Democratic voters in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District have a choice in the 2026 primary election: re-elect incumbent Rashida Tlaib or pick someone new.

Tlaib is seeking her fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She’ll have to defeat two challengers whose names appear on the August ballot. One is former state lawmaker Shanelle Jackson of Detroit. The other is Inkster Mayor Byron Nolen.

WDET’s Pat Batcheller asked the candidates why they’re running. Tlaib says she loves her constituents and wants to keep serving them.

“They want somebody that’s unbought and unapologetic,” she says. “Getting people through everyday challenges and issues is as important as any bill I could ever pass because it changed lives immediately.”

Who is Rashida Tlaib?

Tlaib was born and raised in Detroit, the eldest of 14 children whose ancestors are Palestinian.

“I was always protecting my siblings and even my mother as I would translate for her at the cashier counter,” she says.

Tlaib put herself through law school, worked at the Sugar Law Center, and served in the Michigan House of Representatives for six years. She became interested in politics as an aide to her legislative predecessor, Steve Tobocman.

“He said, ‘I’ll teach you how to kill a bill,'” she recalls. “When he was term-limited out, he asked me to run.”

She’s not shy

As a state lawmaker, and then as a congresswoman, Tlaib has been outspoken on many issues, such as immigration. Many of her constituents are immigrants who live in southwest Detroit, where she grew up. She also represents Dearborn, which has a large Arab American and Muslim population. Tlaib has criticized the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants regardless of their legal status. She wants to abolish Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“We’re getting complaints over and over that they’re deporting U.S. citizens,” she says. “We can have a comprehensive, very humane, and fair immigration system without this aggressive, very violent, militarized agency.”

Tlaib has been Washington’s most vocal critic of Israel and its war in Gaza, which has killed thousands of Palestinians. Israel says it’s defending itself from terrorist groups such as Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. 

Tlaib has voted against giving financial aid or weapons to Israel. And she doesn’t apologize for it.

“More of my colleagues are joining in now,” she says. “We’re talking about over 100 now who also support ending the funding.”

Roots in the community

Tlaib’s primary opponents say she spends too much time focusing on Israel and foreign policy than she does working for her constituents. One challenger, former state lawmaker Shanelle Jackson, called Tlaib ineffective, saying Congress has only passed one of her bills in eight years.

Tlaib says that’s not true. She says the House passed several bills she sponsored, including a federal water assistance program. 

“I was able to get $1.1 billion to help families get their water turned back on,” she says. “And $68 million back to the district through the community-funded projects from the Boys and Girls Clubs for home repair.”

Affordability goes beyond high prices

Tlaib agrees with Jackson and her other challenger, Inkster Mayor Byron Nolen, that affordability is a big issue in the 12th district. But she says it’s about more than just the cost of gasoline, food, and housing—it’s greed.

“The big banks, the corporations, the industries, all of them are extracting from our federal government and pulling all these resources away,” she says. “It’s all profit-driven, and it leaves a lot our families in survivor mode.”

Tlaib blames President Trump for much of the nation’s problems. He is one of Tlaib’s biggest critics. If House Democrats regain the majority in the 2026 midterm elections, Tlaib says she won’t back down during his final two years in office. And she resists her opponents’ calls to compromise with Republicans.

“How do you compromise with a fascist government that thinks my neighbors’ votes should count or that polluting their communities is OK?” she asks. “I push back no matter how unpopular it is.”

Whoever wins the primary election will likely win the general election in November because the 12th district is a Democratic stronghold. Voting ends on August 4.

Democratic voters in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District have a choice in the 2026 primary election: re-elect incumbent Rashida Tlaib or pick someone new.

Tlaib is seeking her fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She’ll have to defeat two challengers whose names appear on the August ballot. One Inkster Mayor Byron Nolen. The is former state lawmaker Shanelle Jackson of Detroit. 

WDET’s Pat Batcheller asked Jackson why she’s running against Tlaib. She says the district needs someone who focuses more on what’s happening in Detroit.

“I feel like we’re a stool for her to stand on to move and project the needs of another group of people that are suffering somewhere else,” Jackson says.

Who is Shanelle Jackson?

Jackson describes herself as “a Detroit girl through and through.” She attended Detroit Public Schools, the University of Michigan, and Marygrove College. She earned a master’s degree in social justice and political science and became a lawyer. At age 26, she ran for a seat in the Michigan House of Representatives. She won, becoming the youngest woman of color ever elected to the state Legislature. She served six years from 2007 through 2012. 

Jackson says she became an effective Democratic policy maker by working with Republicans.

“I drove across the state, I met them in their districts,” she says. “I learned the art of policymaking, moving policies to change folks’ lives.” 

Jackson says Tlaib lacks that ability.

“You have to have a willingness to be amenable to the other side,” Jackson says. “You’ve got to be willing to sit with them to work with them, understand them, learn from them, listen.”

Addressing poverty is critical

Jackson says affordability is the top issue facing the 12th district. She says the root of that is poverty, which affects almost half of Metro Detroit. She says the way to break that cycle is to help people find work.

“We do that with education,” Jackson says. “But we also do that with investment in job training, public-private partnerships.”

The former lawmaker says Congress needs to help people who receive public assistance avoid what she calls the “benefits cliff.”

“What happens is you get men and women who are on assistance, they get a small raise,” she says. “But as soon as they get that, they get pushed off assistance.”

Jackson says she hopes to restore people’s trust in government. 

“Some folks feel disenchanted with the process,” she says. “I’ll tell your story; I’ll make sure that our voice and our perspective is heard.”

Finding common ground

Despite her reservations about Tlaib’s effectiveness, Jackson says she shares many of the congresswoman’s positions.

“She’s a great advocate on social justice issues,” Jackson says. Both women support women’s rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and universal health care. But Israel is a different story.

Tlaib has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s government and its war in Gaza, which has killed thousands of Palestinians. Israel says it’s defending itself from terrorist groups such as Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. 

Tlaib has voted against giving financial aid or weapons to Israel. Jackson says she stands with Israel, but doesn’t want the U.S. to rush into any conflict.

“I will work toward more diplomatic efforts stopping this war that the president went into without going to Congress for authorization,” she says.

Jackson also says she would reform Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Tlaib says the government should abolish ICE.

Whoever wins the primary election will likely win the general election in November because the 12th district is a Democratic stronghold. Voting ends on August 4.

Democratic voters in Michigan’s 12th Congressional District have a choice in the 2026 primary election: re-elect incumbent Rashida Tlaib or pick someone new.

Tlaib is seeking her fifth term in the U.S. House of Representatives. She’ll have to defeat two challengers whose names appear on the August ballot. One is former state lawmaker Shanelle Jackson of Detroit. The other is Inkster Mayor Byron Nolen.

WDET’s Pat Batcheller asked the candidates why they’re running. Nolen says he says he wants to change the tone of American politics.

“Everybody’s standing in their corner and looking at each other, saying ‘I hate you, I don’t want to talk to you,’ and they’re not getting things done,” the mayor says. “I pride myself on getting things done.”

Who is Byron Nolen?

Nolen was born and raised in Inkster. He became a lawyer and represented city residents in a lawsuit over water rates. After they won their case, Nolen says people urged him to run for mayor. He was reluctant at first.

“We were a city manager form of government at the time,” he recalls. “I would just be a glorified city council person.” 

Nolen ran anyway and the city revised its charter to give the mayor more power. Voters elected him in 2015, ousted him in 2019, and returned him to office in 2023.

He says affordability is the most important issue in the 12th district. If elected, Nolen says he would work to make their lives better. 

“Do what you need to do to improve the quality of life,” he says. “If you can’t do that, get out of the way and let somebody else take over.”

Nolen says he believes Rep. Tlaib has lost that focus.

“I think she’s more of an activist than she is actually a politician or someone who’s trying to get things done for the district,” he argues.

Nolen says he prioritizes local issues

Tlaib has been an outspoken critic of Israel’s government and its war in Gaza, which has killed thousands of Palestinians. Israel says it’s defending itself from terrorist groups such as Hamas, which killed more than 1,400 people in Israel on October 7, 2023. 

