The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Board of Commissioners voted to authorize its attorneys to enter into the sale of the Flat Rock Dam to the City of Flat Rock for $5, Metroparks officials told The Metro. The offer also includes Metroparks providing $3 Million to the city for an improved fish ladder.

This decision follows months of community engagement and feedback, signaling a victory for organizers who opposed Huron-Clinton Metroparks’ proposal to partially remove the dam.

“It’s a positive sign and appears to have the potential to be something that will be reasonable and fair for everyone. The devil will be in the details,” John Webb, a member of the the Flat Rock Dam Coalition, told The Metro.

The Huron-Clinton Metroparks Board of Commissioners also agreed to delay action on ‘partial removal’ plan, “Alternative 2” in the feasibility study, until its November meeting. 

Three proposals

A two-year feasibility study conducted by Huron-Clinton Metroparks produced three options for the future of the dam.

• Full removal of the dam
• Leave the dam as-is, but improve the fish ladder
• Partial removal of the dam, with construction of rock arches

Metroparks CEO Amy McMillan recommended partial removal, saying it would maintain similar water levels of the impoundment and preserve recreation activities like kayaking and fishing.

But community activists and elected officials were not satisfied with the proposal.

Community opposition

Elected officials joined a chorus of community voices opposed to full or partial dam removal. Rep. Jamie Thompson (R-Brownstown) wrote a letter to the Metroparks board members urging a no vote on dam removal.

Flat Rock’s mayor, Steve Beller, also both spoke at an August 14 board meeting after its city council unanimously passed a resolution to urge Metroparks not to remove the dam.

Brad Booth, president of the Flat Rock Dam Coalition joined the Metro on Wednesday to discuss his group’s concerns over the Metroparks’ proposal to partially remove the dam and replace it with ‘rock arches.’

The future of a nearly 100-year-old dam in Flat Rock, MI will be determined tomorrow. The board of commissioners for Huron-Clinton Metroparks, who owns the dam, will vote on its long-term plans for the structure at 1 p.m. at Willow Metropark. The meeting is open to the public.

Three proposals

A two-year feasibility study conducted by Huron-Clinton Metroparks produced three options for the future of the dam.

• Leave the dam as-is, but improve the fish ladder
• Partial removal of the dam, with construction of rock arches
• Full removal of the dam

The organization’s CEO Amy McMillan recommended partial removal, saying it would maintain similar water levels of the impoundment and preserve recreation activities like kayaking and fishing.

Community members and elected officials oppose all options that remove the dam, urging Metroparks to leave the dam as-is.

Brad Booth, president of the Flat Rock Dam Coalition, says ‘similar’ is not firm enough. His group wants a commitment from Huron-Clinton Metroparks to alleviate fears of a significant decrease in water level.

Booth told The Metro that in addition to recreational activities, his group is also concerned about property values and changes to flora and fauna.

Aging infrastructure

The aging dam is in fair condition but is classified as a “high hazard potential” by Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE). That designation is an assessment of risk, meaning dam failure may cause serious environmental and infrastructure damage, or even loss of life.

A 2020 high-profile dam failure in Mid-Michigan led to severe flooding in Midland, MI, and Sanford Lake was emptied out, wiping out property values and recreation for lakefront homes there.

Elected officials weigh in

Elected officials have joined the chorus of community voices opposed to full or partial dam removal. Rep. Jamie Thompson (R-Brownstown) wrote a letter to the Metroparks board members urging a no vote on dam removal.

Flat Rock’s mayor, Steve Beller, also both spoke at an August 14 board meeting after its city council unanimously passed a resolution to urge Metroparks not to remove the dam.

Environmental impact

Dam removal is growing more common statewide and nationally. Earlier this year, EGLE announced nearly $15 Million dollars in funding for dam removals across the state. 

Proponents of dam removals point to improved river health and biodiversity. They also mitigate the risk of catastrophic dam failures.

In the case of Flat Rock Dam, the Metroparks feasibility study for this project notes improved fish passage for sturgeon, walleye, and salmon to travel up the Huron River to spawn.

Brad Booth, president of the Flat Rock Dam Coalition, joined The Metro to discuss why his organization opposes partial or full removal of the Flat Rock dam.

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In June, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins announced that they wanted to rescind the Roadless Rule, arguing that it created needless obstacles to land management. However, many conservationists say reversing this decision puts millions of forest acreage at risk.

The Roadless Rule, established in 2001, protects about 60 million acres of National Forest land all across the U.S., including Michigan. These areas have no roads, logging, or mining. Outdoors lovers, conservationists, and others value these lands for their natural wilderness. 

When the rule was first proposed, it received over 1.5 million public comments in support, showing strong public backing.

Effects in Michigan

If the Roadless Rule is repealed, 16,000 acres in Michigan could be harmed. Most of Michigan’s roadless areas are in the Upper Peninsula including the Hiawatha National Forest, as well as parts of the Lower Peninsula, in the Manistee National Forest and Ottawa National Forest.

Anna Medema is the Sierra Club’s Associate Director of Legislative and Administrative Advocacy for forests and public land. She says keeping the Roadless Rule in effect is vitally important. “Once you build a road into a forest area it could take decades or centuries if you were to decommission these roads and try to let it regrow wildly,” Medema says. “Those wild characteristics are really rare.”

Trump administration officials say that removing the protections could help reduce wildfires by facilitating forest management. However, research shows that wildfires tend to happen more often in areas with roads because of human activity, negating potential benefits of road access.

In Michigan, wildfires are generally less common and less serious. Additionally, building roads and logging could actually raise the risk of fires.

The public can comment on the Roadless Rule here until September 19. 

