Dearborn Pushes Green Initiatives Forward in 2010
Dearborn continues to push forward with eliminating waste and promoting energy efficiency and made significant strides in 2010.
Some of the city’s sustainability initiatives included a variety of new green and environmentally-conscious programs, including the following “green” highlights from Dave Norwood, the City’s sustainability coordinator.
• Introduced its enhanced residential curbside recycling program: After a test program of 700 homes showed that providing large trash carts doubled residents’ recycling habits, the City decided to provide residents with 96-gallon recycling carts, which in turn have taken recycling efforts to a 30 percent increase since July 1.
• Included significant green elements in the City-owned parking structure at the Dearborn Town Center: The parking structure has LED lights on the roof, outdoor solar panels, indoor “smart lighting”, and eight electric vehicle charging stations, which were installed at the mayor’s direction and with the help of partners involved in green initiatives.
• Carried out a Waste-to-Energy Feasibility Study: The City hired Resource Recycling Systems to analyze waste streams and look at technologies for capturing the energy from Dearborn’s wastes and using it to create power. It is looking at plans to implement a waste-to-energy facility that will possibly be used by Ford Motor Company and SeverStal Steel Company. The current site being considered for this is the former powerhouse site on Miller Road.
• Received a State of Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Pollution Prevention (P2) Grant: The grant has allowed the City to create a climate action plan. The plan proposes a communitywide greenhouse gas emission inventory, municipal facilities greenhouse gas facility, “bike-ability” and “walk-ability” surveys of the City, and the creation of the Mayor’s Environmental Commission to advise on sustainability issues, which would review and recommend changes to development processes of the City to encourage lasting practices.
• Received a private grant as a member of the Urban Sustainability Directors Network: A $20,000 grant was issued for the City of Dearborn to partner with Ann Arbor for the Michigan Network of Sustainability Staffs to encourage the best practices and share performance strategies, while discussing successes and failures.
• Applied for a Fordson Island Land Acquisition Grant: If accepted, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and Environment will provide $400,000 for the City to purchase several lots on Fordson Island and restore them to their natural habitat. In the long term, the island will be made a publicly-accessible part of the Rouge River system. Notification as to whether the grant application has been accepted will be available in mid-spring.
• Applied for the National Clean Diesel Grant: This will retrofit 30 trucks by putting new exhaust systems on them to reduce diesel emissions and install new motors in a semi-truck. The City hopes to find out in mid-April if the funds will come in order to carry this out.
• Joined the Department of Energy’s Municipal Solid-Street Lighting Consortium: The group of cities in this consortium receives data and information on LED lighting testing and training on LED street lights.
January 29th, 2011 at 11:17 am
Sheer lunacy and government pork. What kind of idiot came up with the idea to “rehab” Fordson Island? It’s in the middle of the ghetto, home to some kind of chemical or fuel storage tanks and has probably been toxic since Henry Ford dredged the channel to the Rouge Plant.
Let’s build a resort hotel there while we’re at it so the people in Clearwater will have somewhere to live.
January 29th, 2011 at 12:58 pm
I certainly agree with Huh. See he is adding on another Commission, just what we need.
January 29th, 2011 at 4:33 pm
So the city is getting $400,000.00 of our Obama money via the State of Michigan to buy lots on Fordson Island…..I think the best question I can come up with is: From WHOM are these erstwhile worthless lots, in what is the City of Detroit for all practical intents and purposes, going to be purchased? And the intention is to “restore them to their natural habitat”? Are you kidding me? Camp Dearborn East? Salmon fishing? Fur trading? Conversion to a Native American reservation for eventual casino development? Does the Dearborn Navy or Port Authority need boat access to the Detroit River?
January 30th, 2011 at 1:23 pm
My Huh, aren’t we the nasty one. I can’t imagine what you’d do if the City of Dearborn paved you’re street and cleaned out you’re sewers. And do I detect a teeny bit of racism there? My, my, my.
January 30th, 2011 at 4:06 pm
I don’t follow your convoluted implications Rob, please explain. What does paving my street have to do with wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars to “restore” several lots on Fordson Island? I work on Fort Street. Why don’t you come on down and take a look at Fordson Island and the neighborhood in which it sits? As far as any racism you may be detecting; It’s all in your mind or on the screen of your huckster radar unless you’re being facetious. I can’t tell. To coin a phrase: In this day and age in Wayne County and the City of Detroit, cries of “racism” are generally the last bastion of someone with no other cards to play. Good luck with your wolf-crying. I hope it continues to serve you as well as can be expected if that’s the best you can do. Maybe you can spearhead a movement to spend a few million in tax dollars to restore Zug Island to its “natural habitat” too.
