becoming increasingly unaffordable for Michiganders in both rural and urban areas, leading to water shutoffs. Would you support legislation that caps water bills for low-income Michiganders and adds shutoff protections?
yes.
Michigan is home to more than 18,000 contaminated sites. Do you support or oppose legislation to hold polluters accountable for cleaning up these sites?
Support
Because the polluters should be held accountable and those effected should be compensated accordingly. that is environmental justice.