DTE ordered to pay $100M for air pollution at Zug Island facility
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Feb. 17, 2026Updated Feb. 18, 2026, 11:42 a.m. ET
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered DTE Energy Co. and its subsidiaries to pay a $100 million civil penalty for Clean Air Act violations at the Zug Island facility EES Coke.
Environmental justice activists from southwest Detroit and nearby communities surrounding Zug Island cheered the ruling as “a monumental victory.”
“Our families and neighbors can never get back the years lost to breathing dirty air,” said Theresa Landrum, a southwest Detroit activist and Sierra Club member who lives about 3 miles from EES Coke, in a press release. “This ruling gives me faith that big corporations can be held accountable for breaking the law and it gives me hope for the future.”
EES Coke Battery is a coal-powered plant that makes coke, a material used to make steel. It produces “coke oven gas” that can be used as fuel, but produces sulfur dioxide when it burns. Sulfur dioxide pollution can harm people’s respiratory systems and make breathing difficult, especially for people with asthma, a disease more common in Detroit than elsewhere in Michigan. It also can lead to increased risk of cancer, Alzheimer’s disease and early death.
EES Coke is owned by DTE Vantage, a subsidiary of DTE Energy.
A DTE spokesperson said the the company is “extremely disappointed in the court’s ruling and its negative implications on the domestic supply of coke to the U.S. steel industry” and contended the facility is operating within the limits of its original state permit.
“We have been anticipating this order and are eager to make our appeal to the 6th Circuit Court,” the spokesperson wrote in an email.
U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain ruled Tuesday that DTE is liable for the Clean Air Act violations at EES Coke and ordered the companies pay the $100 million civil penalty and bring EES Coke into compliance with federal air quality law. Drain also ordered the companies to form a Community Quality Action Committee and give it $20 million in funding for local air quality improvement projects.
The Community Quality Action Committee will have seven members, including residents and representatives of environmental advocacy organizations, according to a press release from the Sierra Club. The Sierra Club intervened in the case alongside the city of River Rouge. The committee will find ways to improve public health and air quality in Ecorse, River Rouge and the Detroit ZIP code 48217, such as distributing air purifiers to homes near the coke plant, installing air filters in schools and weatherizing homes.
“Through our efforts we won millions of dollars to help fund things like air purifiers in homes and schools that will help kids breathe easier,” said Dolores Leonard, a Sierra Club member who lives in the 48217 ZIP code. “These wins will undoubtedly save lives.”
Leonard testified in the trial between the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and EES Coke in September, according to Drain’s order. She said she avoids going near the facility because of its odor and the feeling she gets in her chest when she is close. She doesn’t spend as much time gardening as she used to because of chest pain and troubled breathing, she said.
The EPA sued the EES Coke plant in June 2022, alleging the facility violated the Clean Air Act’s New Source Review program and endangered the health of its neighbors by modifying the facility and increasing its sulfur dioxide emissions.
The New Source Review program does not allow companies to construct new sources of air pollution without following permitting requirements, Drain said in his Tuesday order, and Michigan regulations prohibit an existing pollution source from doing major modifications without first getting a permit. That permit would require the facility achieve the “lowest achievable emissions rate,” Drain wrote.
EES Coke operators sought permits in 2013 and 2014 from the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy that would allow it to burn an unlimited amount of coke oven gas, which the company said would allow it to use less blast furnace gas.
The company said the move would not lead to a significant emissions increase, the EPA attorneys said when filed the agency’s lawsuit against EES Coke, but emissions did rise.
Financial analyst Dan Leistra-Jones, who testified as an EPA expert witness at the trial in September, said DTE likely saved between $46.4 million and $99.1 million by failing to install pollution controls.
The EPA added DTE Energy Services Inc.; DTE Energy Resources LLC; and DTE Energy Co. to the case as defendants, alleging they are “operators” of EES Coke.
EES Coke has no employees of its own and DTE exhibits “a high degree of control over the facility, including over environmental decision-making and the facility’s emissions-related activities,” Drain wrote.
Drain ordered DTE and EES Coke to get its Clean Air Act’s New Source Review permits. EGLE will determine the allowable emissions levels, Drain wrote.
ckthompson@detroitnews.com
