Environment Section

Cecilia Sauter’s rain garden solved the problem of a wet and mushy side yard at her Ann Arbor home and may have helped her neighbor with water in her house’s foundation. Greg Marker, of Ypsilanti, uses a rain garden to hold runoff from three sump pumps and his house’s gutters, which resolves some water problems with his neighbors who live down the hill from him.

I just wanted to get rid of some lawn.

The thread that ties the three of us together is that we got help from Washtenaw County’s Office of Water Resources Commissioner (formerly the Drain Commissioner), which provided us with rain garden designs and helped us buy the native plants called for by the plans. The county’s program started in 2005, and so far it’s helped set up about 50 rain gardens.  [Full Story]

At the start of last Tuesday evening’s meeting of the Ann Arbor Energy Commission, Bill Verge commented that for the first time since he’s been on the commission, people in the audience outnumbered commissioners. “I’m quite happy about that,” he said.

The reason for the interest? Argo Dam.

The dam has been at the center of a heated debate over whether to repair it or remove it completely – the latter option would result in the elimination of Argo Pond. The city’s Park Advisory Commission and Environmental Commission have both weighed in with recommendations to city council, the body that will ultimately decide the dam’s future.

Because Argo Dam has the potential to generate electricity, as Barton and Superior dams already do, the Energy Commission decided to look at the issue, too. Nearly a dozen people showed up on Tuesday night to see what the commission would recommend. (As soon as the commission finished with that segment of its meeting, all but a couple of people in the audience departed.) [Full Story]

At its Thursday night meeting, the Ann Arbor Environmental Commission approved a resolution recommending that the city initiate removal of Argo Dam. It is the opposite advice given by the city’s Park Advisory Commission, which last week on a 5-4 vote recommended keeping the dam. City council will make the final decision, which is expected within the next two months.

At last week’s Park Advisory Commission meeting, 15 people spoke during the public comment period. Supporters of keeping the dam – many of them from local rowing clubs – outnumbered those in favor of removing it. The same number of people spoke at Thursday’s Environmental Commission meeting, but only six of the 15 speakers were in favor of keeping the dam. One of them, Sarah Rampton, explained that most rowers were out of town at a rowing competition in Canada. She said she had stayed behind, missing her daughter’s last regatta, because she felt she needed to advocate for keeping the dam.

But after an hour of public comment and more than two hours of debate, commissioners voted 8-4 to recommend removal of the dam, primarily citing environmental benefits of a free-flowing Huron River. [Full Story]

[Editor's Note: HD, a.k.a. Dave Askins, editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, is also publisher of an online series of interviews on a teeter totter. Introductions to new Teeter Talks appear on The Chronicle.]

There’s been an unintended two-month hiatus in tottering. Talking on the totter resumed last week with Brenda Bentley.

I met Brenda around this time of year standing on the Broadway Bridge – the one over the Huron River, not the one over the railroad tracks. I first thought it was last year, but my recollection is hazy.

Through that haze, I think I remember the reason I was hanging out on a bridge that’s not in my neighborhood: I was waiting for Liz Elling to pass through during her swim along the length of the Huron River.

Elling swam around a 100 miles down the Huron in July 2007. So it’s actually been two years since I first met Brenda.

On that occasion, she was taking notes for a book she was writing about walking routes that lead to the river. Consistent with my habit, I invited her to come ride the teeter totter once she completed the book. [Full Story]

An effort to change the cleanup of contaminated groundwater has come under fire by local residents and government officials who’ve been keeping an eye on the issue for more than 20 years.

At Wednesday’s annual meeting of the Coalition for Action on Remediation of Dioxane, residents said that requested changes filed by Pall Life Sciences earlier this month with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality would allow higher amounts of the contaminant, 1,4-dioxane, in the groundwater. As a result, they said, the 1,4-dioxane, a presumed carcinogen, could flow northward and reach Ann Arbor’s primary drinking water supply at Barton Pond. [Full Story]

After hearing residents passionately argue both sides of the issue at its Tuesday meeting, the Ann Arbor Park Advisory Commission voted 5 to 4 to recommend keeping Argo Dam in place.