Tlaib has voted against giving financial aid or weapons to Israel. Nolen says he hopes the U.S. changes its policies and makes future aid to Israel conditional. He says that might have happened if Tlaib had openly supported then-Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election. 

“You could have had that conversation with Kamala Harris,” he says. “Now, you’re trying to have it with Donald Trump. That’s going to be tough.”

While Nolen might differ with Tlaib’s approach to foreign policy, he does agree with her on many domestic issues, including women’s reproductive rights.

“Your body, your choice, you do what you need to do,” he says. “I don’t think men should be part of the conversation.”

Nolen says he also supports LGBTQ+ rights and universal health care, just as Tlaib does. 

He pledges to work across the aisle

Whoever wins the primary election will likely win the general election in November because the 12th district is a Democratic stronghold. If the party wins control of Congress, Nolen says he would work with Republicans to get things done during the final two years of President Trump’s second term.

“The president is only going to sign bills that he wants to sign,” the mayor says. “You figure out what his priority list is, look at what you want to get done, see if there’s some common ground, and try to go after those things.”

People who’ve been putting up with thick, smelly clumps of algae in Lake St. Clair may get some relief soon.

Macomb County has contracted two marine excavators to start removing muck from parts of the Lake in the fall. Each needs to get permits from the state and federal governments, which have jurisdiction over the lake.

The organisms, known collectively as Microseira wollei, have been growing on the bottom of the lake since about the mid 2010s. 

Macomb County Public Works Commissioner Candice Miller says they start by forming tiny balls about as big as a person’s thumbnail.

“And when you have an onshore breeze, all these little balls roll up onto the shore, which doesn’t sound like much until there are literally billions of them,” she says. 

The algae form mats on the water that can be several feet thick. Miller says it keeps growing and begins to vegetate over time.

“It almost looks like land, but it’s not,” she says. “Now if that’s happened to your boat well, whether you’re a resident, a residential property owner, or whether you’re a marina owner, you can imagine the negative impact.”

The three-year pilot project will focus on three specific areas where water is stagnant. One is near Veterans Memorial Park in St. Clair Shores. The other two are Campau Bay and the marina at Hidden Cove condominiums in Harrison Township.

The Michigan Legislature appropriated $880,000 to begin removing the muck, which officials will study over the next three years. Miller says she hopes to find a long-term solution.

“We all know as soon as we dredge it, it will begin to come back,” she says. “But will it come back in a month, a year? We’re sort of in the learning process.”

Republican state Representative Alicia St. Germaine and Democratic state Senator Kevin Hertel worked together to put the project in the state budget. Miller says that kind of bipartisan support is critical to the cleanup’s success.

“The water doesn’t know if it’s a Republican or a Democrat or an independent or Green Party or whatever,” she says. “It’s just something that all of us live here, we all have to solve this together.”

Miller says it’ll take a lot more money and time to remove and manage algae in the lake. She hopes state and federal agencies step up to protect the waterway.

Metro Detroit Youth Day is a tradition that arose from tragedy.

After a rash of deadly youth violence in the 1980s, then-Detroit Mayor Coleman Young gathered business leaders together and asked them to create an event for children that would keep them out of trouble.

Businessman Ed Deeb came up with the idea for whole day when kids could play and learn.

Metro Detroit Youth Day annually draws thousands of young people to Belle Isle in the middle of summer.

Deeb presided over the festivities every year, with the help of corporate and nonprofit sponsors.

When Deeb died in 2025, his family looked for someone else to stage and manage Youth Day and continue his legacy.

His son, George Deeb, says it wasn’t easy.

“He was convinced he was going to live forever, and he didn’t really leave clear instructions,” the younger Deeb says. “We had to figure out who were the logical partners that could have interest.”

After interviewing several of those partners, Deeb says the choice became clear: The Boys and Girls Clubs of Greater Detroit.

“They had the budgets, operating teams, marketing prowess, and knew how to run big events successfully,” Deeb says. “And they had a mission of serving the kids of Detroit.”

Bigger and better

One of the first things the clubs did was to expand the event from one day to five.

“They had long wanted to do events to serve kids in a much bigger way,” Deeb says. “And their vision was, ‘why limit it to one day?’.”

They also decided the event shouldn’t be limited to Belle Isle. The 2026 edition will begin on the island, with events throughout the week at Eastern Market, the Joe Louis Greenway, Michigan Central, and the Ralph C. Wilson, Jr. Centennial Park.

George Deeb says while some things have changed, the mission is the same: to serve the youth of Detroit.

“We know there’s a lot of challenges that you’re dealing with as a young person, and you don’t have to go through those by yourself,” he says. “We’ve got your backs.”

And he says his father would be proud of what’s happening now.

“He invested his entire life into it,” Deeb says. “This is what he would have wanted.”

Metro Detroit Youth Day takes place Aug. 11-15.

If the heat doesn’t get you, the foul air might.

Wildfire smoke is making it hard to breathe in metro Detroit. The Environmental Protection Agency recommends staying indoors because of the conditions outdoors. 

The EPA’s air quality index measures pollutants such as ozone, dust, and fine particles. The primary pollutant in Detroit is particulate matter that is 2.5 micrometers or less in diameter.

An index of 0 to 50 is considered good. Anything over 300 is hazardous. 

The AirNow website showed AQIs over 500 for PM 2.5 as of 9:00 a.m. EDT.

Where’s it coming from?

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy has issued an air quality alert for the entire state. EGLE says the smoke is coming from wildfires in Canada and Minnesota.

Corey Behnke is a meteorologist at the National Weather Service office in White Lake Township. He says a shift in the jet stream is responsible.

“The jet stream that was confined to northern Canada earlier this week is now pushed down in the northern Great Lakes, just over northern Lake Huron,” he says. “This jet stream is bringing well organized northwest winds to the region.”

Metro Detroit was already dealing with heat and humidity before the smoke arrived. Behnke says the high pressure system responsible for the hot weather is starting to weaken. But that’s adding to the smoke problem.

 “As that breaks down, now we’re starting to see greater mixing throughout the atmosphere and is helping transport that smoke down to the surface,” he says.

Relief is coming

Behnke says the smoke could linger through Friday before spotty rain and milder temperatures move in for the weekend.

“There will be some rain chances beginning Friday afternoon, and then we could see rain chances again Saturday afternoon,” he says. “No widespread rain across the region, but definitely some chances for some showers and thunderstorms.”

The forecast calls for highs in the mid-80s Saturday and Sunday.

What to do

EGLE recommends these steps to protect yourself from smoke:

• Stay indoors and avoid strenuous activities.
• Wear an N-95 mask if you must be outside.
• Run forced air systems on “fan” or “cooling.” Set window air conditioners to “recirculate.”
• Limit activities that create indoor pollution such as frying foods.
• Limit outdoor activities such as campfires and using gas-powered vehicles.

Steve Yzerman won 3 Stanley Cups as the captain of the of the Detroit Red Wings.

His time as general manager wasn’t nearly as successful.

The team announced that Yzerman is stepping down as GM after seven years, during which the Wings never qualified for the National Hockey League playoffs.

His departure comes about two months after team captain Dylan Larkin asked Yzerman to trade him to a contender while he can still be productive. Larkin turns 30 on July 30.

It also follows another late season collapse that took the Red Wings out of playoff contention after the Winter Olympics in Italy.

Detroit Free Press hockey writer Helene St. James says Hockeytown is a mess.

“The team is in shambles that I don’t think we’ve seen since 1982 when Bruce Norris tried to celebrate 50 years of his family’s ownership and was booed off the ice,” she says. “It’s such a bad look.”

The man with the (Yzer)plan

When owner Chris Ilitch hired Yzerman in 2019, Detroit had missed the postseason for three straight years. He inherited an aging roster, bloated contracts, and a barren farm system, not to mention Larkin.

Yzerman set out to build the Wings from within by drafting talented young players. The first player he drafted was Moritz Seider, a gritty defenseman from Germany. Seider quickly developed into one of Detroit’s best players, along with Sweden’s Lucas Raymond, who Yzerman drafted a year later.

Still, St. James says Yzerman’s approach to building a roster was too conservative.

“He hasn’t made any bold trades or free agent signings that would excite a fan base,” she says. “I think that’s a huge part of the problem.”

