Read our page on Aevitas A new air permit application would let the oil recycling facility at 663 Lycaste return to full operations, with many of the same problems that made our air unbreathable before the fire.
On June 30, 2025, a massive fire ripped through the Aevitas Specialty Services facility on Lycaste Street on Detroit’s east side. Black smoke poured over our neighborhoods. Oily water ran into the streets. Residents who had been smelling fumes from that facility for years finally had a name to put to what they’d been experiencing.
Nine months later, Aevitas has applied to the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) for a new air permit, called a Permit to Install or PTI, to rebuild the facility and resume operations. EGLE is now reviewing that application.
Our air quality since the facility shut down tells the story clearly. Before the fire, EGLE received dozens of odor complaints from this neighborhood every year: chemical smells, hydrocarbon fumes, rotten-egg odors strong enough that residents called DTE thinking there was a gas leak. After the fire, those complaints dropped by 91%. That’s not a coincidence. That’s what our neighborhood looks like without Aevitas running.
Since Aevitas shut down, the complaint data shows a 91% drop in fuel and chemical odor reports from this neighborhood. For the first time in years, families have been able to be outside without being overwhelmed by fumes.
Now the company wants to come back. And EGLE is the agency that gets to decide what conditions, if any, it puts on that permit to protect us.
First, some background: what is a PTI and why does it matter?
A Permit to Install is the state’s legal permission for a facility to build or rebuild equipment that emits air pollution. It’s supposed to set enforceable limits on what a facility can release into the air, and require specific controls to reduce those emissions.
Because Aevitas’s old permit (PTI No. 10-12) covered equipment that was destroyed in the fire, EGLE determined that a brand new permit is required before the company can rebuild. That’s actually an opportunity. It means EGLE can set new, stronger conditions for how this facility must operate if it’s going to be in our neighborhood again.
The question is whether EGLE will use that opportunity to protect residents, or whether it will rubber-stamp a rebuild that recreates the same conditions we lived with before.
What does the new permit application say?
Aevitas hired an engineering firm, NTH Consultants, to prepare the application. It was submitted on April 2, 2026. Here’s what the company is proposing:
- Rebuild and operate tanks for receiving, heating, and processing used hydraulic oils and oily industrial waste
- Install a scrubber system for odor control on some of the processing tanks
- Resume receiving tanker trucks full of oily industrial waste from facilities across the region
- Keep some tank farms outdoors, the same configuration as before the fire
The application argues that emissions will be small and that the facility doesn’t need the most stringent level of regulatory review. We have real questions about whether that’s true, and whether the permit as proposed will actually prevent a return to the conditions our neighborhood has been living with for years.
The Questions EGLE Needs to Answer
We’ve been digging into the permit application and the public records we’ve obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. What we found raises serious questions. On Monday, April 20, we submitted those questions directly to EGLE. They have confirmed receipt and said they will respond. We don’t yet know how long EGLE will take to process the PTI, or when a public comment period or hearing will be opened. What we do know is that the community deserves answers before that process moves forward, and we intend to hold them to that.
Question 1: Where are the emissions from tanker truck unloading?
Every time a tanker truck full of oily industrial waste pulls into Aevitas and pumps its load into a storage tank, fumes are displaced and released into the air. This is called vapor displacement and it’s one of the most significant sources of odor from facilities like this.
The new permit application does not include a single emission calculation for tanker truck unloading. There’s no emission unit for it. There’s no pollution limit on it. There’s no required control equipment for it. The company’s process flow diagram shows tanker trucks as the starting point of all operations, but the permit treats those transfers as if they don’t exist when it comes to air emissions.
We know from EGLE’s own violation records that the facility received multiple citations over the years for persistent fumes reaching residential areas. We know from a resident account submitted directly to EGLE’s Air Quality Division that fumes were strong enough at 2 AM on the night of June 30, 2025 to require closing windows, more than three hours before the fire ignition time that Aevitas reported to federal authorities.
Questions for EGLE: Why are tanker truck transfer operations excluded from the emission inventory? What emissions occur during those transfers? What controls, if any, will be required to limit fumes during truck unloading, and will those controls be enforceable permit conditions?
Question 2: Why is 70% odor control good enough when it wasn’t before?
The new permit proposes a scrubber that captures at least 70% of hydrogen sulfide (H2S) and other odor-causing compounds from certain processing tanks. H2S is what causes that rotten-egg smell and it’s also a toxic gas.
Seventy percent control sounds like something. But it means 30% of those fumes still get out. And critically, the scrubber only covers certain indoor tanks, not the outdoor tank farms, not the truck transfer areas.