The question of whether to remove or repair the dam has been debated for more than three years, with several hearings and public meetings. Now, the issue could be decided within the next month or so. The city’s Environmental Commission is expected to vote on its own recommendation at its May 28 meeting, with Ann Arbor’s city council ultimately deciding the issue, perhaps as early as June. [Full Story]

We have had a whole bunch of the stuff that brings May flowers in the past few weeks, so a lot of gardeners have spent time indoors, hoping that the necessary showers won’t wash out the tender tulips, daffodils, crocuses and other spring-blooming bulbs that have already started to bloom.

Some would-be gardeners wish they had some showy spring bulbs to worry about. But though they missed the first wave of fall-planted bulbs, they shouldn’t worry, because they can plant some summer-blooming
flora now.

These bulbs, tubers and corms give a great show when they bloom. The downside is they can’t survive our tough winters. That’s why we have to put them in the ground in the spring. Some bulbs need some cold weather before they’ll bloom, and that’s why Miami doesn’t have a tulip festival. But summer-bloomers like gladiolas, dahlia, calla and canna just can’t take that kind of refrigeration. Leave them in the ground through the winter and you’ll most likely get squat the next summer. [Full Story]

In a letter to Ann Arbor’s mayor and city council, Noah Hall, executive director of the The Great Lakes Environmental Law Center in Detroit, has raised the specter of an environmental lawsuit filed against the city of Ann Arbor. At issue is whether the city’s planned underground parking garage on Fifth Avenue violates the Michigan Environmental Policy Act (MEPA). The bond issuance for the project, for an amount not to exceed $55 million, was approved by city council at its Feb. 17, 2009 meeting. As of Friday, May 15, 2009, bonds have still not yet been issued, according to Tom Crawford, the city’s chief financial officer. [text of Hall's letter]

Joining Hall as signatories to the letter are Henry L. Henderson (Natural Resources Defense Council), Stuart Batterman (environmental health sciences at the University of Michigan), David Yves Albouy (economics at the University of Michigan), Doug Cowherd (Sierra Club-Huron Valley Group), Tom Whitaker (Germantown Neighborhood Association), as well as two other Ann Arbor residents.

In an emailed response to The Chronicle reacting to a previous draft of Hall’s letter circulated two months ago (which covered substantially the same issues), Leigh Greden (Ward 3) stated: “A lawsuit alleging that the parking garage violates MEPA would be frivolous,” contending that the standard suggested by Hall would make any construction project non-compliant with the MEPA.

Still, based on background sources for The Chronicle,  the project has been slowed somewhat by the extra unknown of a lawsuit. We’ll track this dispute as it evolves, and will hopefully be able to gain some insight into any planned next steps from councilmembers at their Sunday night caucus.

Meanwhile, what exactly is the MEPA standard to which Hall appeals in his letter to the Ann Arbor city council? Two key aspects to consider in evaluating a MEPA claim are (i) standing, and (ii) cause. The first relates to those who are allowed to bring a suit in a MEPA case. [Full Story]

“I’ve always had this idea, sort of a picture in my mind, of a lot of people working physically together, towards a common goal. Not only like working together and being simple, like peasants, having simple needs and not complicated by so many interpersonal things going on. Just people working side by side and as they’re working it becomes an art – they’re singing, see. They’re singing and it’s a rhythm…We’re doing the farming part and kind of doing the music thing and maybe somehow those will work more together and really living life more artistically and having our daily activities more appealing and beautiful and more nourishing than now.” – Ken King, 1989

Twenty years ago Ken King shared this simple idea about community and life. He achieved that vision, and more. Through his practical practice of his ideals, hard work, loving family, and extensive community, he lived and thrived on Frog Holler Farm in Brooklyn Michigan. Locally, Ken is perhaps best known from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market, where the Frog Holler produce has been a staple. 

Ken died Thursday, May 7. His was a life well-lived. [Full Story]

Green was the operative word at Thursday night’s annual meeting of the Ecology Center, where around 100 people  heard about initiatives that this Ann Arbor nonprofit is leading to build a greener world, and about the challenges in reaching that goal.