Because of his success as a player, Wings fans might eventually forgive Yzerman’s missteps. But St. James says they might not forget them, either.

“I don’t think you can just sweep this under the rug, this seven years of futility,” she says. 

Who’s next?

It’s not clear yet who will replace Yzerman. His top assistants were Kris Draper, who played with Yzerman, and Sean Horcroff. 

Larkin’s future in Detroit also remains in doubt. Could he change his mind and stay with the only team he’s played for? Or might the next GM be inclined to deal him? And if he does come back, would he still be the captain?

St. James says only time will tell.

“They can’t just trade him because he wants to be traded,” she says, noting that he has a no-trade clause. “They have to get players who can help them now in return.”

Detroit’s Cadillac Heights neighborhood was once a thriving Black middle-class community. Today, parts of it are more industrial than residential.

One company—Crown Enterprises—has acquired almost every parcel surrounding its Kronos Concrete plant on East McNichols Road near Conant Street. Most of the homes in that area have been demolished. Of the few that remain, the people who live in them blame the owners of the concrete plant and the city for the noise, the dust, and the traffic they deal with every day.

Bridge Detroit and ProPublica spent more than a year investigating what’s happening in Cadillac Heights.

WDET’s Pat Batcheller spoke with Bridge Detroit’s Jena Brooker. She says residents are used to living next to industry, owing to old zoning laws that still exist dating back to the 1940s. But she adds that more recent developments have worsened things.

The following interview has been edited for clarity.

Pat Batcheller: What was Cadillac Heights like before the concrete plant started operating?

Jena Brooker: Residents were used to living next to industry to a degree in this neighborhood. And there was even a truck depot on this lot where the concrete plant is that the Morouns have owned since 1966. But then when the concrete plant went in in 2022, residents said that the neighborhood really changed. There are streets that used to have houses on them and nicely maintained lawns and trees. And those whole streets now are completely empty, and the lots are vacant.

PB: You mentioned the Moroun family, which owns the Ambassador Bridge. Do they also own Kronos Concrete?

JB: Yes, and then they also have another concrete operation by the Ambassador Bridge on the riverfront. They own several other concrete plants throughout Southeast Michigan, and they’re expected to open one soon in Toledo, Ohio, and in Windsor.

PB: How did they end up owning so much property in Cadillac Heights?

JB: They bought this central lot where they owned a truck depot and operated it since 1966. And over the decades, they acquired some properties in this neighborhood. They have property across the city, so that’s not unusual. By 2019, they had about 80 properties.

Then in 2019, Detroit had this historic land swap deal where they wanted to give land to Fiat Chrysler Automobiles to open the first new car plant in 30 years. To do that, the city orchestrated this deal where they were shifting around different land.

The Morouns, who own Crown Enterprises, gave up a lot on the east side. In exchange, they were given 34 [Detroit] Land Bank [Authority] parcels in this neighborhood. And from 2019 until now, we also saw at least 16 private individuals sell their properties to Crown. That land swap deal also gave Crown first rights on any properties that enter into the Land Bank until 2034.

PB: How has the concrete plant affected the neighborhood?

JB: Residents say that it’s been dirty and noisy, and just a general nuisance in their everyday lives. We submitted many Freedom of Information Act public records requests, and we found that more than 80 complaints have been submitted to the city and the state regarding dust.

Residents described literal whiteout conditions, having to go inside when they were doing yard work. One of the families we featured had two kids under five and had just had a baby. They were concerned about how the dust was affecting their development. Another resident has COPD, and so the dust is a major concern, coating cars and entering people’s homes. Then there is the noise, the increased truck traffic, and the bright industrial lights from having this industrial operation right in the middle of a neighborhood.

PB: Have these operations broken any kind of laws or regulations?

JB: When the concrete plant was first set up, Crown did not have a permit to do so. They had applied for a permit. They hadn’t gotten it yet, but then they put it up. The city ordered it to be taken down, and then what we saw after that was the city giving special allowances to Crown to operate this whole thing. You’re not supposed to be able to get permits from the city if you have outstanding blight tickets, but we saw that happen in multiple instances. We also saw that they participated in the Wayne County tax auction and were able to purchase a house, even though they had outstanding blight tickets.

PB: How has the city responded to complaints from the neighbors?

JB: The city says that inspectors go out three times a week. The company was required to submit a fugitive dust plan of how they will control dust from exiting the site and going into the neighborhood. That includes things like watering around the plant daily, filtering the dust on the site, and reducing the speed of traffic. When Mayor [Mary] Sheffield took office, she directed the city to install some more air monitors around the plant. But the concern is we have so many air monitors across the city. What’s the next step once we have this data that the air quality isn’t great?

PB: How has the company responded?

JB: The company has said that they’ve increased fugitive dust protections by watering the site every day – they have a water truck that goes around the plant and wets the streets to keep the dust down – that they have never NOT been compliant with city laws and ordinances, and that this represents the biggest investment in the neighborhood in in recent memory.

PB: What promises did they make, and which ones, if any, have they kept?

JB: They promised to create a vegetative buffer and plant trees. In renderings that they publish online, it shows brand new sidewalks around their properties. And when you go out to the neighborhood today, it looks maybe worse than what it looked like before.

PB: How long did it take you to research and report this story?

JB: I’ve been working on this story for a few years. We had published a few articles in Bridge Detroit. But since July 2025, I really took the time to work with ProPublica for the whole year, looking at what this neighborhood used to be like.

Going back to one of the people I feature the most, her family built the first homes in this neighborhood in 1917. It took a long time to get a picture of what this neighborhood was like and how it’s transformed throughout the decades with the help of the city and the state, and the presence of Crown Enterprises.

PB: What do you think the next chapter in this story is going to be?

JB: I plan to continue to follow up. I was recently in the neighborhood dropping printed copies of the story off, and it was dusty. It’s still an issue. They recently got tickets for the dust, but they weren’t fined because of this special agreement they have with the city. There are still some residents left there, and they deserve to be protected and continue to focus on environmental justice stories in Detroit.

Michigan drivers are feeling less pain at the pump.

AAA and Gas Buddy say the statewide average price for a gallon of regular unleaded gas is less than $4 per gallon as of July 7. The last time it was that low was in April, a few weeks after the United States attacked Iran in March.

Iran responded by closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic. That sent gas prices up to almost $5 per gallon in May. At the same time, the average cost of diesel fuel rose to $6.20 per gallon, a new record for Michigan.

When did prices begin falling?

Tensions in the Persian Gulf have eased since the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding in June, aiming toward ending the war.

Iran is now allowing more tankers through the Strait of Hormuz.

Gas Buddy senior petroleum analyst Patrick DeHaan says oil prices have fallen to their lowest level since the war began.

“OPEC+ has increased production, another piece of good news,” he says. “Prices are back below $70 per barrel.”

Oil prices are low, gas not so much

But the drop in oil prices hasn’t affected fuel prices as much as it could have. DeHaan says that’s because of Ukrainian attacks on Russian oil refineries.

“You can have all the oil in the world,” he says. “But if there aren’t refineries to turn that into gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel, you could have very low oil prices but very high fuel prices.”

DeHaan says prices could go up 10 to 20 cents per gallon by mid-July due to less refining capacity at home, too.

A power outage at the Marathon Petroleum refinery in southwest Detroit on July 5 temporarily halted operations there. It also forced the company to burn off excess gases to keep them from building up. Marathon says power was restored on July 6 and it’s working to resume normal operations.

DeHaan says even a short delay could affect prices.

“Many times, brief disruptions can lead to multiple days of down time,” he says. “We don’t have a full picture on exactly how long that refinery could be impacted.”

Domestic supply dwindles

A lack of refining capacity could mean the U.S. dips into its strategic oil reserve to address any shortages or price increases.

DeHaan says that reserve is getting low.

“It’s now at its lowest level since 1983, with about 326 million barrels,” he says. “Having less oil available strategically could be problematic down the road.”

DeHaan says while gas prices are trending down, several factors could send them back up, such as a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.

“We’re weeks away from entering the peak of hurricane season.” he says. “And with continued Ukrainian attacks on Russian refineries, that could be a problem.”