January 31st, 2011 at 11:02 am
Rob, My wise neighbor once told me that people use themselves as measuring sticks. Perhaps you should think about that. I agree with Huh? totally. This is a huge waste of money. Wayne County and Detroit have issues, that is apparent to any fair minded citizen. Stating facts that may be uncomfortable to some who wish to keep their head buried does not make one a racist. Actually, I have always found that those who make that charge tend to be. Pooring money into a wasteland is wasteful. “Green Initiatives”….these labels the government puts on pet projects to suck in the gullible certainly do work. I would bet that if PETA had a “Bambi Initiative” to stop the sport of deer hunting that you would jump on that bandwagon too. No wonder we are in such shape.
January 31st, 2011 at 10:16 pm
Any type of “Go Green” or “Green Initiative” is nothing but a scam cooked up by liberal environmentalists. They bully and threaten governments into spending and wasting our tax dollars,these are the “global warming” people,you know the ones that got exposed when their emails were made public and they were admitting that global warming is a hoax and they purposely skewed the real statistics that showed the earth is cooling and not warming. A bunch of people and groups made billions of that hoax and yes billions of our tax dollars went to that scam as well.
Any politician that falls for or cooperates with this “Go Green” initiative is just showing he is either weak or incompetent or BOTH.
February 4th, 2011 at 11:36 am
I just looked at Fordson Island via Google Maps…except for what looks like a docking site, or perhaps a boat-repair facility, there are mostly trees on the island…surprisingly, there appear to be several personal boats pulled up to the island on the narrow side. It is hard to believe that anyone would choose to boat in that area, but there you go. I don’t see any storage tanks in the picture, although there are circular marks on the ground that could be left by such tanks.
I wonder if Henry Ford would see any wisdom in essentially making a park out of land just DOWNSTREAM from the Rouge Plant. I join in the chorus of those who think this a strange way to spend tax dollars. Certainly it won’t be wise to splash one’s feet in the water next to the island, no matter how much concrete is removed.
And, to ‘Huh?’, I have to give you points for droll humor. Fur trading? Indian site to be used for a casino? If only we all could make sharp points with such wit…
February 4th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Rob – I can’t cut through all of the stuff on the other responses.
Why are the majority of the people on this site so negative. I am not young nor naive. I live in Dearborn and pay taxes for the schools that I do not use nor have ever used but I will never allow myself to become as bitter or grumpy as the majority of these writers.
Can you please tell me where Fordson Island is?
February 5th, 2011 at 10:42 am
Can you please tell me where Fordson Island is?
Ask and ye shall receive cloe. Fordson Island is just upstream from Zug Island. Less than two miles and just downstream from the Rouge plant. It resulted from digging a channel through the Rouge River so freighters could make it to the Rouge Plant. In some folks’ minds, it’s just over from Gilligan’s Island off the coast of Shangri-La. Follow the money. Who stands to profit from the taxpayers funding an effort to restore Fordson island to the way it was when Antoine De Lamothe Cadillac first saw it. (To do that you’d have to fill in the channel and the freighters wouldn’t be able to get to the slip at the Rouge plant.) Fordson Island never had a “natural habitat” because it was never “natural” in the first place.
http://www.dearbornarealiving.com/topography.shtml
More pictures here:
http://www.detroityes.com/mb/showthread.php?7907-Fordson-Island-Restoration-Advances
I’ll tell you why I’m so negative: I’m sick of seeing my taxes wasted on stupid projects like a disingenuous scam to try to convince naive voters that we can turn an industrial site into Boblo or a bucolic nature park in the middle of Southwest Detroit. Somebody stands to make money off of my back on this one. Who is that? Maybe we can buy a used Tilt-A-Whirl from Wade shows for a half million dollars, drop it in the middle of Eliza Howell Park in Brightmoor and call it Edgewater. I’m even sicker seeing my money used to make a profit for other people who made bad or speculative investments.
February 7th, 2011 at 11:28 am
Huh – thank you for the information. I think if Ford Rouge was the one to profit from it in the first place, they should be the ones to fix it up if needed.
I really do understand your anger on many issues. Way too much money is being wasted on things that make no sense. I agree that it needs to be seen who would benefit from this project.
Thanks again for the information.
February 7th, 2011 at 11:11 pm
The Chinese government spent 37 billion dollars in year 2009 on improving alternative and environmentally sustainable energy sources. China is not usually considered a liberal, government bullied by environmental scam artists. As for climate gate that was proven to be a complete hoax. Five separate investigations proved there was no wrongdoing, and the entire controversy was a cooked up news story.
So no one was exposed, no scientist admitted global warming was a hoax, and no data was skewed. Climategate was a hoax. Sorry you did not get the memo.
As for Fordson Island who should clean it up. The factories who created the mess wont clean it up. The State of Michigan can’t afford it. Should we continue to let vast ecosystems become toxic he’ll holes? The Rouge River watershed, empties into the Great Lakes watershed where we get our drinking water. See that’s the great thing about living on a self regulating planet, everything is interconnected. I am not a liberal but I am smart enough to know ” Don’t s..t where you eat”