They heard about a multimillion-dollar grant recently awarded to Recycle Ann Arbor, with The Ecology Center as a partner, to install green energy technologies at schools and colleges statewide.

They heard from board chair Roger Kerson, director of public relations for the United Auto Workers union, who assured the audience that the center doesn’t spend a lot of money – as in, not a lot of green – on lavish salaries. (This comment drew laughs from the staff.)

And finally, John Warner – who founded and leads the world’s first green chemistry institute – gave a speech that was part tutorial, part pep talk about the benefits of that approach to product design. [Full Story]

The idea crystallized for Susan Zielinski 16 years ago, when she was was riding her bike through traffic in Toronto, trying to keep Beethoven’s ninth symphony in her mind as the incessant traffic noises threatened to drive it out.

“What I need,” she thought, “is 20 people riding with me, singing in four-part harmony to drown out the sound of the traffic.”

To humor her, a handful of her friends planned what they thought would be a one-time bike chorale performance during Toronto’s bike week. They called themselves Song Cycles – the Choir on Bikes.

CBC radio called for an interview before they’d even had a rehearsal, and minor celebrity ensued.

Zielinski moved to Ann Arbor three years ago to work on a sustainable transportation project at the University of Michigan, and with the help of Michigan Peaceworks executive director Laura Russello, she’s once again at the hub of a burgeoning bike choir. [Full Story]

After hearing more than two dozen people speak to defend three city-funded facilities facing cuts, the Ann Arbor Park Advisory Commission passed a resolution recommending that Mack Pool be closed earlier than proposed by city staff, and that the city use those savings to restore funding to the Leslie Science & Nature Center. PAC also is recommending a task force be formed to look at funding options for the Ann Arbor Senior Center, which the city has proposed closing permanently on July 1, 2010.

PAC will send its recommendation to city council, which in May will make the final decisions about what areas to cut in order to balance its budget.

Many of the speakers at PAC’s Tuesday afternoon meeting were passionate about the value of the places they supported, and some told poignant stories about how the Ann Arbor Senior Center, Mack Pool or Leslie Science Center touched their lives. We’ll start our report with a summary of those comments. [Full Story]

The sixties are known for being one of most turbulent decades in American history. Ironically, however, perhaps the most turbulent year of the sixties was actually the first year of the seventies. Before it was even half over, the Weathermen had blown up a townhouse in Greenwich Village, killing three of their own number (including former Ann Arborite Diana Oughton), the unlucky Apollo 13 moon shot had ended in failure, Nixon had invaded Cambodia, four students had been killed at Kent State while protesting the invasion, and a week later, two more students had been killed at Jackson State in Mississippi. Even the Beatles broke up that fateful spring.

The sudden swelling of tension and conflict seen across the nation in early 1970 was also occurring in Ann Arbor. In February, the University of Michigan chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) organized a series of spirited protests against campus recruiters representing corporations such as General Electric that were supplying material for the war in Vietnam. At one of these “recruiter actions,” thirteen protesters were arrested following a street battle with police.

At the same time, a coalition of African-American student groups calling itself the Black Action Movement (BAM) were demanding that the university take immediate steps to increase black enrollment, and threatening a campus-wide strike if their demands were not met. (Eventually, BAM would call the strike, shut down the university for ten days, and win accession to all their demands.) On top of this were almost daily smaller protests and demonstrations on the war, women’s lib, gay rights, tenant’s rights, and nearly all the other sociopolitical issues of the day.

It was into this maelstrom that a group of U-M natural science students dove when they decided to set about organizing a teach-in on the environment, the latest movement to emerge in a nation awash in movements. The students initially desired to keep the teach-in apolitical, sober, and focused on science. In the highly charged atmosphere of the time, such a goal would prove impossible. Ironically, though, the eventual politicization of the teach-in would prove to be a significant factor in making it the watershed event it would ultimately become. [Full Story]

Winter is so over. And what was all that about, anyway?

Gardeners have no time to fret over winter anymore. The time for looking at catalogs and polishing up pruner blades is over. It’s also past time for cruising through garden stores, peering at seed packets and picking through boxes of gladiola bulbs.