Grosse Ile sits in the lower Detroit River between the Downriver communities of Wayne County and Canada. Native populations inhabited the island for thousands of years before French explorers arrived in the 17th century and gave the island its name.

On July 6, 1776, two days after the Second Continental Congress ratified the Declaration of Independence, 18 Potawatomi chiefs signed a deed transferring ownership of Grosse Ile to brothers Alexander and William Macomb. The British fur traders became the first Europeans to lay claim to the island.

Grosse Ile residents celebrate the 250th anniversary of that signing on July 6, 2026. Residents can view the original deed at the Grosse Ile Township Hall from July 6-8.

Tony Krukowski is the vice president of the Grosse Ile Historical Society. He met WDET’s Pat Batcheller at the island’s history museum.

Krukowski says the Potawatomi chiefs likely viewed the deed transfer differently than the Macomb brothers. 

The following interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

Tony Krukowski: To the Potawatomi, it probably meant that they were just sharing the property, just like you couldn’t own the sky and the moon and the air. They felt like it was something that would be jointly enjoyed by both the Potawatomi and the British colonists that were coming here to settle.

Pat Batcheller: It sounds like that didn’t quite happen that way.

TK: Well, in the minds of a European person, somebody from Britain, there was a strong sense of ownership of property, so that was a different concept. The Potawatomi couldn’t quite appreciate what William and Alexander Macomb were attempting to do, and vice versa; they didn’t understand what the Native Americans felt about property.

PB: Who were the Macomb brothers?

TK: Well, they came to this area primarily as traders. They would trade materials in this area to the British and whoever else wanted to buy things. It’s kind of interesting that William Macomb was considered to be a neo-American, but he was also a member of the Canadian Parliament. So, he kind of played both sides, whichever seemed to work best for him financially.

Editor’s note: Alexander Macomb’s son Alexander was the commanding general of the U.S. Army from 1828 to 1841. Macomb County is named for the general.

PB: I looked it up and found that both brothers had enslaved people. Do you know whether any of them were here on Grosse Ile?

TK: We believe that there may have been at least one enslaved person who was maintaining the mansion that was built by William Macomb.

PB: What happened to the Potawatomi after that?

TK: Well, they probably moved farther west. Different tribes would come in and out of this area, depending on whether they were seeking food to eat. They might meet here with other tribes. It was a pretty fluid movement among the Native Americans in this area.

PB: When did Grosse Ile officially become American territory?

TK: It wasn’t until after the American Revolutionary War, and even years after that, the British still had control of this area. We have a picture of a fort that was built here in 1815 because there was still concern about the British and some Native American tribes coming over from Canada and burning some of the homes and the farms.

PB: What has the museum done to preserve or share the Potawatomi history? Do you have artifacts here, for example?

TK: We do have artifacts, and we have tried to get more and more information on Native Americans in this area. They were here for probably at least 25,000 years, so they have quite a story to tell as well.

PB: How did the island evolve after the Macomb brothers arrived?

TK: There were some French residents that came in here, and there was a concept of what they called ribbon farms, where the farms were long and narrow. And access to the river was a lifeline for the people who lived here.

PB: What is Grosse Ile like today?

TK: It’s still a very small community. We have a little over 10,000 people. It’s very rural, but we have the advantages of being close to Detroit. If we want to go to any kind of events and things, that’s available to us. But if you live on the island, what you’re going to sense is you’re surrounded by forest, and we have bike paths, access to the water. It’s really a beautiful place to live.

PB: Do you guide historical tours?

TK: One of the things we’re doing now is we’re going into the second grade at least two or three times a year to talk to the students there about the history of Grosse Ile. If somebody calls us and says, ‘we’d like to come to the museum,’ we’ll try to work some time out that’s convenient for them. We have our lighthouse tour in September, where we actually take people by bus over to the lighthouse, take them out to the lighthouse, go up to the top, and tell them about some of the reasons why we have a lighthouse and some of the history behind Grosse Ile.

PB: When you talk to the kids, or when somebody comes here to the museum, what is the most common question they ask, and how do you respond?

TK: It depends on where their interests lie. Say an engineer comes in, he’s very interested in the invention of the outboard motor. We have kids come in, they’re very interested in Native Americans and look at some of the arrowheads. Some of the people who are really into railroads are very interested in that this building that we’re operating out of used to be the railroad depot and that we have a customs house just about 100 feet away.

PB: The railroad depot is important because there used to be rail traffic that came across the island.

TK: Exactly. There used to be a railroad track where current road, Grosse Ile Parkway, runs to the free bridge. That free bridge used to be a trestle, and the road used to be a railroad track, and the railroad track ran across to Stony Island, which is just to the east of us. And then between Stony Island and Canada, there was a ferry service that ran that would carry railroad cars over to Stony Island, where they would be coupled and then brought to Grosse Ile and beyond.

PB: Are there still remnants of that bridge over here?

TK: Yes, if you go across the road and down the steps at what we call Sunrise Park, and turn to your left, you can still see some of the stone abutments. And then in low water times, you can still see parts of the supports for the for the trestle that used to run the Stony Island.

PB: Anything that we didn’t talk about that you’d like to mention?

TK: I think it’s really important that this was where the ZMC-2, the only all metal-clad dirigible was launched. Orville Wright actually came to the island to see the launching of that. We also have a hotel registry that shows that President Calvin Coolidge and his wife came here, probably to negotiate with Henry Ford about having support on his campaign.

The Grosse Ile History Museum is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursdays and 1-4 p.m. Sundays.

The Detroit Red Wings do not have a first round pick in the 2026 National Hockey League draft. They traded it, along with a third round selection, to the St. Louis Blues for defenseman Justin Faulk in March.

At the time, the Wings were in a good position to reach the NHL’s Stanley Cup playoffs. They thought adding Faulk would bolster their chances of making the postseason for the first time in almost a decade.

Instead, Detroit collapsed, losing 13 of their last 19 games. The team now has the longest playoff drought in the NHL at 10 seasons.

Besides giving up a first round draft pick, the Wings could lose their team captain this offseason. Dylan Larkin has asked for a trade, preferably to a playoff contender. Larkin has played his entire career in Detroit. But he turns 30 in July and wants to win a Stanley Cup while he can still play at a high level.

Helene St. James covers hockey for the Detroit Free Press. She says Larkin’s desire to leave traces back to the Winter Olympics in February, when he and Team USA won the gold medal.

“I was there covering the team, and I’ve never seen him look happier,” she says. “I think it really hit home to him what he has been missing out on in Detroit.”

Larkin has a no-trade clause but can waive it if General Manager Steve Yzerman finds a team willing to acquire Larkin.

Deal or no deal?

St. James says Yzerman doesn’t have to trade Larkin. If he does, he would want a similar player in return.

“He would need to get an established NHL player in his mid-to late-20s who can play center,” she says. “They really need value players now.”

Larkin listed the Florida Panthers as one of his preferred destinations. They won the Stanley Cup in 2025 but missed the postseason in 2026. And they have already made a big roster move that makes a deal for Larkin unlikely.

Florida acquired Larkin’s Olympics teammate Brady Tkachuk from the Ottawa Senators on June 21. Like Larkin, Tkachuk was a team captain and their statistics are similar. But Tkachuk is three years younger than Larkin. And the Panthers gave up several draft picks, including two first-rounders in this year’s draft.

St. James says trading Larkin for draft picks would set Detroit’s rebuild back by several years.

“Those guys are not going to materialize into NHL contributors for a few years, especially later in the draft,” she says.

A new leader waits in the wings

If Yzerman refuses to make a trade, then it would be up to Larkin to decide if he wants to play in 2026-27 or sit out the season. Either way, Yzerman and head coach Todd McLellan could pick a new captain to replace Larkin.

St. James says defenseman Moritz Seider would likely be that player.

“He has emerged as a leader in every respect, on the ice and off the ice,” she says. “He shows up all the time.”

Seider, 25, captained Germany’s national team in the 2026 Olympics. He was also the first player Yzerman drafted when he became GM in 2019.

Michigan has seen 22 confirmed tornadoes 2026, including three in Metro Detroit.

The National Weather Service has issued more than 50 tornado warnings statewide this year. Joel Fritsma has tracked every one of them online.