Aevitas’s own response to a previous violation notice acknowledged that when the scrubber system was overwhelmed or operating improperly, emissions escaped into the community. The company made fixes. The violations kept coming. EGLE issued violation notices for persistent, objectionable odors reaching residential areas in 2020 and again in 2022 and again in 2025, just weeks before the fire.
Questions for EGLE: Is 70% control, only on indoor tanks, leaving outdoor transfers uncontrolled, sufficient to prevent the community odor violations that recurred repeatedly under the previous permit? What is the best available control technology for a facility of this type, and why isn’t it being required here?
Question 3: Was this permit reviewed under the right rules, given that Detroit is back in an air quality violation zone?
This one is about the legal framework the permit was built on, and it matters before anything else gets decided.
When a region is failing to meet federal air quality standards, stricter permitting rules kick in for new and rebuilt industrial sources. Those rules require a more rigorous review process and stronger pollution controls than what applies in areas that are meeting the standards. The Aevitas application was written as though none of that applies here.
But in December 2025, a federal appeals court overturned the EPA’s 2023 declaration that the Detroit area was meeting ozone standards and returned Wayne County to nonattainment status. The court found that Michigan had failed to adopt required pollution control rules for industrial facilities emitting volatile organic compounds before seeking that designation. Aevitas is an industrial facility that emits volatile organic compounds. The permit application was filed four months after that ruling without acknowledging it.
Then on February 7, 2026, just eight weeks before Aevitas submitted its application, the EPA formally designated Wayne County as failing to meet the updated standard for fine particulate matter as well. That’s a second nonattainment designation the application doesn’t address.
If the application was drafted under the wrong regulatory framework, the entire emission analysis and control technology review may need to be redone before a permit can lawfully be issued.
Questions for EGLE: Given that Wayne County was returned to ozone nonattainment in December 2025 and designated nonattainment for fine particulate matter in February 2026, both before this application was filed, was the Aevitas PTI reviewed under the correct legal framework? Does the ozone nonattainment status require Nonattainment New Source Review for Aevitas’s VOC emissions? Does it require that EGLE apply Reasonably Available Control Technology standards as a permit condition? If the application was drafted as though Wayne County was still in attainment, does EGLE need to redo that analysis before issuing a permit?
Question 4: What exactly will be controlled outdoors?
The facility layout included in the permit application shows that some tank farms will remain outdoors. Outdoor tanks that receive, store, or process oily waste are a known source of fumes, especially during hot weather, during filling operations, and when tanks are open.
The permit application does not make clear what controls, if any, will apply to these outdoor areas. Submerged fill pipes, which reduce fume release during filling, are mentioned in the application documents, but they are not proposed as enforceable permit conditions. That means Aevitas could use them or not, without legal consequence.
Questions for EGLE: Will enforceable controls, specifically submerged fill pipes or equivalent vapor recovery equipment, be required as permit conditions for outdoor tank filling? If not, why not?
Question 5: Has EGLE investigated what caused the fire?
The June 30, 2025 fire destroyed most of the facility and sent a plume of smoke containing benzene, toluene, and other chemicals from burning oil and solvents across our neighborhoods and, depending on wind direction, as far as Grosse Pointe.
EGLE issued a violation notice to Aevitas in July 2025 related to the fire. But the cause of the fire has not been made public. The Detroit Fire Department’s official report is still pending. Aevitas’s own insurance company was conducting a cause-and-origin investigation and we don’t know what that found.
This matters for the permit review. If the fire started in connection with routine operations, such as a tanker unloading, a tank overflow, or a vapor release near an ignition source, then the new permit needs to address that specific risk. If EGLE is reviewing a permit to rebuild without knowing what caused the fire, the agency is approving a rebuild without knowing what it needs to prevent.
Questions for EGLE: What is the status of the fire cause investigation? Has EGLE received the Detroit Fire Department’s official report? Did Aevitas share the results of its insurance company’s cause-and-origin investigation with EGLE? And has that information been factored into the conditions of the new permit?
Question 6: What happens when the scrubber fails, like it did before?
The scrubber is the main line of defense against odors escaping from the processing tanks. The old permit also required a scrubber. And yet EGLE documented violations for persistent community odors repeatedly, because scrubbers can be overwhelmed, can malfunction, and can have sections of packing material that degrade and reduce effectiveness.
Aevitas’s own violation response letters describe exactly these scenarios: blocked packing material, suboptimal airflow, vapor leaking around hatch covers. These weren’t rare events. They were the routine explanation for why the scrubber kept failing to prevent community odor.
Which is why what the CEO wrote to EGLE after the fire matters so much. In his written response to EGLE’s July 2025 violation notice, CEO Robert Slater wrote: “Our plans are to redesign and rebuild a new facility in the same location, with updated and indoor processes including wastewater treatment and oil product drying systems. Fugitive odors from these systems will be controlled by new higher efficiency and lower energy-use odor control scrubbers with sufficient capacity and redundancy to eliminate odor incidents.”
