A Pond Restored
“It will be heartbreaking for a lot of people if it is allowed to dry up and die.”
Read More
Environment
Lyme Disease Alert
Chelsi Preuc at the Washtenaw County Health Department says that through June, the department received reports of eighty-five cases of Lyme disease, up from fifty in the same period last year.
Read More
Big Book Sale
“It’s probably the biggest sale in town,” says bookseller Gene Alloway. He plans to line up early on Friday, September 5, when the three-day event begins at WCC’s Morris Lawrence Building. “The books are in fine shape,” says the owner of Motte & Bailey Booksellers, “and they have lots of different subjects.”
Read More
The New MRF
On December 1, 2021, Recycle Ann Arbor unveiled Ann Arbor’s revamped materials recovery facility (MRF). Their predecessor, ReCommunity, had trashed it back in 2016, and the upgrades came with a hefty price tag. RAA secured two grants but still had to take out $5.9 million in loans.
Read More
Salty Streams
It was a snowy winter, and Ann Arbor used a lot of road salt to clear its streets: 4,057 tons as of March 19, according to city communications specialist Robert Kellar. That’s 656 tons more than last winter, though still around 1,800 tons shy of the most recent high in the winter of 2021–2022. Along with ice-melter applied by contractors and homeowners, some of it ends up in storm sewers and the Huron River tributaries they feed.
Read More
Target: Farmers
At risk are dozens of conservation easements, grants, and farm programs worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In Michigan, 90 percent of USDA funding is allocated to commodity conservation, leaving new farmers and small agricultural businesses particularly vulnerable.
Read More
Target: Environment
The Trump administration’s plan to slash payments on research grants has put thousands of U-M jobs at risk. But other local researchers are in even more immediate jeopardy: those who work directly for the federal government, at the EPA or the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory (GLERL).
Read More
It’s Bird Flu Season
In February, Shira Haderlein and a friend took a walk in Mary Beth Doyle Park to decompress. But as they approached the detention pond, they discovered the corpses of dozens of Canada geese.
“I mean, it was just littered,” she says. “It felt apocalyptic.”
Beavers Are Back
The first signs were subtle but undeniable: last November, Matthaei Botanical Garden staff began noticing trees stripped of bark or cut down entirely, leaving only a pointed stump behind, and a pile of leaves and sticks along the edge of the creek slowly growing into an unmistakable dam. Those efforts soon raised the level of the creek by more than a foot for several hundred yards upstream.
Read More
Conservation Voters
Wozniak is executive director of the Michigan League of Conservation Voters. It was founded in 1999, she says, “to address some of our state’s most egregious problems regarding the air we breathe, the water we drink, and protecting public health and the natural environment.”
Read More
Noah on Hoover St.?
The U-M’s $631 million dorm complex on the old Elbel Field isn’t even finished, and Evan Pratt is already worried about its future. That’s because Allen Creek flows underground beside the property—and with Ann Arbor getting wetter, the county’s outgoing water resources commissioner says, it’s getting harder to keep it there.
Read MoreBYOC is Back
A regular customer of the former location on E. Liberty, Jessica Cichowlas secured a new storefront in a plaza along the burgeoning Jackson Rd. corridor in Scio Twp.
Read More
MIFarmLink
Dohner compares MIFarmLink to “a matchmaking service that connects farmland owners and seekers who would otherwise never meet.” According to the Conservation District, land access is the greatest barrier for beginning farmers; meanwhile most farmland owners lack a succession plan. MIFarmLink neatly solves the problem with an online tool that lets owners list their available properties and farmland seekers post their professional profiles.
Read More
Lyme Disease Outbreak
“The number of cases has exploded,” says Beth Ann Hamilton, communications coordinator for the Washtenaw County Health Department.
Read More
Nature’s Calendar
Is global warming making our springs earlier and longer, or is this year a fluke? Area scientists and nature lovers say it’s too soon to tell.
Read More
Turkeys in Traffic
Ask most Michiganders about the hazards of driving in a state full of wildlife and you’re likely to hear about run-ins with deer. But on a recent Saturday afternoon, a different kind of traffic hazard asserted itself.
Read More
Greenbelt and Bluebelt
In March, Michigan’s Agricultural Preservation Fund Board awarded $2 million to eight farmland preservation programs across the state to purchase development rights that protect land for agricultural use. Five of the eight are in Washtenaw County.
Read More
Heat from the Ground
When it’s completed next year, the $10 million, 11,000-square-foot Edward and Rosalie Ginsberg...
Read More
Magazine Seedlings
On Facebook’s Buy No Things Ann Arbor page, Stacie Cowie recently put out a request for old copies...
Read More
Planting a Pocket Forest
At the end of February, the city’s Parks Advisory Commission heard an unusual pitch: The local...
Read More