City Of Ann Arbor Community Sustainability Discussion: Resource Management
When: January 12, 2012 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
This first in a series of four monthly discussions co-sponsored by the City of Ann Arbor centers on Resource Management and will include discussion on natural areas, waste reduction, recycling, compost, local food systems, water and air quality. Panelists include: Jason Tallant from Natural Area Preservation; Chris Graham, Chair of the Environmental Commission; Kerry Gray, Urban Forestry & Natural Resources Planner; Tom McMurtrie, Solid Waste Coordinator and Matthew Naud, Environmental Coordinator. Joining the City of Ann Arbor staff will be Richard Norton, Chair of UM's Urban and Regional Planning program and Laura Rubin, Executive Director of the Huron River Watershed Council. Each of the four monthly sessions will examine past successes and challenges, discuss possible future priorities and feature a think tank of local stakeholders (UM faculty, representatives from community organizations, city commissioners, City of Ann Arbor staff and the public). The ensuing discussions will help guide the city's sustainability planning efforts. Details of this series are posted online at www.a2gov.org/sustainability. For Ann Arbor's current environmental goals, check out the State of Our Environment Report at www.a2gov.org/soe.
Transcript
- [00:00:23.66] TIM GRIMES: Well, good evening everybody and welcome to the Ann Arbor District Library. My name is Tim Grimes, I'm the manager of community relations and marketing here at AADL, and on behalf of the library thank you so much for coming. I've been working here all day, but people-- so I haven't been outside-- but people coming in tell me it's a very, very dreary, wet night out this evening, and so we really appreciate that you're here spending the evening with us for this really great program.
- [00:00:51.18] This is one of several-- well, actually many programs that we have throughout the month here at the Ann Arbor District Library. You can find out more of our events at aadl.org. But this is a special event because it's first in a series of four events cosponsored with the City of Ann Arbor about sustainable Ann Arbor. And here to tell us more about that is the city's environmental coordinator, Matthew Naud.
- [00:01:17.99] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:01:24.06] MATTHEW NAUD: Thank you. I am pleasantly surprised at our audience tonight, thank you all for coming. There's always the usual suspects you think are going to come, and I see a lot of faces I haven't seen before. So thank you all, and again this is an experiment. We've talked through the environmental commission and other groups here in town in how do we engage the community to talk about some of the good stories, things we're doing well here in Ann Arbor, but also talk about what some of the challenges are and the ways we should be moving forward and doing-- kind of managing the things we do with the city, which is really about sustainability.
- [00:02:02.57] So first I'd like to thank you for coming out and being engaged. Part of what we're looking for is, how do you want to be engaged? And that's something-- that's a question we're going to have for you at the end of the presentations. Do you want more meetings like this? Do you want more smaller group sessions? What are the important issues that you're concerned about?
- [00:02:28.00] I'd like to thank the library, they are a tremendous partner, this space is great, this is going to be filmed, put up on the web, opportunities for other people to watch it. The Home Depot Foundation was generous to give us about $100,000 to work on a larger sustainability framework project, and that's funded some staff that have helped organize this, so I'd like to thank them. Specifically Jamie Kidwell, our sustainability associate, who's here, and Wendy Rampson, the head planner at the city, we're the three leads on this along with a lot of help from city staff. And I'd like to think our presenters in advance for taking the time tonight to come out and speak with you.
- [00:03:14.40] So tonight is the first of four sessions, as Tim said. We've broken our sustainability story into four themes, tonight's is going to be about resource management. We're fortunate to have Dick Norton, who's chair of the Urban and Regional Planning Department at the University of Michigan; Laura Rubin, executive director of the Huron River Watershed Council; Tom McMurtrie, our solid waste coordinator; Kerry Gray, our urban forestry and natural resource planner-- she wins the contest for the longest title, I think, at work. Jason Tallant is in Natural Area Preservation and one of the GIS data whizzes we have, and then Chris Graham, the chair of our environmental commission.
- [00:04:02.89] We have several commissions that are appointed by city council, or the mayor, that advise council on a variety of sustainability issues. That's another opportunity for you to get involved, you can watch those on TV, you can come to our public meetings, you can also sign up on the city's website for something called GovDelivery, where if you click on Environment any time there's an issue that I think's important I send it out. I think there's about 700 people on our list right now. And then finally we'll open it up to questions. Because we've got a good sized crowd today I think we're going to use the mic at the back so everyone gets heard, and so you'll just have to stand in line. We also have some comment cards, so if there's something pressing that you didn't get an opportunity to share with us you can write it down and we'll get back to you individually.
- [00:04:55.78] So these are the four sustainability themes that we're working with, these are going to be the second Thursday's of the month the next four months. So our next session in February is land use and access. March is going to be about climate and energy, and a lot of that's going to be a presentation on what we're doing in our Climate Action Plan update here at the city. And the fourth is about community. Housing, parks and recreation, things like that.
- [00:05:24.26] So you know, we have a State of the Environment report on our website. Council adopted 10 environmental goals, and we've organized 60 indicators around there. And it's a tiered level of information, the color is where we think we are right now, and the arrow is which way we think we're going. So if it's going up we think we're getting better, down it's getting worse. That's all at a2gov.org/soe for State of Our Environment.
- [00:05:55.25] Part of the sustainability framework that we're working on with Jamie, city staff, other members of the commission, is Ann Arbor's been fortunate. We've done a lot of good planning over the last 20 to 25 years, but when you go back and look at it we have 26 different plans that we have. What we're trying to do now is pull them together, take a step back, look at what we've done, and try and pull that together in one place. Of those 26 plans-- and Jamie's helping me make these word clouds-- 226 goals. So we think there's a way to summarize this and pull those goals together into some coordinated effort, and we've got a group of environmental commissioners, energy commissioners, park advisory commissioners, and planning commissioners helping us sort through that.
- [00:06:51.33] So these are the four city commissions that touch on main parts of our sustainability projects here at the city. Again the energy commission, environmental commission, park advisory commission, and planning commission. If you go to the city's website, right on the front page, there's a calendar section and the calendar lists when all these commissions are. All these meetings are open to the public. If you have any questions, city contacts are available on the website. If you have any questions, you can always email me, Matt Naud. If you just look for environmental coordination on the city's website, I'm there.
- [00:07:29.76] So in resource management, this area of sustainability that we'll be talking about tonight, there's four key goal areas. One is clean air and water, so what are we doing to help protect the air and the water here in Ann Arbor. Viable ecosystems, that's what we all want-- ecosystems that support both our green infrastructure, habitat, carbon sequestration, lots of benefits. Responsible resource use, we've been a leader in recycling for many years. The cartoons are David Zinn's, he's been our supporter and doing great work for us at the city, so if you see our large compressed natural gas truck with the kids fishing on it, that's all David, too. And then local food sufficiency.
- [00:08:24.20] And we're not going to talk about all these issues tonight. The format tonight has been designed so that I have a short introduction, Dick Norton has a short overview of broad context, Laura's going to provide some overview of the community and some of the work she's doing, short five minute presentations on three issue areas, and again a short presentation by Chris Graham representing the environmental commission to give you some key ideas about what's going on, and then open it up for you and questions.
- [00:09:00.29] These are some key web pages that you can go to. Again a2gov.org/soe for State of the Environment, and a2gov.org/sustainability gets you into the sustainability framework, some of the work that Jamie is doing integrating these plans. And at the end we'll be asking you, and it's open format, so you can ask whatever questions you want. Tonight it'd be great if you kept them around this resource management theme, but if there's a really pressing question feel free to bring it up, but we're going to try and focus these through the various themes in the forums. So with that I would say again, thank you very much for coming. And I'm going to introduce Dick Norton, the chair of the urban and regional planning program at the University of Michigan, and please welcome him tonight.