Indoor processes. Redundancy. Sufficient capacity. Eliminate odor incidents. Those were not casual remarks. They were written directly to the agency that is now reviewing the rebuild permit, in response to a formal violation notice.
The permit application tells a different story. It proposes a single scrubber at 70% control efficiency, covering only the indoor processing tanks. There is no redundant system. There is no backup. There is no mechanism in the proposed permit conditions that would require Aevitas to deliver what its own CEO promised.
Questions for EGLE: The CEO committed in writing to scrubbers with sufficient capacity and redundancy to eliminate odor incidents. The permit application does not reflect that commitment. Which one will EGLE hold Aevitas to? What permit conditions will ensure that when the primary scrubber goes offline or underperforms, as it repeatedly did under the previous permit, the community is protected? And how will EGLE know the system is failing before neighbors start smelling it?
Question 7: Who monitors the air at the fence line, and who gets notified when something goes wrong?
Right now, the way this system works is: a resident smells something. They call EGLE’s hotline. EGLE documents the complaint. If they send someone to investigate, they might document an odor. If the investigation finds a violation, EGLE sends a notice. Aevitas responds. This process can take weeks. In the meantime, people are breathing it.
Our neighborhood already has one of the highest pollution burdens in the state. The EPA’s own screening tool ranks this area above the 90th percentile nationally for air toxics exposure, particulate matter, and proximity to industrial facilities, on top of being a majority-Black, lower-income community. We are not starting from a clean baseline. We are adding one more source on top of Stellantis, a steel scrapyard, and everything else.
A community air monitor at the fence line, one that measures in real time and sends public alerts when readings spike, would change this completely. Instead of finding out days later that EGLE investigated a complaint, neighbors would know immediately.
Questions for EGLE: Will the new permit require real-time fence line air monitoring, with public reporting and community alerts? If not, why not, and what does EGLE’s environmental justice policy say about cumulative impacts in overburdened communities like this one?
Question 8: What does EGLE’s environmental justice policy actually require here?
Michigan has an environmental justice policy. EGLE has said publicly that it takes environmental justice seriously. Our neighborhood, majority Black, with documented health disparities, surrounded by industrial facilities, is exactly the kind of community those policies are supposed to protect.
The permit application was prepared with standard regulatory models. What it doesn’t include is any cumulative impact analysis: an assessment of what this facility adds to a community that is already carrying a disproportionate pollution burden from every other facility around it. The fact that Aevitas’s emissions may fall below state thresholds as a standalone source doesn’t mean those emissions are acceptable when added to everything else our neighborhood is already breathing.
Questions for EGLE: Has EGLE conducted an environmental justice review for this permit application? Has the agency assessed the cumulative air quality impact on residents in this corridor, not just Aevitas in isolation, but Aevitas plus Stellantis, plus the scrapyard, plus everything else? And what specific permit conditions will EGLE require to reflect that cumulative burden?
What You Can Do
We don’t yet know how long EGLE will take to process this application, or when a formal public comment period or hearing will be opened. We will post updates here as soon as we have them. In the meantime, there are things you can do right now.
- Read through the Aevitas Permit to Install and see what they have planned in our back yards. Permit to Install, New Layout, Process Flow, Support Document
- Submit a comment to EGLE’s Air Quality Division now, before the formal comment period opens, by emailing EGLE-AQD-PTIPublicComments@michigan.gov. Reference Permit Application Submission HQF-BPQJ-KHFNH, Aevitas Specialty Services Corp., SRN N7359. We will update this page when the formal public comment period opens.
- Contact your Detroit City Council members (Council Member Johnson, Council Member Young (At Large) and Council Member Waters (At Large) and ask them to engage with EGLE for an improved PTI. – Detroit City Council passed a resolution regarding Aevitas after the fire.
- Share this post with your neighbors, especially those who have smelled fumes from this facility and never knew who to call
Our neighborhood has been patient. We’ve called EGLE hotlines. We’ve attended council meetings. We’ve filed FOIA requests. We’ve done the work of holding this facility accountable even when the agencies didn’t.
This permit review is a chance to get it right before the facility reopens, not after. EGLE should answer these questions in public, with the community present, before a single piece of equipment goes back in the ground.
Documents referenced: Aevitas PTI Application (NTH Consultants, April 1, 2026); EGLE Air Quality Violation Notices to Aevitas (2020, 2022, 2025); EGLE On-Site Inspection Reports (2020, 2022, 2025); EGLE FOIA Production 2025; Post-Fire Complaint Impact Report (Eastside Environmental, 2025); NRC Incident Report #1435571 (June 30, 2025).