It’s time for getting out, for appreciating the early spring flowers (note to self: more crocuses and chinodoxia next year), clearing out the debris of leaves, windblown newspapers and fallen branches, maybe even cleaning out the garage on a warm day. It’s a maddening time of year: One week snow is covering your daffodils; the next temperatures hit 70s. You can’t be fooled by either extreme.

On those cold, wet days, you stay home and swear. On those warm and sunny days, you just have to get outside. In the past few weeks, I’ve been knocking around my yard like an outdoor Roomba, peering at the buds and new leaves on my lilac and redbud tree. I squint along the ground, looking for the first signs of emerging bloodroot and hepatica – the cutest of the cute spring blooms. [Full Story]

No one attending last month’s public meeting at Lawton Elementary looked happy to be there. Nor were they happy about the prospect of holes being dug in their basement and front yard. “My wife and I have lived in our house 30 years and never had a drop of water in the basement,” one man said. “Do I really need this?”

“This” is a citywide program to disconnect the footing drains in all houses from the sanitary sewer system. And the answer to his question is “yes” – because the city mandates it.

Much like the sidewalk replacement program, the effort to disconnect footing drains will span several years. But unlike the sidewalk replacement, which homeowners must pay for, the city is reimbursing costs of the drain disconnect – at least for now.

The program started in 2001 as a way to deal with chronic sewer backups in basements of some residential neighborhoods, caused during storms when stormwater would flood that sewer system. In older homes, footing drains – which are designed to divert ground water away from a house’s foundation – were often connected to the sanitary sewer system. With heavy rains, the system didn’t have the capacity to handle the additional rainwater. Sewage would back up into basements through floor drains. It wasn’t pretty [Full Story]

There was grumbling among some residents before the meeting even started: “They’re going to do what they’re going to do, it’s already a done deal.”

But the half-dozen city staffers who met with neighbors at Forsythe Middle School last Wednesday presented a variety of different options for how the resurfacing of Miller Avenue between Maple and Newport roads could be undertaken. Construction on the project could begin as soon as 2010, but far more likely is a 2011 start, according to project manager Nick Hutchinson, who’s a civil engineer with the city.

Some irritations from neighbors did surface in the course of the meeting. But reached by phone after the meeting, Hutchinson said he thought it was a healthy exchange and that the project team had been able to collect a lot of useful information. [Full Story]

At last Thursday’s regular meeting of the Ann Arbor environmental commission, Alfredo Nicastro of MGM International gave a sales presentation for his company’s services – which served an educational opportunity about carbon credits, and the possibility of the future “compliance market” in the U.S. based on a cap-and-trade system. It was also an opportunity for environmental commissioners to start thinking about the impact of such a market system on the city of Ann Arbor.

In broad strokes, here’s how a cap-and-trade system for carbon emissions – greenhouse gases – might work. The U.S. would set an overall limit – a cap – on the amount of a gas that can be emitted. Companies and other organizations, including entities like the city of Ann Arbor, would be issued permits (allowances, or credits) to emit a certain amount of carbon. The sum of all the emissions allowed by the permits would not exceed the amount specified in the cap. All organizations would have to comply with the requirement that they hold emission allowances at least equal to the amount of carbon they emit. [Full Story]

This year, Earth Hour fell on Saturday between 8:30 to 9:30 p.m., so The Chronicle decided to head downtown and see how much impact this international event was having in Ann Arbor.

It was hard to see the dark.

Street lights were off along Main Street between William and Huron (three blocks), on Liberty between Main and Ashley (two blocks) and, somewhat oddly, only on the south side of Liberty between Fourth and Main. What this seemed to reveal more than anything is how bright the downtown area is without street lights. [Full Story]

[Editor's Note: HD, a.k.a. Dave Askins, editor of The Ann Arbor Chronicle, is also publisher of an online series of interviews on a teeter totter. Introductions to new Teeter Talks appear on The Chronicle.]

How does someone like Ariane Carr come to be a guest on my backyard teeter totter?