Fritsma is the chief meteorologist for Michigan Storm Chasers. The website launched in 2022 and hired Fritsma straight out of Central Michigan University, where he studied meteorology. He says their goal is to fill communication gaps between NWS and the public so people watching online have time to take shelter. 

“Every time there’s a severe thunderstorm warning or a tornado warning in the state, we’d be covering it live,” he says. “Since 2024, we haven’t missed a single warning.”

It’s “go” time

Fristma says he and his team start live streaming as soon as the weather service issues its first warnings for any severe event. And they don’t stop until the last warning comes out.

“Sometimes, it’s upwards of 10 to 11 hours,” he says. “It just depends on how long the storms want to go.”

And it doesn’t matter what time it is. Fritsma was live streaming when a brief tornado hit Lincoln Park between 2 and 3 a.m. on April 15. He doesn’t mind.

“I kind of like taking the night shift,” he says. “We always have at least one person on call throughout the day.”

Fristma says when the weather is fine, he’s still working full-time.

“We’re looking at the forecast multiple days in advance,” he says. “We host live streams prior to an event so that people can ask questions.”

A lot of people tune in

Fritsma says the website’s staff has grown from a handful of people to about 30 since 2022. And he says its audience has grown, too.

“We have over a million followers between all of our platforms,” he says. 

People can watch and interact with the live streams on Facebook and YouTube. And soon, they’ll be able to download a new mobile app.

Fritsma says the app will allow followers to get live streams on their phones and let them report storm damage.

“We have Messenger, we have Discord, there’s so many options,” he says. “And that information will be very crucial when we send it to the National Weather Service.”

The app is set to launch this summer.

Have you ever wondered which communities in Metro Detroit are part of the Downriver area, and how it got that name?

Listener Scott Troia of Ann Arbor wonders.

“I was curious about where the term ‘Downriver’ originated from: Who, when, why they started using it. Is it a geographic boundary, or is it cultural? Who identifies as being from Downriver?”

WDET’s Pat Batcheller does. He was born and raised in Trenton and has lived in Southgate with his wife Amy since 1999. Pat’s happy to answer Scott’s question.

What does “Downriver” mean?

As the name suggests, Downriver refers to those communities on the Detroit River as it flows down into Lake Erie. Humans have lived in the area for thousands of years. The term Downriver is more recent. It appears as two words in a 1917 magazine published by the city of Wyandotte. In 1963, Thomas J. Anderson wrote a book called “The History of Southgate and Downriver”—one word. Today, the term covers a lot more territory than just the riverfront.

Which communities make up Downriver?

That depends on who you ask. Lisa Wayne is the CEO of the Downriver Community Conference. The nonprofit helps people find jobs through the Michigan Works program. It also coordinates grants for its 20 member communities. 

“We serve Allen Park, Brownstown, Dearborn, Dearborn Heights, Ecorse, Flat Rock, Gibraltar, Grosse Ile, Huron Township, Lincoln Park, Melvindale, River Rouge, Riverview, Rockwood, Romulus, Southgate, Taylor, Trenton, Woodhaven and Wyandotte,” Wayne says.

The DCC started with 11 communities and includes Dearborn and Dearborn Heights. Many consider those cities to be outside of the traditional definition of Downriver. Ron Hinrichs grew up in Dearborn but didn’t consider himself a Downriver resident. 

“I remember someone asking me once, ‘where are you from?'” Hinrichs recalls. “And I said, ‘I’m from Dearborn.’ And they said, ‘oh, so you’re—you’re from Downriver.’ And I said, ‘I’m not from Downriver, I’m from Dearborn.'”

Hinrichs leads the Southern Wayne County Regional Chamber, which promotes the Downriver area. He says if you ask ten people where Downriver is, you’ll get ten different answers.

Where does Downriver end?

Downriver does not have defined borders, but most descriptions stop at the Huron River separating Wayne and Monroe counties. That would make Rockwood part of Downriver, but not its next-door neighbor, South Rockwood, a village in Monroe County’s Berlin Township. Stephanie Hawkins is the president of the Berlin Charter Township Historical Society. She says if you ask South Rockwood residents, they’ll say they feel closer to Downriver than Monroe.

“They mentioned that when they want to do something like go shopping, they go north because it is closer than driving all the way down to Monroe,” Hawkins says. “So, I think that’s why you’ll find that the folks who live in the village itself do identify with being Downriver.”

So do people in Taylor, which is not on the Detroit River. Karl Ziomek is Taylor’s communications director and a former journalist at the area’s paper of record, the News-Herald. He recalls newsroom arguments about how far west Downriver reaches.

“And there are a lot of people I think to this day who would believe that Taylor is even stretching it,” Ziomek says. “Certainly, Romulus does. It goes on the other side of Metro Airport, then people start going, ‘well wait a minute, is this really Downriver?”

Pearl Varner laughs at the suggestion that Romulus is part of Downriver because of its distance from the Detroit River. Her family has lived in Romulus for over a century. She runs the city’s historical museum. But Varner says if it brings more visitors to the museum and the downtown area, she’s fine with being considered Downriver.

“You want people to come and see what you’re doing, what your museum is like, what your city is like, what your people are like,” Varner says.

What are people like Downriver?

Each community is unique, but they all share common roots. Many are descendants of European immigrants who worked in factories or started their own businesses. Some settled in Wyandotte, where Ted Butkin has lived his whole life.

“We had a German festival, a Polish festival, a Mexican festival and there was one other that were just huge because everyone was represented in this melting pot of Wyandotte,” Butkin says.

Wyandotte is the second oldest incorporated city in Wayne County, after Detroit. Joe Gruber is the city’s economic development director. He says its vibrant downtown attracts people from Downriver and beyond.

“All of the small business owners and entrepreneurs in our community are really, really engaged and hard working,” Gruber says. “We try to offer a lot of fun quality-of-life events and opportunities for families to come, especially those events that are free.”

Anthony Beitel moved to Wyandotte a couple of years ago. Before that, he had lived in Detroit and the northern suburbs. Beitel says he didn’t know much about Downriver before relocating with his partner, who is from the area. He says he loves how people support the local economy.

“They have this whole ‘Shop The Dotte’ initiative, which is all about promoting small businesses,” Beitel says. “And it’s just really great to see that sense of community and everybody kind of supporting each other and lifting each other up.” 

Industry drove Downriver for decades, for better or worse

Small businesses have always been a vital part of the Downriver economy, but through much of the 20th century, heavy industry was the main source of jobs and tax revenue. It was also a major source of pollution, such as coal dust. Lisa Donovan lives in Brownstown Township but grew up in Wyandotte. She says sometimes when the wind blew, it turned houses black with ash.

“And they would have piles of coal next to the park in Wyandotte that’s on the waterfront, and you’d come home with ash on you.”

More: New book explains how working class shaped Downriver

Because of that, Donovan says some people—mainly outsiders—saw Downriver as a dirty place to live. That reputation lingered long after downturns in the automotive and steel industries forced many factories to close. Business and civic leaders suggested dumping Downriver in favor of something they thought sounded more attractive—Metro Shores. But, unlike coal dust, that name didn’t stick.

People have pride in Downriver, even those who are new to the area

Michael Echols moved from Detroit to Ecorse a couple of years ago. Ecorse started as one of Wayne County’s original townships in 1827. Today, the cities of Ecorse, Allen Park, Lincoln Park, Melvindale, River Rouge, Southgate, and Wyandotte comprise what used to be Ecorse Township.

Echols says Ecorse is a peaceful place.

“It’s a different variety of people down here, but it’s everybody getting on, and that’s the most beautiful part,” he says.

The river itself defines the region

Just a few hundred feet offshore from Ecorse is Mud Island, part of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. John Hartig once managed the refuge, which includes Grosse Ile and the entire Michigan shore of Lake Erie. He says it took decades to repair the industrial damage to the environment and restore the river’s natural habitat.

“We’ve seen some dramatic improvements in water quality,” he says. “Bald eagles are back, and peregrine falcons, osprey, lake whitefish, lake sturgeon, river otter and beaver are back.”

