Exporting Rats Stirs Controversy

Metro Times is citing Grosse Pointers as the source for a story on rats, trash and gentrification. Taking information from a story in the Grosse Pointe Times, Metro Times explained that “a city with a $92,500 median household income that has chosen to headquarter its garbage collection in a city where the median household income is $26,095. Demographically, it's a city that's 93 percent white handling its trash and parking its trash trucks in a city that's 82 percent black.”

Metro Times says the new trash facility will also be “a stone’s throw” from Balduck Park, one of east Detroit's only recreational spaces.

While the Times story offers a tone-deaf quote about the move from a Grosse Pointe City council member: “I’m really excited about the outcome. ... I think it’s good for everybody,” feelings on the Detroit side of the line are decidedly not happy or excited about this “solution.”

"We already burn some of Grosse Pointe's trash resulting in high asthma rates in communities surrounding the incinerator," one Detroiter wrote.

Read full coverage of this story in Metro Times.

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