I live in a neighborhood that is frequently targeted by canvassers for various causes. In my youth, I knocked on doors selling subscriptions to the morning newspaper that I delivered (the Courier-Journal out of Louisville, Kentucky had a circulation area that reached as far north as Columbus, Indiana), and I have no fond memories of that experience. So I do not envy the task of these mostly 20-something folks wielding clipboards. For several years I’ve had a long-standing strategy of telling them right up front, I’m not handing over any money, but I’m happy to sign stuff and write stuff. I don’t want to waste their time if money is the only way they can use my help. [Full Story]

It’s not an image you see on the big screen every day: Close-up shots of dogs pooping, and then of their turds being plopped into an otherwise clear glass of water.

Funny, memorable and making a point – this is what happens (albeit less graphically) when you don’t pick up your dog’s excrement and it finds its way into the Huron River watershed. And by making the point this way, Nani Wolf, a fifth grader at Emerson School, won an award at the 2009 Millers Creek Film Festival.

About 350 people gathered on Friday afternoon, March 13, to see the festival entries at the Michigan Theater. (If you missed it, the winners will eventually be posted on YouTube. Here’s a link to last year’s winners.)

The event, now in its fourth year, is a way for the nonprofit Huron River Watershed Council to promote the importance of stewardship to the river and its tributaries, including Millers Creek. The festival’s three categories are short films (less than five minutes) from adult filmmakers, short films from school-age filmmakers, and 30-second public service announcements. [Full Story]

As the nearly 160 guests started dinner Thursday evening, Susan Lackey urged them to continue making bids on the silent auction items – including, she said, “heirloom” Washtenaw Land Trust mugs. “The value of those will go up significantly before the evening is over.”

Those mugs are the last of their kind, as the land trust now has a new name: Legacy Land Conservancy. Lackey, the nonprofit’s executive director, says the name reflects a broader mission and geographical reach beyond the boundaries of Washtenaw County. In the past few years, the trust has helped protect 337 acres in Jackson County, to the west of Washtenaw. Its logo includes the charge of “protecting and preserving Southern Michigan.” [Full Story]

By the conclusion of its Thursday evening meeting, Ann Arbor’s historic district commission had denied the application by Morningside LLC  for permission to demolish two houses on the Old West Side.

Morningside wanted the option for demolition of the structures to give them more flexibility in the marketing of a 19,000 square foot greenhouse space adjoining the Liberty Lofts condominium project. The plan was to add additional parking spaces, if a tenant requested them.

The commission took three votes on three different motions related to the application for demolition, but was not able to pass any of them. The votes all split 3-3 among the six commissioners who attended the meeting. Given the failure to pass any of the motions, the body had fully considered the application and thus acted on it without approving it, which meant that the application failed.

What were all those motions about? [Full Story]

On Tuesday night, heading to the planning commission working session, we headed into the Larcom Building through the newly constructed side entrance off Ann Street. That’s the door that will be used for the next couple of years as construction activities on the new municipal building take place.

We noticed a guy standing at the table in the lobby next to the table with all the full-sized planning drawings for projects under current review. But it wasn’t the guy so much as his very science-guy gadgets that we noticed: microscope, slides, vials … and a black box with a thin plunger-like mechanism sticking out of it.

What was he up to? [Full Story]

Several Chronicle readers who live in the neighborhood surrounding Michigan Stadium alerted us to emails they received today about sound tests planned for Friday afternoon and early evening. In his email, Jim Kosteva, director of community relations for the University of Michigan, states that from 3:30 to 7:00 p.m. on March 13, approximately five tests will be conducted that will sound like a “cannon shot.”

Reached by phone this afternoon, Kosteva said the tests will generate about 140 decibels of sound from a device positioned at the north end of the stadium in front of the scoreboard, facing into the stadium. [Full Story]

At planning commission’s working session on Tuesday night, held in the 6th floor conference room of the Larcom Building, representatives of the University of Michigan described a request for permanent closure of Monroe Street, between Oakland and State streets. Previously, The Chronicle covered the proposed Monroe Street closure as part of UM’s early December 2008 meeting with neighbors, which is now required under the city of Ann Arbor’s citizen participation ordinance.