- [00:09:53.20] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:10:00.75] RICHARD NORTON: I don't have any slides, I'm just going to talk. I was asked to talk just very briefly about some big picture concepts on these themes that are the topic of discussion tonight, and then talk about some of the challenges that local governments face in dealing with them. The first thing I want to point out is that the environment does not completely encompass sustainability. Sustainability is bigger than just the environment. The environment is a fundamental, vital piece of it, it's not all there is. Having said that, the topics for tonight are really focusing on the environment, and that's what I'll focus my attention on. The other thing I'll say is I'm going to just briefly mention a whole bunch of ideas, and then if any of this intrigues you or you want to talk about it more, we can use the panel discussion to maybe flush some ideas out.
- [00:10:52.90] The four themes I'm going to talk about, we're not really talking about local food sufficiency here tonight. Clean air, clean water, viable ecosystems, responsible resource use. I think clean air and clean water-- the key concepts to be thinking about are trying to keep them unpolluted, insufficient quantity, and providing adequate access of everybody to them. Those are what we're really concerned about in terms of those attributes of a clean environment.
- [00:11:23.22] In terms of viable ecosystems, viable ecosystems are one way to provide clean air and clean water. Viable ecosystems provide filtering functions, they filter air, they filter water, so we want them for that reason. We want them as a source of biodiversity. We're part of a complex web of life, we suffer when we homogenize our environmental base. There are lots of reasons why we would want to keep biodiversity, that's a topic unto itself. And then we also want viable ecosystems as pleasant places to live. They have an aesthetic quality that we should worry about.
- [00:12:05.55] Responsible resource use, the two things that pop to mind when I think about that are the three R's-- reduce, reuse, and recycle. Of those three R's, recycling is probably-- it goes in that sequence-- recycling is good, not preferable, reuse is better, reduce is best. Right? So don't think that just because we're recycling we've solved all of our problems, let's try and reuse as much as we can, even better let's reduce as best we can.
- [00:12:32.67] The other concept with that approach is trying to figure out how to improve our waste stream to input process. There's a fellow-- oh, gosh, I've just blanked on his name-- folks promoting the idea of you can use waste streams-- you can use the products of waste streams as inputs into new systems. And that's the best way to use a waste stream, don't just take it out to a landfill and dump it, use it as a source for composting that you can now use as another productive resource attribute.
- [00:13:01.69] All of those approaches are ways to conserve vital biodiversity and protect clean water, they're all connected. If you do one, you're heading down the road of trying to do the other things. So those are some ways to think about these attributes of a clean environment that we're talking about. Let me talk about four challenges that local governments, in particular, face in trying to address these. And they include-- I'll list them and then I'll come back to them-- factual uncertainties, moral disagreements, capacity problems, and unhappy propensities.
- [00:13:36.78] Let me go back. Factual uncertainties. The environment, our world, is a complex place. Global climate change, biodiversity itself is a complex concept. There's a lot of scientific uncertainty out there. It's hard to know how to protect the environment when you don't really understand the environmental systems as well as you might. That gives some ammunition for folks who don't want to protect the environment to say, what are you doing, you don't have scientific evidence for what's going on here. That's a difficulty for local governments to deal with.
- [00:14:06.30] The second aspect of factual uncertainties is pollution. What is it? When does carbon dioxide go from being a common element in the atmosphere to a source of pollution that's causing an environmental problem? How do we know when that's happened? What about arsenic? Arsenic is a natural element in the environment, when is it a toxic pollutant? How do you categorize those things? So there's a factual uncertainty of that.
- [00:14:33.84] And then another aspect of this is depletion. The environment is actually a pretty resilient receptor of pollutants and is a pretty resilient-- it can take a lot of shock. In fact, functioning biodiverse systems have a lot of disruption associated with them. So when is disruption too much and when is depletion too much? There are a lot of factual uncertainties there. That makes it hard for local governments to act, because how do we know when it's problematic?
- [00:15:00.14] Moral disagreements. Is nature a form of sacred life, or is it toilet paper on the stump? Is nature a source of life supply, or is it something that we worry about at the expense of jobs? Who gets to decide? Do you get to decide, does the planning commission get to decide, do the state bureaucrats get to decide? I tell my students, if you have a collaborative planning process and you have it at all representative of the community, you can bet you will have people at the table who dramatically disagree on whether nature is sacred or toilet paper on the stump. And you have to learn how to deal with those different viewpoints, and that's a huge challenge for local governments. I think all of the local officials here would attest to that, how difficult it is to do with that plurality of values. And who gets to decide.
- [00:15:54.54] The third issue-- capacity problems. Two broad categories-- legal capacity and fiscal capacity. The legal capacity problem is local governments-- you local officials in here might not like this-- you are creatures of the state. You can only do what the state has enabled you to do. My law students know this, I pound this into them over and over again. They're creatures of the state, they're only enabled to do certain things. A lot of local officials are reticent to take-- step out and do proactive environmental protection things because they're concerned they've not been adequately authorized, they don't have the legal capacity to do it. I happen to think local governments have a lot more capacity to act typically than they think they do, or than they're willing to act on, but that's an issue.
- [00:16:36.60] And then the second capacity issue is fiscal capacity. Governments are highly strained in their resources right now and there's a sentiment, what, we can't afford this sustainability stuff, we've got other things to worry about, we've got to get jobs going, we've got other things to pay for. I'll push back on that a little bit. I was telling Matt, quite often energy efficient systems are also less expensive systems, but usually they require some upfront investment that then pay off over time. So it's changing the time frame and our thinking about costs that's really the hurdle. But, nonetheless, the concerns about capacity is a huge issue.
- [00:17:13.16] And then finally three unhappy propensities. Localism, parochialism, and inertia. Localism is the by gum, we're the local officials, we get to decide, nobody else has a say in this. Does that sound familiar? Parochialism is that's happening outside of my borders, we don't have to worry about that. Which is fine for the community that's downstream of you, it's problematic when the community upstream of you is saying that. Right? We're all part of an interconnected system, we can't afford to be parochial. And then inertia, this is the way we've always done it, why would we do anything different. A lot of this sustainability stuff is really a new way of looking at things and that's change, and if one thing people-- what do people not like, they don't like change, they don't like to see things different than what they've gotten used to.
- [00:18:04.55] I have to say, and I'm not just saying this because I like Wendy and everybody else here, I think Ann Arbor is stepping out in front of a lot of communities. So there is a natural tendency to be localist, and parochial, and inertia, and I'm happy to be in Ann Arbor where there's a lot less of that going on. I think with the things that we're doing here are pushing those boundaries, and that's great. But that's a natural pull and you have to keep fighting that, and you have to keep thinking broader perspective, how do we fit into the larger system? How do we get over the if I can't decide, then I don't want anybody deciding for me issues? They really come up as we try and deal with the issues that we're trying to deal with. That was a completely redundant thing to say. Deal with the issues we're trying to deal with.
- [00:18:49.11] That's all I'm going to say, am I anywhere close to my ten minutes? OK whew, success.
- [00:18:53.18] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:18:57.68] MATTHEW NAUD: No, that was perfect. Thank you, Dick. And next we have Laura Rubin from the Huron River Watershed Council.
- [00:19:06.47] LAURA RUBIN: Thanks.
- [00:19:06.87] MATTHEW NAUD: Thanks so much.
- [00:19:16.75] LAURA RUBIN: Thanks for having me. Dick with a great set up to talk about a watershed council, because we were originally formed by units of government to care about and protect water, a local resource. And what happened is in 1965, 17 units of government came together and said, who cares about the shared resource besides our-- beyond our political boundaries. And they came together and they said, we can't just look at our water resources from our city boundary or our township boundary, we need to form a local entity that can help us manage water resources. So the Watershed Council was formed.