Downriver has its own culture

Hartig says the river’s revival is changing perceptions of Downriver, its people, and its culture. Linda Francetich is trying to do the same. 15 years ago, she started a website called Discover Downriver to promote the area’s cultural activities, such as festivals and concerts. Francetich says the area might not have the vibe of Royal Oak or Birmingham, but that’s OK.

“Everyone has their own regional culture,” she says. “But I think Downriver has a very unique culture because of how close everybody is and how supportive everybody is.”

Francetich says Downriver has a lot of musical talent, including bands such as 50 Amp Fuse and the Transit Brothers. Chris French plays trumpet for the Transit Brothers and the Downriver Community Band. He also owns a family law firm and organizes yearly concerts to benefit Downriver veterans. French says the region has a lot to offer, including a variety of real estate.

“You want a farm, we have farms,” he says. “We’ve got water everywhere, so you can buy a house on the water.”

Some of the most impressive homes on the water are on Grosse Ile, which sits in the middle of the Detroit River. Tony Krukowski is the vice president of the Grosse Ile Historical Museum. He says the island’s scenery is a big draw.

“People just love to drive around the island, especially around East River Road and West River Road to take in the natural scene,” he says.

Two bridges connect Grosse Ile to the rest of Downriver.   Listener Scott Troia, who asked the question, says he understands the area better now that we’ve connected the dots for him.

“What are the boundaries of it and do people from different communities actually self-identify with being part of Downriver that might be on some of those fringe cities? You very much covered those topics, really.”

Thanks, Scott. It’s why we’re here. 

WDET’s CuriosiD series answers your questions about everything Detroit. Subscribe to CuriosiD on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, NPR.org or wherever you get your podcasts.

We want to hear from you!

Have a question about Southeast Michigan’s history or culture? Send it our way at wdet.org/curious or fill out the form below. You ask, we answer.

Metro Detroit’s Downriver area is where heavy industry meets nature, creating a complicated dynamic between the economy and the environment.

Steel mills and other factories that once lined the Detroit River employed thousands of people from River Rouge south to Rockwood. Workers enjoyed the benefits of well-paying manufacturing jobs that bolstered the middle class. But they also recognized the environmental threats those factories posed to the land, the water, and the air around them.

Labor unions and other groups fought to protect the Downriver area’s natural resources and the recreational opportunities they provided.

Michigan State University labor historian Lisa M. Fine has studied the working class’s relationship with the communities where they live. She studied those bonds and wrote a book about them. It’s called “Downriver Detroit: The Working Class, the Environment, and the Bonds of Place.”

WDET’s Pat Batcheller, a Downriver native, spoke with Fine about her research. Here’s a transcript of their conversation, lightly edited for clarity.

Pat Batcheller: Why did you write the book?

Lisa Fine: I cast out to find a place where I could test my theories that working class people cared about not only the natural world around them, but also the community, the region, the place in which they lived. My first scholarly exploration was Pointe Mouillee, the game reserve down there. And it was to my great delight and surprise to find a site Downriver that the people of the region and beyond wanted to preserve once it became available for sale to the state, so that everybody publicly can hunt there for ducks or whatever else they wanted to hunt for.

And to me, that just seemed like a great validation in some ways, or sort of an invitation in many ways, to explore this throughout the entire region. I wanted to uncover the ways in which working class people living in a particular region expressed their identities and their actions through the things that define them by that region.

PB: And what do you think connects people to Downriver?

LF: Since I’m a historian, the first thing that I’ll say is I think it’s history. So for many people, like Native American communities or immigrants, it’s the ways in which the region has become their home, the ways they’ve been able to make a living there, to establish families and communities, and to create a working-class way of life. There’s such a powerful nostalgia that I uncovered.

These things were threatened during the 1960s and 70s because of the kind of employment, because of the kind of life that people could build, because of the place itself. It’s not a place that you would normally associate with natural beauty. But in fact, the people that live there do love the waterfront, and they do love the terrain and the spaces there. People connected to that as well.

PB: You mentioned Pointe Mouillee, which is only a few miles down the river from what used to be heavy industry. You still have Great Lakes Steel in Ecorse. But a couple of steel plants dried up. DTE Energy tore down its coal-fired power plant in Trenton not that long ago. You’ve got this balance that you have to strike between preserving the natural features and at the same time maintaining the tax base, the job base. How difficult was that for people to balance?

LF: It was a constant negotiation. Pointe Mouillee was originally an elite hunting ground owned by industrialists from all over the northeast. But then when it was being sold, there was a groundswell to make this available as a public space, which is incredible. Federal, local and state funds became available to do that.

But there were also other developments later such as the creation of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, which was an incredible effort to preserve spaces up and down the river and even down to Lake Erie. All of those were negotiations that were affected by historical circumstances, availability of resources, public input, and sometimes pushback around it.

One of the labor leaders that I feature in my book, Harry Lester , said, “you have to have jobs. They have to work.” And so, the responsibility to make that balance or to engage in that negotiation should not rest solely on the working people. We’re not going to give up the desire to have a Detroit River that we could use, that we could fish in, that we could swim in one day. This responsibility should be shared by local, state and federal officials.

PB: You mentioned in your book the role that unions played in those negotiations. Why was that important?

LF: It signaled at least at the beginning of the environmental movement in the United States. Working class people, through their labor unions, were going to be lobbying for and engaging in activities on behalf of the environment. Unions recognized this: what good is bargaining for more spending money and more free time if the places that they want to spend their money and engage in their outdoor activities are unacceptable, trashed or polluted?

PB: What did you learn about the people who call Downriver home?

LF: I learned that they were both similar to places all around the country and also completely unique, which I know sounds contradictory. But for me, that’s the importance of the study.

On the one hand, very few communities of working-class people live in an environment like this. They don’t live beside a boundary water and a river with all the concentration of industry. But on the other hand, there are so many downrivers and downwinds and downstreams all across the United States.

Working class people who live in those communities never sign on to the fouling of their environments and never sign on to be pushed out of their communities. Those kinds of things are not unique. And yet the ways that the people of Downriver responded, with this powerful nostalgia, this commitment to improving their resources and their desire to stay I found very compelling.

PB: How important is the river itself to the region’s identity?

LF: It’s all about the water. I’ve visited many times down there and it does dominate the landscape, certainly among the communities that are right on it. People from the very beginning lived near there because of those waters. Industry came there because of those waters. It’s the magnet that brought both of these constituencies together—industry and people. It’s sort of the font of all activities in Downriver. And it’s not just the Detroit River; it’s all the different tributaries emptying into Lake Erie. It’s a very defining, important, feature of this. It’s the thing that makes Downriver what it is.

PB: Why is the bond to this place so strong?

LF: I think it’s history. I think it’s legacy. I think it’s the kind of life that working class people were able to create there. I think it’s the proximity to the resources, natural resources that they had access to, and that they created access to.

I mean, these were things that weren’t just handed to they, they worked to do this. And once that era of deindustrialization, or as I refer to in the book, the ‘Downriver disaster’ happened, all of these things were challenged so profoundly.

I think the importance of this comes to the forefront and they realize that they’re losing more than just a job. They’re losing a way of life that they had participated in creating.

And there are certainly people who left. I quoted some people who actually did leave because of the pollution and some of the challenges of living in Downriver. Nevertheless, once this is challenged, it is a very difficult obstacle to overcome because of the loss of the tax base when firms and companies left, and something that they had personally felt that they had been participating in creating.

PB: What was the “Downriver disaster?”

LF: It was the departure of jobs, companies, corporations, and plants. These were good union jobs that allowed them to support their families and to live close to a middle-class kind of life where they can engage in the different kinds of outdoors activities, if that’s what they were interested in. It didn’t just threaten their livelihood, but it threatened an entire way of life and communities as a whole. Plants just picked up and left or went out of business. It changed the whole character of the region.

One scholar that I quote believed that it was a collective trauma. They thought, “oh, this is just a downturn. It’ll come back.” And then over time, people began to realize maybe it wasn’t. And we have to think of a different plan for the future. It was a disaster for many of the communities and certainly for the families that live there.

PB: How has Downriver managed to survive these kinds of economic and industrial upheavals?

