Resident complaints about paint odors from Stellantis NV's Mack Assembly Plant in Detroit have continued to trickle into the state's environmental agency in recent months, records show.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy’s air assistance program got odor reports from the east Detroit facility on at least a dozen days from the start of April through early July. They included residents complaining of "strong paint odor," "very strong paint smell" and "paint fumes."

"The smell is there all the time but today is nasty," one April report said.

EGLE investigators responded to several of the neighbor calls and messages, records indicate, but only detected a "light intensity" of odors in one instance in April, which officials wrote didn't rise to the level of an air quality violation.

Three years after Stellantis finished expanding the plant that now builds the Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV — and a year after the company installed additional emissions equipment meant to knock down the paint shop smells and prevent more air quality violations — nearby residents are still reporting problems.

Their frustration was aired this week in Congress. On Wednesday, U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, told Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan that his agency needs to be more aggressive in addressing resident concerns on Beniteau Street.

"They have a massive Stellantis auto plant complex in their backyard," she said during a hearing of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability. "It’s been making them sick, and ruining their quality of life for years. Some can’t even have outings outside with their families, barbecues, birthday parties. The odor is unbearable. I’ve experienced it myself, Administrator."

In late 2021, nearby residents filed a complaint with the EPA under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, alleging discriminatory environmental permitting by state regulators that had allowed the plant's expansion and emissions and harmed the neighborhood of mostly Black residents.

Tlaib asked Regan why recent negotiations toward an informal resolution agreement between the parties — the EPA, EGLE and the residents — had apparently cut the residents out of the process, after they were initially able to participate in several sessions.

She said state regulators had decided, "Nah, we don't want to talk to them (the residents) anymore."

"I’m asking the EPA to take this complaint seriously," Tlaib told the EPA leader. "Set a precedent that you care, and watch, no matter who is the governor, no matter who is in charge, it’s important that we’re consistent.”

Regan said the Title VI case remained active so he couldn't comment, but pledged to take the concerns back to lawyers working on it. In a statement sent Thursday by EPA spokesperson Rachel Linduska, the agency said it doesn't comment on pending matters, but noted that beyond the Title VI process, it is "supporting EGLE to find different ways to engage with communities and local government, including the city of Detroit, to identify ways to address conditions surrounding the Stellantis facility."

An EGLE spokesperson, Jill Greenberg, said the agency is committed to working with the EPA's Office of External Civil Rights Compliance on resolving the complaint brought by residents, but declined to say more since the negotiations are confidential. She didn't specifically address Tlaib's concerns about the residents being cut out of the negotiation process.

A Stellantis spokesperson, Jodi Tinson, said in a statement that multiple agencies had found nearby air quality "meets all health-based screening standards and is well below the levels that are considered harmful according to applicable federal standards and Michigan Air Toxics Screening Levels."

She added that ambient air quality monitoring on-site shows neighborhood air is "consistent with other areas of the city." Tinson also pointed out that EGLE has responded to odor complaints and "not confirmed a nuisance odor," and the company also monitors for odors.

Other upgrades for the neighborhood have also come thanks to a Stellantis community benefits agreement with the city, Tinson noted, including $1.8 million in home repair grants, and a joint effort with the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment authority to provide additional repair grants for homeowners.

Robert Shobe, a longtime Beniteau Street resident whose home is a few hundred feet from the plant and its paint shop, said he appreciated Tlaib's concern about him and his neighbors.

"She's keeping us relevant, and keeping us in the fight," he said Thursday. "She's one of the few who continuously has something to say."

Shobe noted Stellantis now is asking the state to increase its emissions limits for particulate matter at Mack — a decision currently undergoing a public comment period. Stellantis says it needs the increase after installing additional equipment called regenerative thermal oxidizers, or RTO, which both control some pollutants but also release some. The company has said the particulate matter permit limits for the facility are among the lowest in the industry.

A public hearing on Stellantis' request had been scheduled for next week at Southeastern High School, but is now postponed due to water damage, EGLE officials said. The agency says it will soon announce a new location and date, and will also extend the public comment period, which was previously set to close July 23.

Shobe said he's convinced there are only two ways forward for residents living in the shadow of the plant: it shuts down, or they move farther away.

"We are entirely too close to these pollutants," he said.

Andrew Bashi, an attorney with the Great Lakes Environmental Law Center who is representing the residents in their complaint with the EPA, said efforts to reach a informal resolution appeared to be moving smoothly at first.

There were a couple of meetings involving the agencies, residents, and a mediator, and in early 2023, EPA officials visited the neighborhood. They talked with residents, heard about their health concerns, even smelled the paint themselves, according to Bashi.

Since then, though, there haven't been any meetings between the parties. Eventually, Bashi said EPA officials told him that EGLE didn't want to continue to negotiate alongside the residents. And more recently, he said he and the residents learned about a draft agreement that had been drawn up by the EPA with input from EGLE, which failed to address many of the residents' core concerns.

The residents wrote a letter earlier this year to the EPA saying they no longer planned to "lend legitimacy" to the Title VI resolution process.

"They're not quitting," Bashi said, adding there are other legal avenues the residents could pursue to challenge the state's permitting. "We're hoping the EPA will come to its senses, and for once will do the right thing."

Beniteau residents earlier this year told The Detroit News that the new emissions equipment last summer had cut down on the paint odors. Through last fall and into March, the agency reported receiving 10 complaints of odors from the plant, which EGLE officials said was a significant drop from before the RTO equipment went in. But the most recent string of resident odor reports — including five in a two-week stretch of June alone — suggest the problem hasn't gone away.

Greenberg said the agency strives to be "responsive to every complaint" and that EGLE would continue to "monitor the facility and respond to complaints when necessary."

At the Wednesday committee meeting, Tlaib urged Regan to do more for the "predominantly Black, very working class, low-income, poor community" that lives next to the plant. She said residents aren't seeing the change yet that they need to keep living there.

“Fight for them like you live on Beniteau," Tlaib said. "Fight for them like you live there."

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