- [00:19:56.56] I'm going to be talking a lot about water. And one of the things that's easier for me to talk about tonight is a watershed because we've had so much rain today, and so it's very easy to illustrate. The watershed is defined by where rain falls and eventually makes its way to the Huron. The largest watershed we all think of, that everybody learns about in fifth grade is the Continental Divide, where everything to the east goes to the Atlantic and to the west goes the Pacific. If you keep taking those down to a watershed level, we're in the Great Lakes watershed, we're in the Lake Erie watershed, and you're now sitting in the Huron River watershed.
- [00:20:34.45] One of the things about water and watersheds is that sometimes people overlook some of the values that water and watersheds bring us. So just some of the-- where we think that water is very plentiful in the Great Lakes, it's easy to take for granted all of the services that it provides. The Huron River system is arguably the most prominent natural feature in the area. And so I just highlighted some of the services that the watershed does provide. In the Ann Arbor area we especially think of it in terms of drinking water because we get 85% of our drinking water from the Huron River. But some of the other things that I think are more intangible, our property values, wildlife habitat, stormwater control, and recreation.
- [00:21:20.66] Some of the things that we are blessed with in the Huron, through a lot of hard work in many cases. The Huron is the only river in southeast Michigan designated a Natural Rivers river, I guess I'd say, our Natural River. It affords the Huron some very special protection in terms of vegetative setbacks and building setbacks. By having had a lot of focus on the watershed, and very progressive communities, we have some very strong local and regional regulations and some very strong partnerships. The city being predominantly one of them, but up and down the entire river. With the Huron-Clinton Metropolitan Authority and many of our forward thinking parks departments, we have a wealth of recreational and fishing opportunities. And I list there a bunch of the endangered and threatened specie with wonderful names.
- [00:22:16.01] But we also have our share of some problems in the Huron. We have many impaired water bodies, this is a designation that comes under the Clean Water Act, meaning it is impaired, it can't meet certain designated uses for swimming, for fishing, for navigation. In the Huron one of our largest problems is excess phosphorus, nutrients that are coming off the landscape expose soils, our lawns.
- [00:22:43.65] We also have problems with e. coli, especially in our urban areas after heavy rain events. That's coming from a lot of animal feces, but sometimes human waste with illicit connections. Pipes that should be going to the wastewater treatment plant that are hooked up to the stormwater. We have very erratic flows, we do get low dissolved oxygen. We have as many lakes in Michigan do mercury problems, which are atmospheric mercury deposition. And we also have historic contamination, especially with PCBs.
- [00:23:23.83] Those are some of the problems, the data. This gets a little bit to why. Why do we have some of these problems? We've lost a lot of our natural areas in this area as we've been sandwiched between the Detroit and Lansing area and Ann Arbor's become it's own very large urban area. We've lost a lot of the natural green infrastructure and natural areas, the wetlands, flood plains. We have 97 dams that we know of and probably another 50 that we don't know of. And lake level control structures, this changes the flow patterns tremendously, make very erratic flows.
- [00:24:04.84] Similarly nonpoint source pollution adds to those erratic flows and also some of our pollution problems. Nonpoint source pollution is really what you see, especially if you walk out today and you look at where the rain is falling on the rooftops, to the gutters, on the roads, and going into our storm drains. It's warmer water, it's carrying a lot of pollutants directly to the river. Nonpoint source pollution is now the number one cause of water pollution in the US, so we are not alone in terms of battling these problems.
- [00:24:36.62] What are some of the tools that we have at the watershed level? We have very strong collaborative and watershed-wide partners. As I've mentioned before the city is a strong partner, but up and down the watershed from Oakland County to Livingston, Washtenaw, Wayne, we have very strong partners and stakeholders that come together and develop watershed management plans. They talk about either protecting high quality resources or restoring those resources.
- [00:25:03.79] We have very good data sets. The Huron is the best-studied river in Michigan. We have been studying this river for a very long time. Through our work and also with partnership with the University of Michigan and a lot of graduate students and Ph.D. Students we have very good data sets on the river. We also have a great capacity to educate and advocate for policies. It's a lot of what we do with the Watershed Council, I always sort of joke as we push people to do more to protect the river. A lot of times we're bringing the data to the table, we're pushing, we're urging, we're advocating, we're trying to secure resources, we're trying to make things happen.
- [00:25:43.52] Couple of examples, if I still have some time there. Water Quality Monitoring Program, this is collecting information from the tributaries. And I see I am running out of time, so I'll race through these. Our Adopt A Stream program, again this is promoting stewardship while also collecting good data. The value of having these eyes on the river is we're tracking the long term trends. We have a scientific basis for a lot of the local and statewide policies. We've been able to secure a lot of restoration and protection projects in our watershed and you see those around town. We have river and lakewide management plans that allow us to attract federal funds under the Clean Water Act. And we do a lot of reporting out to our partners.
- [00:26:32.47] I will stop there, I had one more project to talk about, but maybe we'll get to it in the questions. But, thank you.
- [00:26:39.21] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:26:44.32] MATTHEW NAUD: Thank you. Tom McMurtrie is next, who's going to be talking about solid waste. While he's walking up here, trivia question-- how many cities use the Huron River for drinking water? One. Just us. That's why we care about us upstream partners.
- [00:27:07.43] TOM MCMURTRIE: Thank you, Matt. I want to talk about our recycling program here in Ann Arbor. Primarily recycling is one of the most effective things that individuals can do to reduce their carbon footprint, to make their lives more sustainable. Ann Arbor has the distinction of being one of the top recycling communities in the US, according to a recent EPA study.
- [00:27:31.59] What have we done to make recycling work in Ann Arbor? In the 1970s, we brought curbside recycling to every single family home in Ann Arbor. At that time we had to separate-- I don't know how many of you date from back then, but we had to separate green glass from brown glass from clear glass from newspapers from cardboard, et cetera. Reminded me of-- I don't know if you can read this-- one of my favorite New Yorker cartoons is called "Recycling In Hell." And it has these people going down these little paths to recycle onion skin paper and a bunch of other items.
- [00:28:09.63] In 1991, we celebrated with the introduction of two stream recycling with paper in one container and all the other materials in the other. At that time every multifamily household was added to the program, which doubled the number of residents participating in the recycling program. It was very successful, we saw a large increase in recycling at that time. We built a sorting facility at the location of what is now the drop-off station on Ellsworth Road. We had this sorting container line added, which was actually built by a manufacturer that built potato sorting equipment. And this thing was able to sort each color of glass, and the metals, and the plastics. For those of you who participated back then, we added the HDPE plastics at that time, which was a big move. The two-stream recycling was much easier for the drivers although the collection was still manual, as you can see in this picture.
- [00:29:19.19] In 2010, the city moved to a whole new level with single stream recycling, where all recyclable materials were put into one cart. A number of new types of plastics were added to the mix. Every household in Ann Arbor received a cart as part of this program with a radio frequency tag in it that allowed them to participate-- at least the single family households-- to participate in a program called Recycle Bank, where you could get points for putting your cart out with the recyclables each week.
- [00:29:54.77] A $3.5 million overhaul to the MRF was completed on July 1, 2010. City tonnages to the MRF went up 25%, overall tonnages to the facility tripled with materials coming from as far away as Toledo and Lansing. And the city, which owns the MRF, was able to collect money from each one of those tons that came to the facility, so this contributed to a much quicker payback on this investment than we'd originally anticipated.
- [00:30:33.25] Four new hybrid automated recycling trucks were purchased for the program. These trucks used significantly less fuel and have less wear and tear on the braking system, similar to a Prius automobile, for those of you that are familiar with hybrid systems. We're anticipating adding four additional recycling trucks in 2012.
- [00:30:54.52] As Dick mentioned earlier, when you think about solid waste and sustainability it's always important to remember the three R's-- reduce, reuse, and recycle, all in that order. Reducing the amount of stuff you use is one of the most effective things you can do to make your life more sustainable. You can buy fresh produce with less packaging, you can shop you local farmer's market to again reduce the amount of packaging you purchase and act in a more sustainable way.
