Water could make the Great Lakes a climate refuge. Are we prepared? – Bridge Michigan

Jesse Keenan, an associate professor of real estate at Tulane Universitys School of Architecture,told the New York Times in a widely read article in 2019 that Duluth, Minnesota, could experience a real estate boom from climate migrants moving north. But the Rhodium Group also identified the Ohio River basin, New England, and parts of the mid-Atlantic as equally attractive.

Will climate change really reverse decades of slow or negative population growth in Michigan and the Upper Midwest? Every year since 2000 the annual United Van Lines national moving study identified Michigan and its neighbors as the top region for outmigration to other states.

Still, some of the preparation for projected growth has already started, the result unanticipated until now of innumerable projects that respond to rising carbon levels in the atmosphere. Heres a sampling:

Great Lakes forests are the foundation of a $100 billion annual recreation, manufacturing, and real estate economy that employs hundreds of thousands of workers. The forests absorb and store carbon, reduce flooding and erosion, keep streams clean, and provide habitat for plants and animals. The Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science, a research unit of the U.S. Forest Service, is one of the leading groups that has dispatched teams of forest specialists to build partnerships with businesses and communities, conduct public education workshops, and assist land managers across the eight Great Lakes states in adapting practices that enhance the capacity of forests to thrive in changing conditions.

In response to rain and snowmelt inundating water treatment plants and polluting rivers, Detroit is a leader among American metropolitan areas. Reacting to a lawsuit brought by the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up the Rouge River, Detroit and 47 other cities in three southeast Michigan counties spent $500 million from 1994 to 2000 to end the combined sewer overflows that poured untreated filth into the river during storms. Since then, Detroit has spent $528 million more to build eight retention basins and treatment plants for storing and disinfecting 131 million gallons of stormwater that otherwise would drain into the Rouge and Detroit rivers during heavy rains and snows.

Three years ago, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department increased drainage fees to raise $150 million to pay for its state-of-the-art stormwater system. The fees were based on a monthly $750-per-acre charge on impermeable surfaces for Detroit properties. Up to 80 percent discounts were offered, in particular for parking lot owners and manufacturers who reduce or eliminate storm water flowing off their property.

Those offers spurred myriad innovations in the city. For instance, Chip Letts, chief executive of Letts Industries, a Detroit-based auto parts manufacturer, installed a $1 million green roof and ground level rain garden at the companys 70,000 square-foot building on Bellevue Street. Letts received a $50,000 grant from the city to help pay for the roof and garden.

He receives an 80 percent discount on drainage fees for the 104-year-old building that hes renovating into spaces for offices and workshops. The green roof and rain garden, viewed as attractive amenities, have raised the occupancy rate of Letts new Beltline Center to over 70 percent. Its all working well, he said in an interview. Im happy.

In September, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued an executive order that called for cutting emissions 28 percent by 2025, compared with 1990 levels, and set 2050 as the deadline for the state to reach carbon neutrality. Michigans conservative legislature could be an impediment to achieving those goals, but the state is clearly moving in that direction.

Almost a fifth of Michigans electrical generating capacity comes from renewable sources, according to the Michigan Public Service Commission; a decade ago it was under four percent.

Similarly, Michigans big electric utilities, for decades the largest carbon producers and water users, are steadily making the transition to reduce both. As recently as 2010, 27 coal-fired power stations operated in Michigan; now there are 12.

Consumers Energy, Michigans largest utility, announced three years ago that it would close its coal-fired plants by 2040. DTE Energy, the second largest utility, announced it will be carbon neutral by 2050, a target that could be met earlier, said Greg Ryan, the companys manager of environmental sustainability and climate change.

Carbon reduction is a primary goal, he said. Were getting there as fast as we can.

Whether they are big or small, climate-related responses are complex, expensive and take years to complete. The Detroit stormwater drainage network started in 1977 with a federal order, took four decades to build, and cost over $1 billion. This massive project also did nothing to improve the D+ grade that The American Society of Civil Engineers awarded Michigan in 2018 for the condition of its infrastructure.

Smaller projects are hardly easier.

High water levels and less ice on Lake Superior, for example, produced huge winter waves that steadily turned 1-mile-long Lakeshore Boulevard in Marquette to rubble. Fixing the damage involved moving the road 300 feet inland and converting more than 30 acres of city-owned property into a natural buffer zone and public park to absorb the lakes energy.

Sounds like a readily achievable solution. In concept it was. In practice it was not, according to Tyler Penrod of Superior Watershed Partnership, a Marquette-based conservation group that helped lead the project. The new road was built last year. Next summer the shoreline buffer and park will be planted in native species of grass and trees. The $12-million project took 12 years of public discussion, community meeting, engineering, design, fundraising and construction to complete.

The Marquette project is a distillation of the need to unsnarl the process for updates required to respond to climate change in the Great Lakes states. Beth Gibbons and her ASAP colleagues have set out to use climate science to help answer another riddle about human migration to the region.

Mother Earth is not waiting. She is pushing back hard with heat, fires, hurricanes, droughts, floods, tornados, earthquakes and plagues. If anything is true about the hotter, harder, illogical and alarming era that weve entered, its this: Climate disruption will force the Great Lakes states to scrub clean the rusted parts, and add innumerable new ones to the regional workbench of governance and management.

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Water could make the Great Lakes a climate refuge. Are we prepared? - Bridge Michigan