Agriculture

Great Lakes cities swallow streams

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By KEVIN DUFFY
Capital News Service
LANSING — Developers have buried more than 350 miles of streams in Michigan over the last century, creating large areas researchers call “urban stream deserts.”
These riverless areas favor concrete connections over urban parkways. They submerge surface streams, sometimes swallowing entire river systems.

“Urban rivers have value, and when cities start to systematically remove them, they remove viable ecosystem services, like flood control,” said Jacob Napieralski, an associate professor of geology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn. Detroit has lost 86 percent of its surface streams since 1905, according to a study Napieralski recently submitted to the Journal of Maps. That’s roughly 180 miles of stream. Other Michigan cities, including Ann Arbor and Grand Rapids, have seen declines with up to 60 percent stream loss.

Environment

Michigan farm officials oppose federal authority expansion over water

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By ASHLEY WEIGEL
Capital News Service
LANSING — Michigan farm officials are fighting an attempt by the federal Environmental Protection agency to regulate small bodies of water, saying that a new permit process would make construction and farming more expensive and time-consuming. It would affect “anyone who puts a shovel in the ground,” said Laura Campbell, manager of the Michigan Farm Bureau’s agricultural ecology department. Farmers will need more permits approved by the EPA for things like nutrient applications, basic pest control and adapting new land for farming, she said. EPA is suggesting new rules under the Clean Water Act that would give it jurisdiction over more bodies of water. That includes water that could run into a stream that is already under its jurisdiction and areas that are only wet during flood seasons.