- [00:31:30.66] And when you do need to buy something that is in a package it's important to remember to recycle it. As an example, making aluminum cans from old ones uses 1/12 of the energy when you recycle them than it takes to make the aluminum can from raw materials. Similarly, with plastic bags making them from recycled polyethylene takes one third of the sulfur dioxide and half the nitrous oxide than making them from scratch, or better yet use reusable bags.
- [00:32:04.98] Composting is another very sustainable management practice for our solid waste. Every pound of yard waste or food waste that you can compost greatly reduces the burden on our landfills. And for those of you that aren't familiar with our program, it is now an option to put food waste in-- vegetative food waste-- in your yard waste cart-- your compost cart. So this is something that we've added, I believe it was two years ago, and more and more people are using it for their food scraps.
- [00:32:40.89] I'd like to look at this slide, it shows one of the-- I don't know if you can see-- this is a core boring taken from the Ann Arbor landfill. You can see that much of the materials has not decomposed. When you put it in a landfill it becomes a wasted resource. It sits there and really doesn't get used. Here are some samples that were taken from that core boring, you can still see the pictures, nothing has decomposed, that material will sit there forever.
- [00:33:15.84] So in summary, recycling is something that is not only positive for the environment, it creates jobs, and it's something we owe our children. Here's a group of them touring our MRF. If any of you want any more information on our recycling program, you can visit our website at a2gov.org/recycle. I do want to mention that we're starting work on our Solid Waste Management Plan. We expect this to be about a six month process and we encourage the public to participate in this. And there is more information on this website for any of you that want to participate in the process, or just want to follow it along online. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
- [00:34:02.59] MATTHEW NAUD: Thank you, Tom. And for those of you that haven't, there's tours of the MRF that are available. You can also find that on the website. I'd like to introduce Kerry Gray, our urban forest and natural resource planner.
- [00:34:18.69] KERRY GRAY: All right, good evening, thank you so much. I'm going to talk to you guys tonight about the urban forest and I'm really going to be talking basically about the publicly managed trees within our urban forest. So in 2009, the city completed an updated tree inventory of our street trees and the park trees in our mowed areas. This was because we really didn't know what our resource was, so in order to better manage the resource and understand what we had to do planning we did a comprehensive tree inventory. So the tree inventory identified the species, the size, the location, condition, and maintenance needs associated with the trees. And so we keep the inventory updated and we do work orders associated with them. So currently we have about 43,000 street trees, a little under 7,000 park trees, and then we have potential tree planting locations at about 7,300.
- [00:35:14.35] And as I mentioned we identified some maintenance needs that-- each of the sites that was identified in the inventory had a maintenance need associated with it. So we have about 1,700 trees that still need to be removed. 3,400 that require priority pruning, so this is just pruning for trees that have some hazardous limbs and that then need to be pruned immediately. The remaining trees are really routine pruning, so these are ones that just need to be routine pruned for structure and health. And then we have about 1,300, almost 1,400, stumps that still need to be removed.
- [00:35:48.49] So in 2010, we completed an urban tree canopy analysis. So this is just looking at the city from above using aerial photography in order to identify how much tree canopy we have within the city. And so that canopy analysis found out that citywide we had 32.9% canopy. 46% of that was in residential areas, 23.7% is in the public right of way, so that's the area between basically the sidewalk and the curb, if the area has sidewalks. And then 22% in our recreation area. So in terms of how we compare to other communities, this is a chart showing other communities that had similar urban tree canopy analyses done and where Ann Arbor ranks within them. And we're pretty much average, we have average tree canopy compared to the other communities that have had similar tree canopy analyses.
- [00:36:43.04] In terms of diversity-- and it's kind of hard to read the chart over there-- but the maple, we have 37% maple within the city. So that's the genus maple, so we have a really high percentage in terms of those publicly managed trees. And we assume that we have a similarly high amount on private property, as well. So when we're doing our tree planting now in terms of the city we are really not planting any maple, so no, really not much.
- [00:37:11.41] And then we also discourage that, so when we have commercial development come in for a site plan, if they're proposing maple we try to discourage them from using that and try to think about diversity. And so we also want to discourage that one on private property as well when residents are thinking of planting a new tree. We understand that people choose maples because they're comfortable and they know them, but there's a lot of diversity out there that we want you to consider as well. So if you're planning on planting any trees this spring, plant something other than a maple if you live in town. That's my takeaway message.
- [00:37:43.77] In terms of the value we had as part of our tree inventory and i-Tree Streets analysis, and it provided us-- quantified the value of our publicly managed trees. And we have a net benefit of $2.8 million annually that those provide, so it's a tremendous asset within the city and it's something that we really need to be managing for. And in the past we haven't had a management plan for the city for urban forest, and so in 2010 we began our plan development. And the purpose of the development of the plan is just this is a tremendous asset within the community and we have asset management plans for all of our other assets, and so this was really necessary, we really needed to focus on this asset. So we have been doing a lot of public engagement and we've been having a lot of meetings related to this plan. And we really want to help maintain a sustainable urban forest and maximize the benefits, and that's the purpose of developing this plan.
- [00:38:45.36] So for more information on the plan you can go to a2gov.org/urbanforestry. You can find a lot of information on the plan development, you can also find a lot of information just about Ann Arbor's urban forest. We do have a map based tree inventory that you can look at, so if you're interested in the trees in front of your house you can actually go to the map and click on it and you can find out information about the trees in front of your house, and in your neighborhood.
- [00:39:10.86] And if you're interested in finding out more information, you can also sign up for those email notifications, as Matt mentioned. So that GovDelivery, you can sign up for email notifications on urban forestry. So if you're interested in participating in the plan, we're going to be doing some public meetings in the future. So if you're interested in being more involved in the plan development, you can also get notified through our email notification system as well as just going to the website and finding out more information. So that's all I have.
- [00:39:38.44] MATTHEW NAUD: Thank you.
- [00:39:38.93] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:39:44.36] That's great and Jason Tallant is coming up next. And for those of you that maybe don't remember quite the scale of the 50,000 trees that Kerry was talking about, when emerald ash borer came through we lost 10,000. And those were just the city's street trees, I lost two on my property. So this idea of we don't know what that next critter is that's going to come in and take out part of our forest. So it was over $2 million we spent just on the safety of getting down the EAB ash trees that we took down, let alone what residents paid, so. Thank you, Jason. And our natural area preservation.
- [00:40:29.24] JASON TALLANT: Great to see everybody. So when I think about sustainability and I close my eyes often I think about this picture. This is a scene from one of our parks. This is Furstenberg Nature Area along the river. And this is that integration of a native landscape with the built environment. It's really quite an amazing place and it really sort of marries those concepts.
- [00:40:58.23] So I work for Natural Area Preservation and we as a department of city government we straddle that line between services provided to people and empowering or teaching others to do things in the park system and on their own lands. And so we have a mission, which is sometimes strange for an individual department of the city to have, but our mission is to protect and restore Ann Arbor's natural areas and foster an environmental ethic amongst its citizens. And this has been essentially the goal that we've been working towards in all of our work for about the last decade or so since we coined that and put that into existence.
- [00:41:43.09] In terms of natural areas management and sustainability, a lot of it is about history and what occurred here prior to European settlement. So this is a quote from 1836 and these are land survey notes from people from the east coast coming through and essentially demarcating the land for survey and for division. And so, in case you can't read it, "Oaks of the circumference of 9 to 15 feet abound in the forest. White oak and bur oak at intervals of 30 to 40 feet with an undergrowth of five to six feet high, which has an appearance of being annually burnt down, as I am informed that it is." And so history is really important when thinking about how you move into the future.