LF: There certainly was some outmigration. There certainly was a shift to different types of employment. There have been, as I talk about at the end of my book, different ways of thinking about the future of Downriver. Ironically, using the deindustrialization as a way to promote Downriver as a place of physical beauty and a place where people can come to take advantage of that has been one arena. The creation of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge has been one way to do that. But there is still some industry, and that’s continuing. There have been some efforts to promote it as a good place for people to live.

Again, there’s been a lot of different strategies here. I’m not sure that there’s one silver bullet or perfect course of action. but people have been staying and trying to make Downriver a ‘go’ even through the difficulties that have happened.

PB: People don’t necessarily consider Monroe as part of Downriver because it’s not on the river, it’s on Lake Erie. Why did you include Monroe in your book?

LF: I thought about that a lot because I knew the different characterizations of Downriver and the different towns and cities that have been included in it. It was purely to tell the story that I wanted to tell.

First of all, steel is an important industry, and some of the earliest steel strikes took place in Monroe in the 1930s, which I do recount. They’re part of that steel industry history.

I also didn’t want to leave out the Fermi atomic power plant story. It’s just north of Monroe, but a lot of the opposition and a lot of the activism around it comes from the Monroe area. So again, that would have been, I think, a little artificial to leave out.

And then finally, one of my favorite organizations that I feature in the chapter on water is the Lake Erie Cleanup Committee. It emerged out of the little beach communities north of Monroe and recognized that the pollution that they experienced at Sterling State Park was a result of what was going on upstream. So, it was impossible to separate that out.

And that brought on all of the efforts to try to clean up the Detroit River, even though it was originally a clean up Lake Erie committee. A whole bunch of individuals came together— sportsmen, environmental groups, conservationists. So to me, it seemed artificial to separate out all those efforts just because they happen to be a little further down and on Lake Erie.

I hope that some of the stories that I told explain why I thought it belonged there.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration projects this year’s harmful algal bloom in western Lake Erie to be moderate. 

The agency monitors the lake for potentially hazardous algae growth every spring and summer.

NOAA researcher Rick Stumpf says cyanobacteria thrive in the lake’s warm, shallow environment. He also says they feed on phosphorus, a key ingredient in farm fertilizer.

Stumpf says rain can wash phosphorus from farm fields in northwest Ohio into the Maumee River, which runs through Toledo.

“It is most of the water into the western basin of Lake Erie, where these blooms form,” he says. “It warms up quickly, which these algae like, and it allows the phosphorus to stay at a fairly high concentration, which favors them.”

Early rain provides a clue

Based on the amount of phosphorus already in the lake, Stumpf projects this year’s bloom will range between mild (2.5) and severe (5.5) on a scale of 1 to 10. Last year’s bloom was mild (2.4). At its peak, it covered more than 400 square miles.

Lake Erie has not experienced a severe bloom since 2019.

The key to controlling harmful algal blooms is reducing the amount of phosphorus that feeds them.

Stumpf says injecting the chemical directly into soil instead of spreading it on top could make a big difference.

“Injecting phosphorus into the soil help keeps it on,” he says. “There’s also a big push on testing because if there’s enough phosphorus in the soil, you don’t need to add it.”

Blooms can be toxic

Cyanobacteria can produce microcystin, a toxin capable of sickening people and pets. In 2014, microcystin contaminated Toledo’s municipal water system. That left more than 400,000 people in northwest Ohio and southeast Michigan without drinkable water for several days.

Stumpf says pets are especially susceptible to microcystin poisoning. Many dogs who ingested contaminated water have died.

He advises people to keep their pooches out of the lake if they see a bluish-green scum or something like sawdust floating on the surface.

“Keep in mind its mouth is going to be right in the water, and then they often lick their fur when they’re done,” he says.

Stumpf says if the water looks fine, don’t worry about it.

NOAA updates its harmful algal bloom projections every week.

Drivers can expect to pay at least $1.50 more for a gallon of gasoline this Memorial Day weekend than they did a year ago.

AAA says it expects more than 1.3 million people in Michigan to travel at least 50 miles from home between May 22 and May 25 despite high fuel costs.

But is that estimate realistic?

Gas Buddy published its own seasonal travel survey. 56% of the people who responded say they plan to drive more than 2 hours to their destination this summer. That’s down from 69% in 2025. 

67% said gas prices are directly impacting their driving plans. 36% said rising costs are causing them to take fewer road trips.

Gas Buddy Senior Petroleum Analyst Patrick DeHaan says the average price could reach $4.80 per gallon between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

“That would be higher than 2022’s summer average of $4.43 a gallon,” he says. “But much of that is going to be contingent on whether or not the Strait of Hormuz reopens, and when it does.”

War fuels uncertainty

Iran has restricted ship traffic in the strait since the U.S. attacked the oil-rich country in March. DeHaan says that’s costing the world about 20 million barrels of oil daily.

The U.S. and other nations have released some of their strategic oil reserves to minimize the war’s impact. But DeHaan says that’s only a short-term fix.

“It’s kind of like replacing a broke water main with a paper straw—it’s just not enough,” he says. “And once those releases end, we could see a bit of whiplash with higher prices.”

Rolling back or suspending state and federal fuel taxes may help temporarily. But DeHaan says he doubts drivers will set any travel records this summer if prices climb.

“Those types of big increases are hard for many Americans to stomach,” he says. “And that is why we’re likely seeing a little bit of a decline in the amount of Americans willing to hit the road.”

Health experts and urban planners have long believed that planting more trees in residential areas is good for everyone in those neighborhoods.

A new study shows that’s not necessarily so.

Researchers at Michigan State University found that while trees do reduce stress and extend longevity, the benefits vary based on other factors.

Professor Amber Pearson led the study. She and her team examined the relationship between residential tree canopies and allostatic load. That’s the cumulative wear-and-tear that stress has on the human body. Pearson says they confirmed that trees improve human health.

“What we found was that having higher percentage of residential trees was associated with lower allostatic load scores,” she says. “In other words, it’s good for your health.”

But Pearson found something surprising: It wasn’t good for everyone.

Researchers used federal health data on 40,000 people across the country. They also looked at satellite data from tree canopies in about 10 million U.S. census tracts.

Pearson says health benefits varied based on things like education, income, and employment.

“We found a relationship in those that were more socioeconomically advantaged, but not the more vulnerable or disadvantaged participants,” she says.

The study found that Hispanic and non-Hispanic white participants saw significant improvement, while non-Hispanic Black participants did not.

Pearson says social and economic stress may override nature’s health benefits. 

“Trees alone may not be enough to overcome those stressors in those populations,” she says. “We really need to do more to understand those stressors and that’s an area of future research.”

Pearson says the findings could challenge people’s assumptions about trees.

“Trees are not a panacea,” she says.

The study appears in the Lancet Regional Health – Americas.

This story is a part of WDET’s on-going series, The Detroit Tree Canopy Project. 

Highland Parkers have been telling WDET what they want people to know about their city as part of our Crossing the Lines series. Reporters have been listening to residents as well as people who no longer live there but still have deep connections to the city.

That includes Marsha Battle Philpot. She’s a writer, musician, and historian. And she was a Kresge Artist Fellow in Literary Arts in 2012. Her father, Joe Von Battle, owned Joe’s Records on Hastings Street in Detroit’s Paradise Valley before the thriving Black neighborhood was demolished.

Battle recorded all of Reverend C. L. Franklin’s sermons and was the first person to record Aretha Franklin’s voice. Battle bought a home in Highland Park when his daughter was about 2 years old.

“Marsha Music,” as many call her, tells WDET’s Pat Batcheller what growing up in that house was like.

The following interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Marsha Battle Philpot: It was a home with oak walls in some of the rooms, and pocket doors, and beveled glass, and a huge mantle that ran the length of the room. And it was a magnificent home, one amongst many magnificent homes in the city that were on akin to the homes of [Detroit’s] Boston Edison, but on a smaller footprint, making them, many of them more achievable for working class people. But it was a very, very affluent place to live.