Sue Gott, university planner, and Jim Kosteva, director of community relations, made the presentation to the commission’s working session for the permanent street closure, which would not come before the commission as a formal request until April 21 at the soonest, according to Connie Pulcipher, senior planner with the city of Ann Arbor, who attended the working session. [Full Story]

Washtenaw County’s weatherization program, which typically serves about 100 homes annually out of a $350,000 budget, is getting $4.1 million over the next 18 months from the 2009 federal stimulus package. That amount will allow the program to weatherize 600 homes – and lower utility bills – for low- to moderate-income families during that period.

To ramp up for this influx of federal funding, the program will be hiring staff for the duration of the grant, which runs from April 1, 2009 through Sept. 30, 2010. Aaron Kraft, program coordinator, said there are two full-time employees now (including him), plus a private contractor who does inspections. Kraft expects they’ll need seven full-time staff in the office to handle outreach and applications, four more inspectors and double the number of general contractors that they use to work on these projects.

In addition to the increased number of houses they’ll be able to serve, the amount that can be spent per house has roughly doubled, Kraft said. Not including administrative costs, about $4,500 will be available for each home. The program covers houses, mobile homes, townhomes and condominiums, but not usually apartments in large complexes, Kraft said. [Full Story]

A brutally cold wind buffets the group huddled around a sugar maple at the Washtenaw County Farm Park. They’re looking at a small metal device that’s been gently hammered into a hole drilled in the tree. Faye Stoner, a park naturalist for the county, sounds doubtful. “It’s probably too cold,” she says.

But wait – a kid in the group cries out: “It dripped … it dripped!” And sure enough, a globule slowly rolls off the end of the spout.

The maple sap is rising, and two dozen very cold people are learning about what Stoner calls “a gift from nature.” [Full Story]

Ann Arbor Transportation Authority board meeting (Feb. 18, 2009 ): At its regular monthly meeting on Wednesday, the AATA board postponed a vote on its vision statement until its March meeting, when the board as a whole will thrash through the statement. A bit of news relevant to the board’s vision of the future was the announcement that the number of candidates for the executive directorship has been winnowed down to five. That position has been open since Greg Cook’s resignation in early 2007. Speaking briefly to the board at the meeting on the topic of its search for an executive director and the issue of countywide service was the mayor of Ypsilanti, Paul Schreiber. [Full Story]

If I had to pick sides, I guess I’m anti-lawn. Come summer the small patch of land in front of our Ann Arbor home turns into a micro-garden of pole beans, potatoes and tomatoes, with orange cosmos towering in the narrow strip between the sidewalk and street. Much of our back yard is filled with an herb garden, flowers and, of course, a teeter totter.

So when Doug Cowherd of the local Sierra Club chapter contacted The Chronicle about a dispute between Pittsfield Township and a homeowner who’d been issued a citation over the condition of his yard, I was prepared to sympathize with anyone who challenges the suburbian status quo.

And then, on Feb. 5, I sat on a hard bench through 7.5 hours of testimony in Judge Cedric Simpson’s court. I heard an awful lot about cultivation, weeds, native gardens, organic gardeners, neighbors, township ordinances and the definition of hearsay. I watched a drama unfold that revealed how, in the search for a righteous cause, truth can be inconveniently difficult to discern. [Full Story]

On Thursday near 7th and Madison streets, The Chronicle noticed a guy wearing a bright yellow vest with electronic gear and some sort of measuring stick. We had a pretty good idea what it was about, having recently reported on city council’s approval of a $243,500 contract with Davey Resource Group for a GIS-based inventory of trees in the public right-of-way as well as in parks.

Marcia Higgins, one of two councilmembers for Ward 4, had cast the lone vote against the contract, and had explained at Sunday night caucus two weeks later that she would prefer to see the money for the project, which is coming out of the storm water fund, spent directly on storm water.  She also wondered if the work could be completed more cost-effectively as a Boy Scout service project.

It’s not Boy Scouts who are doing the work, but rather four guys from Davey Resource Group.  One of them is Wes, the guy in the yellow vest, who chatted with us as he took down a couple of trees’ vital statistics: height, trunk diameter, type (genus and species), condition, and location. [Full Story]