- [00:42:41.36] And I apologize this doesn't look as great as it did on my computer. And Matt's way too kind when he says that I have any propensity for doing things well in GIS. So this is a map. You can see the outline of the city boundary. This pointer is not working so well. And these are the historic vegetative communities that occurred in the Ann Arbor area prior to settlement. And so you can see right in the downtown area is primarily a mixed oak forest. All along the tributaries the creeks were sedge meadows, emergent marshes and wetlands. Some beach maple forests and some-- that's kind of further to the, I'm thinking further south.
- [00:43:34.57] What's interesting is that you had this really interesting matrix of natural community ebbing and flowing and moving. It wasn't a monoculture of one thing but it was this mixed environment and it has to do with soils, and it has to do with topography, and it has to do with hydrology, and it also has to do with how people who lived there prior to settlement used the land and what they used it for. And so that is something that we need to consider when-- what we're restoring to in the future, what we're trying to do in Natural Areas Management is not just about us dictating and trying to change things now, but moving forward in the future with that trend that occurred historically.
- [00:44:24.36] So what does NAP do? So we facilitate restoration in all of the city parks and city owned natural areas. And what does that mean to facilitate restoration? It means things like we do detailed botanical and inventories of all the plants that occur in city owned natural areas. We also do detailed inventories of the other critters that live out there. And so we have an idea of what's occurring in the landscape and what's using the landscape and that's important for thinking about ecosystem services. It's important also for thinking about-- yeah, that's fine. They say I have one minute left.
- [00:45:10.98] And so a part of also what do is we do invasive species control. And so when you see someone walking down the street with a big orange bag on their back full of garlic mustard it's because they are putting an effort into restoring or helping the land in a way that doesn't further diminish the biodiversity of that landscape that they live in-- the context they live in-- and also helps bolster or create resilient ecosystems that are all around us.
- [00:45:41.08] So this is another method the city-- and in the green and in the orange and the sort of gray those are public spaces that have some remnant natural community, or the city or other entities within the city are actively restoring or doing work to create viable ecosystems. And you can see it's highly fragmented and you can see that it's not a large percentage of the area, but it is significant.
- [00:46:10.15] And the other part that's important not to forget about is that to be able to create viable ecosystems, to be able to restore these environments, that it's not just something that's being done outside the context of us but we're active participants in doing that. And so through volunteer stewardship workdays and through other things that we bring the public in to do with us we're working towards some of those environmental goals that the city has.
- [00:46:38.88] MATTHEW NAUD: OK.
- [00:46:39.37] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:46:45.21] And I'd like to welcome Chris Graham, the chair of the city's environmental commission, up and he's going to finish it up before we open it up to questions. Thanks, Chris.
- [00:46:55.29] CHRIS GRAHAM: Thank you, Matt. I'll wear my hat as the new chair of the environmental commission very briefly, then I'm dropping back to natural features since this is the resource session. But I want to thank you for coming and I hope you're seeing already tonight, and you will in the next three sessions, how extraordinary the things Ann Arbor is doing really are. The Natural Areas program is really quite special, our recycling program is probably as good as any in the country including our fabulous composting program. Our tree program is coming in a very different direction than it's ever come. You'll see over these next three or four sessions how-- well, there probably are a handful of other cities across the country that are doing things as fabulously as we are, but not very many. You should be very proud.
- [00:47:45.44] Now switching to natural features, who knows what Anne's Arbor really was? Anybody? Uh-oh, she knows. Oh.
- [00:47:55.69] SPEAKER 1: Anne's Arbor? It was an opening in the oak woods. And they think it was near Huron and Ashley, Huron and First, that area.
- [00:48:07.46] CHRIS GRAHAM: If my information is correct, it actually was a grove of predominantly very large bur oak trees, some of the children of which are still obvious in the neighborhood around St. Andrew's Church, north of City Hall in the general vicinity she's talking about. Underneath that great grove of bur oaks was a fabulous-- probably 300 species long list-- prairie that the Indians burned every year. As Jason just told you, this was the original natural feature of Ann Arbor. So I want to get into natural features with you a bit here.
- [00:48:46.09] Who remembers the controversies in the '70s and '80s with development of large parcels in the city where we didn't have any regulations and developers wanted to build lots of housing and there were nice, native forest fragments and big landmark trees still on the property, any of you remember those? You remember 1999 or so, when we passed amendments to our primary development ordinance, Chapter 62. Some of us call that the natural features ordinance, but it's really not. We amended our natural features ordinance and actually stepped very courageously out and added a standard into our development ordinance, which had to be satisfied in order to approve a site plan for multifamily housing on a large tract or any circumstance in which a site plan is required.
- [00:49:37.30] Normally cities have-- "Contemplated development would comply with all applicable state, local, and federal laws, ordinance standards, and regulations," of course. "Development will not cause a public nuisance or interfere with public health, safety, and welfare." Well, we added and we stepped right out there. We added one. "Development would limit the disturbance of natural features to the minimum necessary to allow reasonable use of the land." It took a very controversial way of doing business in Ann Arbor into a very peaceful one because staff quickly learned how to channel those bringing permit applications to the city through their process wherein they were told essentially, if you don't do that-- minimize your impact on the natural features-- you can't get a permit through very easily, you'll have a lot of controversy and it'll take you longer. If there's one thing developers like it's quick, prompt decision. It's worked. A very special part of what Ann Arbor does.
- [00:50:38.82] So what are natural features, who knows? There's Wen. What are they?
- [00:50:46.06] WENDY RAMPSON: Oh well, they're the trees, they're the forests, they're the river, they're the watershed.
- [00:50:54.95] CHRIS GRAHAM: OK. So on my list, and in part you've seen that through the description of the Natural Areas Program, are woodlands, or our native forest fragments, or really the natural areas of the city. We have some wetlands, we have waterways, and flood plains, very important part which Laura and the water resources people in the city are very expert about. But the part I want to talk about a little bit-- forests, native forest fragments, and stewardship.
- [00:51:27.60] One of the ideas we're beginning to hatch-- and part of getting you here tonight is to invite you to participate in hatching the ideas and in developing them. We would like, I think, to try to develop a program-- modeled on the Natural Areas Program-- for the city as a whole. Private lands, university lands, and our public lands to the extent needed, that would take a small group of staff members in the city out to community organizations and groups and tell them what they have in the way of natural features in their neighborhood.
- [00:52:06.19] That map that Jason showed you showed public lands with important natural features on them. If you present the same map with all the private lands that have important natural features on them, you'll see the fabric of that knits its way across much of the city. There are many places where we could develop a much more sustainable landscape, a much more sustainable way of using and relating to our land around us that we live in, if we knew how to do it. And so the kind of program that we're thinking of trying to hatch is one where we do outreach and education and stimulating people to know what's in their backyard.
- [00:52:47.36] Many of you have what we call a native forest fragment growing over your heads. These are trees that were children when the Indians left Ann Arbor and Europeans came here in 1824 after most of the adults were cut down. These are trees that came on properties that were never plowed or farmed so the seed stock in the soil has begun to recover. These are trees that are typically 160 years old. These native forest fragments will not go another step without our help. They'll be invaded by invasive species, who knows what they are? Am I down to-- yeah, oh good. 20 years ago, I would not have gotten those hands in this room. It's just astonishing to see change. Come join us in this endeavor. Thank you.
- [00:53:34.87] [APPLAUSE]
- [00:53:38.36] MATTHEW NAUD: So again I'd like to thank our panelists, and as they move up to the podium you can take a few minutes to think about what your questions are. Again, we have some comment forms in the back, but feel free to line up or-- Sir?
- [00:54:04.28] SPEAKER 2: What's the problem with number three plastics that you don't take in the recycling? And what's the problem with supposedly biodegradable plastics that you don't want?
- [00:54:16.33] MATTHEW NAUD: I'm going to turn that to Tom.
