Five years after a Detroit River dock collapse prompted the city’s first river protection law, dozens of property owners along the waterway are operating under widespread maintenance requirements from city inspectors that aim to close regulatory gaps.
Since the Waterbody Protection Ordinance went into effect in 2022, 42 parcels have registered to operate with the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering, and Environmental Department (BSEED) and are subject to inspections, reporting requirements and fines over failure to comply.
A BridgeDetroit analysis using the city’s Open Data Portal found that the 42 properties registered with BSEED have accumulated 239 violations since the law went into effect, for reasons including certificate compliance and registration issues, unlawful property rental or occupancy and failure to reduce unsafe conditions. The companies collectively have $27,970 of unpaid blight tickets. This marks a significant decrease since the 2019 collapse, when the same addresses racked up over 1,000 blight violations, according to records in the Open Data Portal.
In an email to BridgeDetroit, BSEED spokesperson Georgette Johnson said that the ordinance has enabled the department to more effectively enforce laws to ensure safety on all fronts.
“Due to the ordinance going into effect, the city now has a comprehensive list of all properties along the shoreline,” Johnson wrote. “This has also allowed us to strictly enforce the ordinance, which makes our shorelines safer for the residents and business owners in the city.”