Schools were jewels

MBP: “People were desperate to try to get their children into Highland Park schools. During those days of the 1950s and 60s, they were some of the best schools in the United States. I remember the schools that I went to were voted or deemed to be the best schools in state of Michigan. It was really an extraordinary place to live. Even our elementary schools had swimming pools. All Highland Park kids could swim. All of us who deigned to do so went to musical classes and band and all kind of extracurricular activities. There were two or three bands in Highland Park. It was just an extraordinarily prosperous place.

The City of Trees

MBP: And if you put that prosperousness on top of the physical lushness of the city, it was such a lush, verdant green atmosphere in Highland Park. The trees would create archways over the streets. So, I would come home from school, and if it was raining, I wouldn’t get wet, because the trees oftentimes bowed over the over the skyline, and they would protect you from some of the rain. It was just an extraordinary place to grow up.

Pat Batcheller: Where we’re talking right now is in your dining room, which is technically in Detroit. It’s just on the south edge of Palmer Park. Where were you before?

MBP: I had been married and lived in a couple of other areas of the city, and so I was very glad to be able to come back to Highland Park when my mom decided that she was not going to be able to keep the house.

PB: The house that your dad bought her?

MBP: “Yes, our family home. Because she was ill, and she went to live with her sister, who was helping care for her. And she finally made a decision, “would you like to take the house?” And so, I did. But in about 2007 is when I had an electrical fire, and it was caused—I learned later from the fire investigators— by a dehumidifier. It was in August of 2007 it was probably 90 degrees. It was hot, and air conditioning those big houses is very challenging. And our basement was always soaking wet, and I ended up with a dehumidifier there that apparently had been running. And the fire people later told me that that that scenario is the cause of many fires.  It’s still standing, but it destroyed the house.

The home of her heart

PB: You said you were happy to come back to Highland Park. What made you happy?

MBP: Because it’s my home. And even though it had experienced so many challenges over the years since I had been gone, it was the home of my heart. And I always loved Highland Park because of its separation, even from Detroit. We’re in our own world in Highland Park.

And there were so many of the elders that were still there since I was a child and had done their best to try to hold on to this city. It’s the essence of the Black experience of perseverance in Highland Park. These people had been holding on despite all manner of reversals and in their big homes, these big, beautiful homes that they’re trying to take care of as best they can. Even in a situation in which the actual light poles were repossessed. Come on, now! You take the light poles out? Oh, my goodness!

PB: You’re only about a block away from Highland Park, so you’re not far away. Do you go into Highland Park?

MBP: Every time I go anywhere, I have to basically go through Highland Park. And I call Highland Park my happy place. You know, I love Highland Park. Even when I’m up on Woodward Avenue and I’m just up there shopping, because I’m not going to get in my car and go to the suburbs and shop. I’m going to shop where I live.

And when I’m up there on Woodward, I literally can feel my mother. And she’s been gone for many years. But I think of her walking up to the stores in Highland Park or driving to the stores and shopping in the days in which we had Sears and Winkelman’s and the various national chains. I think of my people in Highland Park, because we’re very much embedded there.

More Crossing the Lines: Highland Park

Highland Park is an odd shape—a trapezoid to be exact. Its borders include West McNichols Road on the north side, railroad tracks along the eastern edge, alleys behind Tennyson and Tuxedo streets to the south, and the Lodge freeway forming part of its western boundary.

These have been Highland Park’s city limits since officials incorporated it 1918.

That’s how it managed to avoid becoming part of Detroit, which had already annexed most of the surrounding land.

Leaders and residents wanted autonomy

Jeff Horner is a professor at Wayne State University‘s Department of Urban Studies and Planning. He says Detroit wanted to absorb Highland Park even before the latter became a city.

“Highland Park was not open to the idea of being absorbed,” Horner says. “They wanted to have some local autonomy.”

Michigan’s Home Rule law in 1909 made it difficult for one city to annex another. That same year, Henry Ford finished building his Model T factory in Highland Park. It was the first Ford plant to use an assembly line. Horner says the city’s population exploded.

“From the 1910 U.S. census to the 1920 census, the population of the city grew by over 1,000% from about 4,500 to about 45,000,” Horner says. “That is remarkable growth.”

Auto industry drove growth

Highland Park kept growing until 1930, peaking at almost 53,000 people. Marsha Battle Philpot grew up in the city and has written about its history. She says Henry Ford’s offer of $5 a day to work on his assembly line drew thousands of people from across the country.

“This was an astronomical sum in those days,” she says. “Maybe an average person might make $5 a month”.

The city’s population steadily declined through the 1930s and 1940s. But it was still relatively prosperous. Philpot says the schools were among Michigan’s best in the 1950s and 1960s.

“Even our elementary schools had swimming pools,” Philpot says. “It was really an extraordinary place to live.”

But good schools were not enough to keep people from leaving the city decade after decade. Ford eventually closed its Highland Park factory, which is now a Michigan historical landmark. Chrysler moved its headquarters, established in 1925, from Highland Park to Auburn Hills. The city’s tax base evaporated. It had so much trouble paying its bills its streetlights were repossessed. State-appointed emergency managers ran the city and the school district for much of the early 2000s, closing the McGregor Library and the high school. Glenda McDonald, Highland Park’s mayor since 2022, says those decisions hit young people especially hard.

“Children need a place to go, and literacy is a very important part of our children’s learning,” the mayor says. “It kind of put a very bad taste in people’s mouths.”

Lansing takes over

McDonald says emergency management didn’t solve Highland Park’s long-term financial problems. One was literally bubbling under the surface: leaky water pipes, some more than 100 years old. The city incurred tens of millions of dollars in debt to the Great Lakes Water Authority. Each side sued the other with the city accusing GLWA of overcharging residents who were too poor to pay for water. The legal dispute pushed Highland Park to the brink of financial ruin.

In 2023, the state intervened again, this time giving the city $100 million to pay its debt and fix its water infrastructure. McDonald says workers are now replacing every lead water line in town.

“We’re working with the state, we’re working with GLWA, and hopefully we’ll continue moving forward that way,” McDonald says.

Had the state not thrown Highland Park that lifeline, the city likely would have filed for bankruptcy. The financial crisis raised a question: would Highland Park be better off becoming part of Detroit? The mayor demurred.

“Blasphemy,” she says.

Legal hurdles, local pride make merging difficult

For one local government to absorb another, state law requires residents of both communities to vote in favor of it after weighing the pros and cons. Stephanie Leiser directs the Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy at the University of Michigan’s Ford School of Public Policy. She says uniting Detroit and Highland Park could reduce bureaucracy.

“You can eliminate some layer of management there,” she says. “They don’t need to have an additional mayor and a clerk and all of those things.”

But Leiser says there’s not a ton of evidence that it would help Highland Park financially.

“They’re not going to save money necessarily on like plowing the roads, picking up trash, or maintaining the infrastructure,” she says.

Leiser says Highland Park’s finances are in better shape than they were when officials were considering bankruptcy in 2023. But it still has challenges, such as high property taxes.

Highland Park has some of Wayne County’s highest millage rates

In 2025, the city’s millage rate for principal residences was 63.221. That’s $63.22 for every $1,000 of a home’s taxable value. The non-homestead rate as over 79 mills. Rates for industrial and commercial personal property were over 57 mills and 67 mills respectively.

Former Highland Park Councilman Ken Bates says the city’s millage rates and pervasive poverty make it hard to attract new investment.

“We have to look into the future as to what will help Highland Park become sustainable,” he says. “What kind of industry should we count on?”

Bates says city leaders need a plan and the expertise to implement it.

“If not, it’s just you maintaining the status quo year after year,” he says. “You’re just one disaster away from financial calamity.”

More than just lines on a map

Bates says Highland Parkers are fiercely loyal to their community and that most want to remain a city within a city. Resident Michael Williams, Sr. admits he wouldn’t rule out becoming part of Detroit.

“We would get more popularity, probably more services,” Williams says.

But other residents, like Kim McDade, don’t see the benefit of giving up Highland Park’s identity.

“Highland Park needs to be given a chance to continue to build,” McDade says. “Our mayor is doing a great job in doing some things and making connections with the right people.”

Mayor Glenda McDonald says the city’s greatest strength is its people.

“They’re resilient, they’re loving, they’re kind, and we take care of each other,” she says. “I know a person on every single street.”

The mayor says that resilience defines Highland Park more than its shape on a map.