- [00:54:19.81] TOM MCMURTRIE: Number three plastic is polyvinyl chloride, which is a very significant contaminant if it gets mixed in with other plastics. So it's unfortunate that we weren't able to say in the new program, just any sort of plastics. But we wanted to be responsible and not include this material, which is a contaminant Fortunately there aren't a lot of them in the stream. If you go out and look through your plastics or look around in the supermarket, there's not that many materials that are number three.
- [00:55:00.42] As to the second part of your question, this has been a challenging one to deal with because on the surface biodegradable plastic sounds like a good idea. It's something that it'd be nice to add, in some ways, to the compost waste stream, but there's a couple issues with that. One is that if all the research that we've read about compostable plastics-- biodegradable plastics-- is that they break down into not even necessarily microscopic, but very small particulates that are not necessarily good for the environment. There's still a petroleum base in most of these and they end up staying in the environment. The other issue is that if the material does again-- if the material does end up in the recycling cart at the MRF, it's a contaminant. You bale that with other plastics and it goes to a plastic sorting and processing facility, it becomes a contaminant and it's very difficult to sort out.
- [00:56:22.74] MATTHEW NAUD: Other questions for our panel? Sir?
- [00:56:27.02] SPEAKER 3: First off, thank you very much. I'm not actually from here, I'm a graduate student at the university and I think it's great everything that you guys are doing. It's great for somebody like me to be able to move here and be able to recycle and compost, et cetera. I have two questions, it's sort of a follow up to the previous question. Are there any plans to expand the composting program to take post-consumer food waste? I guess like paper, those kinds of products, first of all. And second of all, I was just curious how much contamination do you get in the compost stream, given that it's been going on for a couple of years now?
- [00:57:03.19] TOM MCMURTRIE: I invite you to participate in the Solid Waste Plan update, the question about whether or not to expand the materials that we accept in our compost system will be explored. There are some repercussions around those issues. It is of course something that we are interested in and looking at very carefully. In terms of the contamination from having added food waste, we really haven't noticed excessive contamination and it's something that's been very manageable. For those of you that are not aware, we did to switch to a private operator a little over a year ago and that has worked out very well. They are continuing to produce a very high quality compost.
- [00:58:01.17] MATTHEW DAUD: Great. Ma'am?
- [00:58:03.41] SPEAKER 4: Well, I have a question about air quality, which has to do with the parking structure that's being planned by the city and the university on Fuller Road, just below the hospital. And that is evidently going to be used by shift workers at the hospital, and it has nearly 1,000 spaces in it. And bringing 1,000 cars into Fuller Road just opposite the Fuller Pool and in a park area, having them go into a parking structure twice a day and exit a parking structure twice a day seems to me to very adversely affect the air quality along that corridor between the intersection of Maiden Lane and Fuller Road and the Huron River. And so I would just like to raise that as a concern. And it's not happening right now. But that's a very heavily used roadway anyway with a lot of emissions and it sounds to me like it's going to really change the quality of the air. So I'd like some comments.
- [00:59:33.31] MATTHEW DAUD: I think I will take that. I don't know the answer to your question. I don't know whether there's been a formal air quality study done on that project yet, so--
- [00:59:43.39] SPEAKER 4: I haven't been able to find it.
- [00:59:44.73] MATTHEW DAUD: So if you would give me your email address or a way to contact you. Eli Cooper at the city is the transportation programs manager. He's the person that I work most closely with that's working on that project. And I can find out what's been done to date and see what the plan is for any kind of formal analysis on that.
- [01:00:05.86] SPEAKER 4: Thank you.
- [01:00:10.58] SPEAKER 5: Thank you for all your great comments tonight and your information. I have a question that came up with two different people, Tom and Dick, about recycling, reusing, and reducing. If reducing is really the goal, then how are incentives going to be built in for that for us. We have some great incentives for recycling, but how do we move on to reducing in some formal way that really encourages people to do that?
- [01:00:46.45] MATTHEW DAUD: Do you want to--
- [01:00:46.94] TOM MCMURTRIE: Sure. That is a great question. The simplest would be to do a graduated fee system on our trash production. To charge more for larger trash containers, charge less for people that have smaller trash containers. We are doing that to some extent now. People that have 96 gallon trash carts pay a fee each year for the option of having that trash cart. People that have 64 or 32 gallon trash carts do not pay a fee. But it's pretty minimal. It's, I believe, $35 per year. So possibly we might want to look at incentivizing that a little more to encourage people to produce less waste.
- [01:01:52.18] SPEAKER 5: Can I just--
- [01:01:53.11] MATTHEW DAUD: Sure.
- [01:01:54.74] SPEAKER 5: Is there any consideration for actually charging people for how much waste they create?
- [01:02:01.29] TOM MCMURTRIE: Yeah, that would do that.
- [01:02:03.13] SPEAKER 5: You have the bigger containers, but for everybody on their quantity of waste.
- [01:02:12.70] TOM MCMURTRIE: That's an option to look at. I know that council's been a little hesitant to do that in the past because that becomes a regressive tax for lower income people with large families, that type of thing. So it gets a little sensitive in those ways.
- [01:02:30.84] SPEAKER 5: Thank you.
- [01:02:32.27] MATTHEW DAUD: Thanks.
- [01:02:32.93] RICHARD NORTON: Can I add a comment to that?
- [01:02:34.81] MATTHEW DAUD: Yeah.
- [01:02:37.46] RICHARD NORTON: Take the academic role here and step back a little bit bigger picture. When you talk about reducing you have to ask first, what are you talking about reducing? So to answer your question, and the answer focused especially on trash. But there are a lot of resources that we consume because of the lifestyles that we live. Energy, land, natural areas. And a lot of the things that we spend money and resources on, we have to spend money and resources on because of the way the city's been built out. Right? So urban planners are all about trying to increase the idea of density and connectivity through transit systems and things like that. So that you can reduce the energy demands and the land consumption demands of your lifestyles by living more compactly. So it's very much-- how to answer the question hinges on what you're thinking about and what you're trying to reduce.
- [01:03:30.79] So that's one thing to mention. The other thing I'll note is that I know environmental psychologists have studied the idea of using incentives to get people to behave in more environmentally responsible ways, and quite often those studies are in terms of charging taxes for the use of trash. And there's this quirky finding that they've come up with which is, when you monetize things and create an incentive structure you've changed people's dynamics about it, and now all of a sudden if you take away the incentive, it has a perverse outcome.
- [01:04:03.07] There's a great example of this with-- I remember a daycare example. There was a daycare where they were studying when people knew that if they were late, they were imposing on the day care providers. There was a lot of incentive for them to try and be there to pick up their kids on time. But still every so often someone didn't make it and it was frustrating to the day-care folks. So they started charging for people who showed up late, thinking it would be a disincentive for folks to show up late. Well, what happened? The amount of people showing up late went up because now it turned it into a monetary calculus and they thought, well, I'm late, but it's worth it to me because I've got to get this extra work done. And so it had that perverse outcome and then when you take the incentive away people don't necessarily go back to the socially responsible behavior they were engaging in before.
- [01:04:49.72] So incentives are important and we ought to think about how to use them intelligently. If we really want to reduce, we have to change our cultural expectations. We have to get away from thinking about society as the frontier-- consume, everything's got to be big, live the big life, and throw it away and we'll worry about it later. That's a much tougher nut to crack and there's why it's difficult to find a way to get there.
- [01:05:15.51] CHRIS GRAHAM: One of the recommendations a stewardship team might make to a neighborhood group would be to remove and reduce or even eliminate the turf grass swards that we have so widely across the city. The amount of energy, pollutants in the groundwater, time and effort that's spent on turf grass is really counterproductive when you're speaking of sustainability of natural ecosystems in the city.
