Detroit’s Toxic Legacy –Bankrupt City Faces Environmental Challenges

August 26, 2013

Sitting silent and decaying in its own polluted waste, The Packard Plant awaits a new future in post-bankruptcy Detroit. It is little more than a home for the homeless, a canvas for graffiti artists and vandals alike.

The Packard Plant  was not always so dirty and dystopic. Once it turned out millions of sedans, coupes, war weapons and paychecks. Founded in 1903, it began manufacturing its high-status cars just as Henry Ford started building mass-market cars in a nearby one-story factory.

The Packard grew to a 35-acre industrial powerhouse, revolutionizing the American economy along with Ford and other auto titans.

But as it did, so it left a legacy of lead, chrome, nickel, PCBs and other pollutants deposited only a few yards from residential neighborhoods. Tastes and economics changed, and in the 1950s The Packard’s auto assembly lines stopped, and the property slowly slid into decay.

It is tempting to look at The Packard Plant as a symbol of the rise of Detroit as a world economic power, its industrial pollution and its descent into bankruptcy. While The Packard may be one of the larger and more historic examples of this arc, it is by no means the only one.

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