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Marathon photoLiving near a petroleum refinery can be hazardous to your health.
On Thursday, dozens of demonstrators gathered at the Marathon Petroleum refinery in southwest Detroit near I-75 in hopes of convincing the company to cover relocation costs for neighbors concerned about pollution.
"They are our personal polluters," Wendy Kyles, who attributes her late relatives’ ailments to emissions from the site, tells Mark Hicks of The Detroit News. "So they should do us a personal favor and get us out of here."
Marathon previously had a program to buy Delray residents' properties after the refinery expanded. Of 294 homes identified, 266 took the offer. The rest stuck around in a much quieter neighborhood.
But the offer didn't apply to all homes in the area considered polluted. The refinery sits on about 250 acres of land, and protesters want the buyout to apply to anyone who feels exposure to potential health hazards.
The company says it has no plans for another offer, The News reports.
The refinery's operation includes crude distillation, catalytic cracking, hydrotreating, reforming, alkylation, sulfur recovery and coking.