- [01:05:50.45] LAURA RUBIN: And one thing in terms of if you're talking about saving water, the city did enact a graduated water rate structure a couple years ago. But then again, we've been holding some focus groups about water use because we're tying it also to trying to raise awareness of when you're using water you're also using a lot of energy. And in the Great Lakes saving water doesn't really ring true to people because they see it everywhere., but when you tie it to energy it tends to have more meaning to them. And in the focus groups this summer one of the things that we found is when people talked about what motivated them to take actions to save water, one of the first sort of knee-jerk reactions was to save money.
- [01:06:32.44] But when we asked them who could tell us what their water bill was or what action they took to reduce it, nobody could come up with what their average quarterly water bill was. And really when they got into the motivations about why they did it a lot of it was the non-monetary. It was feeling good, feeling like you're contributing, growing up with a sense of thrift, doing something more altruistic. And so we just thought that was a very interesting finding in terms of, I think-- you know our culture will say, oh it's all driven by economics and money, but when it really gets down to it they couldn't tell us what their water bill was.
- [01:07:10.10] MATTHEW DAUD: For those of you that don't know, you can go online at the city and twice a day, I think, we have water readings. So we used to be we'd have quarterly readings, and now we have a ton of very good data about how you're using water that's-- if you've got your account number, you can get it, so. Next question, sir.
- [01:07:29.44] SPEAKER 6: It's on the same topic that we've been on in regards to trash reduction. I'm originally from here but went to school in Oregon and Portland and I feel like there's a lot of synergy, or Portland and Ann Arbor are sister communities. One thing that Portland has just done is they've essentially mandated this issue by changing the trash pickup and shrunk the trash cans for regular trash, and forced people into using the compost every week. And so now people are actually forced to separate their food waste and food scraps and put them in the compost instead of putting them in the trash. And I think that's the direction that Ann Arbor should be going. And I'm not sure, but I knew that when the compost first came out I thought it only was started in April and was only through the spring and summer months. I still eat fruits and vegetables and meat or waste in the winter, so I think we should have some sort of compost pickup all year round.
- [01:08:32.47] MATTHEW DAUD: And you can comment in the solid waste planning process. No, thank you. And I mean that's the kind of thing we need to hear and that's one of the reasons why we hold a variety of events to try and figure out what the community really wants so that we're moving in the right direction. Sir?
- [01:08:53.89] SPEAKER 7: First one little comment on the previous thing. Some years ago we dug out all the turf grass in our lawn extension by the sidewalk and the street and put in native plants, which was really nice. And we got ticketed by the city for doing that.
- [01:09:07.35] [LAUGHTER]
- [01:09:10.14] So you need to get that straightened out amongst you.
- [01:09:13.05] MATTHEW DAUD: We're not perfect.
- [01:09:15.25] SPEAKER 7: Anyway, my question is I was really surprised to see 98 dams on the Huron River. That's quite incredible. I recently read a book-- an amazing book-- by Fred Pearce called When the Rivers Run Dry. And he has almost nothing good to say about dams, he says they cause a lot of problems. And I wonder what you think about that.
- [01:09:36.01] CHRIS GRAHAM: True.
- [01:09:36.88] RICHARD NORTON: Well.
- [01:09:37.62] [LAUGHTER]
- [01:09:39.30] MATTHEW DAUD: Laura, you want to start?
- [01:09:41.54] LAURA RUBIN: There are actually 97, we were able to remove one in Dexter. But what we are finding-- in the last two years we've been developing a dam management tool. And we've been finding that there are probably another 50 dams that we don't know about because whenever we go out and we have our volunteers go out we've found additional dams. So there's a lot of them, a lot of them are connected. You know people say, why do we have so many of them? A lot of them are connected to aging infrastructure, old wastewater treatment plants that were in most of our cities that have now become more regionalized. Lots there, lots to generate power originally that are now retired and mainly recreational dams, a lot of things that people would consider sort of piles of rubble. And there's some that are regulated and some there's not, but there are a lot of them.
- [01:10:31.84] They are very detrimental from an environmental point of view to the ecology of the river. Socially there are values though, in terms of generating hydropower. Not as successful in the low head hydro dams in Michigan, definitely more successful when you have more elevation drop. Similarly there's social values placed on recreational values, especially in the state of Michigan. We have very few flood control dams on the Huron so that isn't an issue for us. But the other thing that we get to is we engineer a lot of our river systems and our social systems, and dams have become in many cases permanent structures that people see and it's very hard to change that mentality.
- [01:11:17.54] RICHARD NORTON: So let me-- can I add to that again too? That issue really highlights one of these difficulties that local governments face when talking about sustainability-- green doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. Nature doesn't mean the same thing to everybody. There's urban nature, there's rural nature, there's nature nature, there's manufactured nature. Dams provide valuable ecological systems, they also provide really valuable recreational support. And so it struck me with-- we were part of the discussions in the Argo Dam controversy. If you've been here for any time, you know that that was all going on. And it was painful because there were a lot of folks in the community who valued the river to be out in nature, who normally would be on the same side of the stream, if you will, who found themselves on the opposite side of the stream because they were valuing that natural resource in different ways. And that was unfortunate.
- [01:12:11.34] And that just is emblematic of a lot of the issues that we have to struggle with when we talk about trying to protect the environment and protect nature-- that we use them and we value them and we see them in different ways. I'm very sympathetic with the local officials who have to try and reconcile that when they're getting hammered on both sides by different groups kind of hitting them with all of these different perspectives and we're a pluralistic society we get a lot of different values out of nature that's a piece that we're going to always have to struggle with as we work with these kinds of issues.
- [01:12:45.72] MATTHEW DAUD: OK.
- [01:12:49.64] SPEAKER 8: To follow on what a couple of folks have said. I'm a townie since '67, I've actually been to most of these concerts.
- [01:12:55.96] [LAUGHTER]
- [01:13:00.78] I especially keyed on the guy about the outreach program. My neighborhood is very concerned about things like the Gelman water plume and all that kind of good stuff. And they're also concerned about property values and things like that. And I've got a 150 year old maple tree in my backyard. And so I had no idea, oh a native forest fragment, great. Tonight is the first time I actually heard that phrase.
- [01:13:32.05] So I think that outreach thing has got to go a whole lot farther than just natural resources and forests, stuff like that because in my neighborhood, I guarantee you, very few folks are paying a lot of attention other than, I don't want to pay extra money for that damn cart recycle thing, and I don't want my taxes to go up, and I don't want my property values to go down. I mean independent of anything else you may want to talk about sustainable this and that and the other thing. They've got to be able to understand why they should do something in terms that they can understand.
- [01:14:08.32] Because you can say, well great, we're going to eliminate climate change. Well, that drops my property values by 50%, the heck with you. I guarantee you that's what they're going to say. So I would like to see a little-- I like that outreach program idea, but it's got to be combined with more than just telling me what my maple tree is. I think I know that now and I don't need it any more.
- [01:14:32.38] MATTHEW DAUD: Thank you. Yeah, it is one of the challenges. Jason's-- we have a natural area program because voters passed a millage that said the city should have one of these and there's a sustainable funding source for it. We're funding a lot of our forestry system now because we have a sustainable funding source recognizing the stormwater benefit of the street tree program. When street trees were funded in the general fund, and it's also where you're laying off cops and firefighters, you're going to not be pruning as much if you're going to be losing those bodies as part of the safety services.
- [01:15:08.69] So these are some of the things we struggle with, also. There's how do you pay for it, there's a lot of things that people want. But finding a regular stable funding source for it-- for example, I know a lot of people who are sustainability directors in cities all across the country and a bunch of their positions are grant funded. That's not sustainable. They're not going to be there as soon as the federal ARRA money runs out, so. Other questions-- we've got six, seven more minutes.
- [01:15:42.20] SPEAKER 9: I was wondering if the city was going to have some type of conversation on top of the library lot parking structure. I know there's a lot of people who'd like a park or a green space there and are you going to put some trees there, are you going to have a conversation at least? Get some ideas from the public?
