Second of two parts.

DETROIT — To many Toledoans, the Detroit River is just another waterway on a map.

But maps don’t reveal much about a river, nor do they explain how Detroit’s industrial legacy played a key role in defending America’s freedom during World War II.

The Detroit River’s story today begins with the struggle for environmental justice in the southwest Detroit enclave of Delray, where Dolores Leonard, a 79-year-old retired community college professor, remembers growing up under a haze of what she called their “red sky.”

“We thought that was normal,” Ms. Leonard said of an era in which tarps were used to shield automobiles from corrosive air pollution.

“If it’s going to pit the paint, what’s it doing to us?” Ms. Leonard said she used to ask herself as a girl.

PART ONE: Detroit River a suspect in Lake Erie’s algal growth

Decades later and now a community organizer, Ms. Leonard is one of the Detroit River corridor’s more outspoken advocates for better air and water quality.

Delray, which has shrunk from 23,000 residents decades ago to fewer than 3,000 today, is surrounded by the massive Marathon Petroleum Co. refinery, the Detroit Wastewater Treatment Plant, steel mills, coal-fired power plants, a former coking facility, salt mines, and other industries that locals claim have forced out neighborhood residents.

Considered one of Michigan’s most polluted neighborhoods, Delray also is caught in a contentious battle to save its land from eminent domain for a new U.S.-Canada bridge. The structure is expected to help modernize international transportation across the river, but push more people out.

Ms. Leonard could have moved, but didn’t — not even after the U.S. Secret Service showed up on her property one day, asking about photographs she’d taken of heavy industry in her neighborhood.

“We resent people coming in here and taking over our community,” Ms. Leonard said. “This is home.”

A tale of 2 rivers

The Detroit and the Maumee are two of North America’s most important rivers flowing into western Lake Erie.

What happens within the western Lake Erie watershed is largely a reflection of what happens within the Maumee and Detroit rivers.

In some ways, western Lake Erie is a composite of the two vastly different rivers.

Whereas the 137-mile Maumee is mostly agricultural, the Detroit is fast-moving and powerful, with a current swift enough to bring billions of gallons of Upper Great Lakes water down into western Lake Erie, which is a geographical catch basin, in as few as 19 hours.

Much like the Maumee River, though, the Detroit River is a study in land use.

It combines the challenges of heavy industry with Detroit’s transition to a lighter, new economy. Included in that is the battle to save urban wetlands popular among shorebirds, plus the growing movement of urban farming, community gardens, and self-sufficient food production for a hard-luck metro area seeking a comeback.

Rhonda Anderson, Sierra Club of Detroit environmental justice coordinator, said the Delray area has high rates of asthma and cardiovascular disease, with soot, fine particles, and other pollutants affecting the health of young children.

Elizabeth Milton, a local asthma consultant, said the air is even too polluted for many people to take long walks, aggravating an obesity epidemic.

“It’s just basic human decency. We shouldn’t have to live like this,” Ms. Milton said.

Tyrone Carter, a retired lieutenant with the Wayne County Sheriff’s Office, is now president of a local community association.

“Who fights for Delray?” Mr. Carter asked. “It’s almost like this community is being left to die. People are barely holding on. It’s because of the loss of hope.”

The Montana-based Institutes for Journalism & Natural Resources recently sponsored an expedition along the Detroit River corridor for about 15 journalists, extending invitations to many industries in the Delray community.

The only one which offered a representative was Marathon Petroleum Co.

Honor Sheard, Marathon environmental, security, and safety manager, said the refinery strives to be a good neighbor and to lessen its environmental impact.

The refinery, which has expanded twice since 2005, began refining 140,000 barrels of tar sands crude in 2012. Many local residents took advantage of an offer Marathon made to relocate them, she said.

“Those people wanted an opportunity to leave,” Ms. Sheard said. “We helped them whenever we could.”

Robert Sills, Michigan Department of Environmental Quality toxic unit supervisor, said Wayne County’s biggest environmental threat comes from its high sulfur dioxide emissions.

Ecological paradise

A few miles south, the Detroit River is an ecological paradise.

John Hartig, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist and author of Burning Rivers: Revival of Four Urban Industrial Rivers That Caught Fire, stands on part of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge, where he serves as the agency’s manager for the American side.

It is the world’s only wildlife refuge shared by two nations.

The lower Detroit River contains a beautiful archipelago of tiny islands that teem with wildlife.

The two countries manage 18,500 acres along the Detroit River, with a goal of expanding to 25,000 acres. Most of the future push on the U.S. side will be toward Monroe, Mr. Hartig said.

The gradual expansion is part of a collective vision to restore more coastal wetlands between Detroit and Sandusky, Patrick Doran, the Nature Conservancy’s Michigan conservation director, said.

“Our coastal wetlands play a function in controlling those harmful algal blooms,” Mr. Doran said.

Detroit’s interplay between land use and water quality extends to its growing interest in urban farming and community gardens, a drive that seeks to reduce pollution by making more fresh produce available locally.

Billy Hebron, manager of the Oakland Avenue Community Garden, raises organic crops in an economically distressed part of Detroit.

“I don’t like the word ’food desert,’ but that’s what it was. There were liquor stores in all directions, but you couldn’t find a tomato,” he said.

One of the largest urban farms is near the center of downtown, the Plum Street Market Garden.

A local nonprofit, Keep Growing Detroit, created it out of a parking lot, Kido Pielack, the group’s urban agriculture adult education coordinator, said.

History rebounds

Best known for its legacy of automobile manufacturing, Detroit was incorporated as a city in 1815.

It began to take its current shape in 1701, when French explorer Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac landed on the banks of the Detroit River and established a fort.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Detroit was the final U.S. stop on the Underground Railroad that helped free slaves.

In the 1890s, more ships were built along the Detroit River than any other city.

During World War II, factories in Detroit and other major cities were retrofitted to make weapons, part of what former President Franklin D. Roosevelt described as the "Arsenal of Democracy."

That wartime effort was critical but left behind a legacy of oil pollution that remains today, Mr. Hartig said.

From 1946 to 1948, an estimated 5.9 million gallons of oil were dumped annually into the Detroit River and its most heavily industrialized tributary, the River Rouge, much of which ended up in shoreline sediment.

A gallon of oil pollutes a million gallons of water.

“Detroit classically made the Detroit River its back door,” he said.

The area has achieved reductions of 70 to 90 percent from peak periods in phosphorus releases, sewage spills, mercury emissions, and DDT, Mr. Hartig said.

Bald eagles have come back, with 22 active nests compared to virtually none in the 1970s. Likewise, peregrine falcons, osprey, lake sturgeon, and lake whitefish are on the rebound.

“It’s one of the most significant ecological comeback stories in North America,” Mr. Hartig said. “That’s because of where we were.”

Contact Tom Henry at: thenry@theblade.com, 419-724-6079, or via Twitter @ecowriterohio.

First Published November 17, 2014, 5:00 a.m.