- [01:16:03.07] MATTHEW DAUD: I don't know what the plan is for that. I'm sure there's going to be a discussion around, there's discussion already. And we have a city councilperson, Sabra Briere, here, do you want to speak to this?
- [01:16:13.85] SABRA BRIERE: If you don't mind--
- [01:16:14.85] TIM GRIMES: Sabra, let me come up with a mic, just so everyone--
- [01:16:18.99] MATTHEW DAUD: Everyone can hear you.
- [01:16:19.91] TIM GRIMES: OK?
- [01:16:28.23] SABRA BRIERE: Early last fall the city council gave a task to the DDA to plan what would happen on five different city owned parcels. The Kline's lot, the Palio lot, the ground floor of the Fourth and William Street parking structure, the old Y lot across the street, and the library lot. It's a plan that hasn't started. Because it hasn't started, it's impossible for anybody to tell you what will be on the library lot in five years. Or even what will be desirable on the library lot in five years because part of the plan is to solicit the public input. And that part hasn't started yet. They're still at the trying to talk through what they're thinking phase. What is going to happen in the near term, however, is there will be surface parking and there will be trees. But it's not long term, it's short term. It's short term, but who knows how long the short term is going to last. So while I appreciate the question, and you know I do, I wish I had an answer.
- [01:17:47.84] MATTHEW DAUD: No, that's-- thank you. We have a few more minutes, other questions?
- [01:17:55.43] JASON TALLANT: Matt, can I just comment just real briefly on the easement planting? The native planting that you did in your easement is fabulous and amazing, I would encourage other people to that. There's even some city residents who are building rain gardens or bioswales in their easements and taking water off the street, filtering it through their easements and then putting it back on the street before goes in the gutter, which is really amazing. But the key point about having gotten a ticket is that there's also a public safety issue. And when planting an easement if it obstructs the view of, say, a pedestrian in a crosswalk, then there's a conflict there. And so there are height requirements for the height of the vegetation that's planted in the easement, so right plant for the right place.
- [01:18:41.18] MATTHEW DAUD: Is there something? Go ahead.
- [01:18:42.26] RICHARD NORTON: Yeah, I wanted to-- I may get myself into trouble here, but I just can't help it. Say something a little bit controversial. We need to figure out how to make urban places green and vibrant because that makes them attractive places to be, and I think heritage trees and natural fragments is a really cool way to do that. But we also need to worry about maintaining the large viable ecological tracts and the viable farmland that's outside of the city, which means we need to try and prevent those places from getting developed in a meaningful way.
- [01:19:19.35] But if we're going to have development, where would that go? That should go into the developed cities. So we need to also be thinking about how to continually develop and redevelop our cities to accommodate more people so that that development pressure comes in here, so that we can preserve the farmland and the forest land that is still in large enough viable tracts that its functioning the way that we want it to. That's a difficult trade-off. It's really hard to do when you're broken up into lots of multiple jurisdictional fragments and the jurisdictions don't want to talk to each other. And it's really difficult to do when the folks hear the two problems. The folks in the cities don't want to see any more growth and development because they don't want change, and the farmers don't want to be told they can't develop their farmland because that's their retirement assets. Huge hurdles to try and to get there.
- [01:20:04.73] But if we're going to try and reduce our energy use, and reduce the amount of automobile dependency, and reduce our consumption of viable farmland and forest land, we've got to figure out how to keep the cities the places where people are living. And not ultra-dense, ugly places, they still need to be green and well-developed and designed. But there's a trade-off there and so I think, frankly, turning the Liberty-- here's where I'm going to really get into trouble-- turning that Liberty parking lot into an open space probably is not the best use of that space. That's right in the center of downtown Ann Arbor, that probably should be better put to some kind of an urban use. Maybe. I don't know. I just want to--
- [01:20:47.52] [LAUGHTER]
- [01:20:49.53] I want to throw it out there to get you all thinking about it and not presume that that should be a green park, that that's the only good use and we shouldn't be doing any more development in Ann Arbor. Why not? Where is the development going to go? I'd rather see it happening in Ann Arbor and having realistic, real efforts to try and protect the farmland and the forest land that's on the outskirts and kind of working that way. So maybe you all will be really mad at me now, but maybe we can get a good discussion going about the viability of that. I hope that that's-- at least think about it.
- [01:21:19.51] MATTHEW DAUD: Thank you, and we're likely to have the Greenbelt program on one of the next sessions. So if you keep coming, or watch it on TV, you'll learn more about how that program's been working. This may be our last question.
- [01:21:34.30] SPEAKER 10: I purposefully live in an apartment to be environmentally sound, so I'm wondering when the vegetable food waste recycling might come to my multiple dwelling. Because right now what I do is I take all that to work to a friend who lives outside of the city and has 30 chickens. And numbers of my other colleagues at work do too. So there is no lack of motivation for at least some of us to do the separation of the vegetable food waste.
- [01:22:08.98] MATTHEW DAUD: Yet again I will jump in and say, a perfect opportunity to participate in the solid waste planning effort that Tom is undertaking. Because that's one of the things, we hold a lot of public meetings and, you know I was going to joke that the only way to get 100 people at a meeting is to talk about taking out a dam, and you guys have proven me all wrong. So thank you for doing that, but--
- [01:22:31.48] TOM MCMURTRIE: Just a quick comment that most multifamily locations if they're accessible on our curbside routes, can purchase a compost cart and use those carts. So call our Solid Waste Department-- 99-GREEN is the number. And what else, oh, and it is seasonal, as the other gentleman mentioned, April 1 to end of November. So you can't do it in the wintertime.
- [01:23:01.31] MATTHEW DAUD: I guess this will be our last question. I want to be true to the library, we said we'd stop at 8:30.
- [01:23:07.56] SPEAKER 11: And this might just be a good prompt for you to talk about the next few sessions. So I really-- I liked hearing what the city is doing. But this session didn't quite match what I thought was going to happen. I thought you all would have more questions for us, and trying to engage us in a dialogue. And so as I sit here wondering, do I come to the next three sessions, is it more five different department heads telling me what they're doing, or will there be more direct engagement?
- [01:23:49.61] MATTHEW DAUD: And again this is an experiment. So what we're trying to figure out, and there's an evaluation form here. Part of what we're trying to do is give you a taste for a variety of things that are going on in these sustainability theme areas. Because I think there's some people that don't know all the things that are going on and we're never quite sure how much of that information's getting out.
- [01:24:14.41] What we are also looking for is that, if you're interested in-- and the question is if we're asking questions of you, is that a four hour session on all these big theme areas or should we be doing 12 deeper dives in some core areas that people who are really interested in the recycling want to come out to. We'll be getting some of that through the Solid Waste Plan. So I think if there's specific areas that folks are interested that we should be holding more focused sessions, we'd like to hear that. And you can send me an email or write it in the comment card.
- [01:24:54.74] Any kind of format that-- if you will come to the meeting, we will hold it. What we struggle with is we think, oh this would be a great idea for a public meeting. And a gentleman mentioned the Gelman site, and it's a big contamination problem on the west side of town. I live right on top of it. I hold public meetings on the Gelman problem and I'll get 12 people there. And so your torn sometimes about, that's a really important subject but people aren't-- and we all have busy lives and so we're trying to hear what you'd like-- how you'd like to talk with us and how you'd like to work with your neighbors sharing information on how you think we should be moving forward. So good comment. Well, I'd like to-- another round of applause for our panelists.
- [01:25:47.43] [APPLAUSE]
- [01:25:53.19] And thanks again to the library and thank you for taking the time out of your busy schedules and sharing your evening with us.
Media
January 12, 2012 at the Downtown Library: Multi-Purpose Room
Length: 1:26:00
Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)
Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library
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Environment
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Sustainable Ann Arbor