This story is part of WDET’s ongoing series, The Detroit Tree Canopy Project.

For decades, fossil fuel companies championed the idea that climate change is solved through everyday personal habits — change your lightbulbs, recycle more, drive less — while they continued ramping up oil and gas production. BP even popularized the now‑ubiquitous carbon footprint calculator, nudging us into changing our behaviors rather than targeting the sources of the crisis.

A recent study found that people often misjudge which personal choices matter most. Many think recycling is the biggest fix, but it is actually cutting down on long flights, eating less meat, and even deciding whether to own a dog (pets have surprisingly large carbon footprints).

When people were shown the facts, they adjusted their intentions. 

But there is a catch: when climate action was framed only as a personal checklist, participants were less likely to support big collective steps, like voting for climate policy or joining a march.

This tension speaks to the myth of personal responsibility in climate change. 

Naomi Oreskes has written widely about how industries, from tobacco to oil, push this myth to delay real action. She is a professor of the history of science at Harvard University and co-author of the books “Merchants of Doubt” and “The Big Myth.”

She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to discuss how we can shift the focus back to meaningful climate solutions.

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Visitors sometimes leave stuff behind at Great Lakes beaches. Broken pieces from plastic toys or bits of styrene from coolers can get lost in the sand.  

One of the most common pieces of plastic trash found are cigarette butts. 

Here’s some background on that. 

Four years ago, I interviewed people who volunteered through the Alliance for the Great Lakes Adopt-a-Beach program. They were cleaning up trash at Duck Lake State Park. 

Lake Michigan is connected to Duck Lake by a small channel. When the big lake gets high, plastic trash is pushed into the smaller lake by wind and waves. Then when the water recedes, a lot of the plastic gets caught in the vegetation on either side of that connecting channel. A lot of plastic. 

I visited the Duck Lake State Park beach again two years ago and did another microplastics story, which included information about recovering plastic as a recyclable resources for a line of outdoor wear. 

This year, I went back to Duck Lake for a third time. 

It had been raining earlier in the morning. When I arrived, it was a little cloudy, but there was a nice breeze coming off Lake Michigan. 

My plan was to spend an hour picking up trash along the road adjacent to the beach and on the beach itself. I wanted to see if there was a pattern of a lot of cigarette butts on the beach. 

I had a small bag for cigarette butts. I also took a larger garbage bag, because I figured I’d pick up the other trash I found.  

I was going to compare this beach with another one in the afternoon, so I decided to limit the time to one hour.  

In that time, I picked up 158 cigarette butts.  

I had thought I might find 60. Obviously, my estimate was way off. 

An employee at the park told me some people park their cars next to the beach to enjoy the view of Lake Michigan, and then toss their cigarette butts on the ground while they’re there. There’s a bit of irony there, right? 

The fibers in those cigarette filters can quickly break down into microplastics and that’s not good. 

“Wildlife can be ingesting it. It can end up in our drinking water source for 40 million people. It’s also just, you know, adding to the litter on the beach itself, of course, having impact on the enjoyment of the beach, things like that,” said Olivia Reda. She organizes beach cleanups for the Alliance for the Great Lakes. 

“Eighty-six percent of the pieces that we find in a given season are composed of either partially or fully of plastic. So, cigarette butts, again being part of that problem, you know, breaking down into small pieces, less than 5 millimeters, end up in the Great Lakes, or they can end up in the Great Lakes,” Reda said. 

Back in 2018, I interviewed Mary Kosuth, from Dunwoody College of Technology in Minneapolis. She found microplastics in every municipal water supply her research checked in cities that pull water from the lakes.

She also found microplastics in Great Lakes beer, although the amount didn’t necessarily correspond with the microplastics in the tap water supply. That might be because the grains used in the beer often come in sacks made of woven polypropylene. 

She said even if plastic itself is inert, additives or chemicals absorbed from the environment could be harmful to human health. 

“We found in marine environments, at least, these plastic particles are very good at absorbing chemicals from the water,” Kosuth said, adding “So things like PCB, DDT, brominated flame retardants, things like these can actually form a coating on the outside of the plastic particles, which means that we would be ingesting higher amounts of that.” 

Is that really that much of an issue in the Great Lakes? A study out of the Rochester Institute of Technology estimates 22 million pounds of plastic debris enters the Great Lakes from the U.S. and Canada each year. 

My day on the road was not finished. I still had more trash to pick up. My next stop was Ludington State Park about an hour away. It’s a much bigger beach and has a lot more visitors.  

One of the things that could help is more bins for litter and recycling. That’s what Andrea Densham has found. She’s Senior Policy Advisor for the Alliance for the Great Lakes.  

She says scolding people who smoke for throwing their cigarette butts on the beach doesn’t help much. She says a different approach is better. For example, signs at the park encouraging people to join together to keep the beach clean are helpful. 

“Maybe the best answer is both signage, reminding folks that birds and children enjoy the beaches and that having cigarette butts is really damaging.” 

That is, damaging to both the experience at the beach and to the environment.  

She said having more trash cans at or near beaches would help. 

“There aren’t actually enough in many places, both recycling and litter bins, right by the beaches. And that causes some unnecessary eye-trash, I think.” 

Densham said receptacles for cigarettes and cigars are also needed.  

Overall she said all plastic trash is a major problem and society needs to eliminate single-use plastic products as much as possible. 

After wandering around Ludington State Park’s expansive beach for a while, I only found four cigarette butts. The road to the park runs along the beach for about three miles. There are places to park your car along the way. I found about a half-dozen cigarette butts at each of those places.  

I talked to a guy who’d been walking the beach and he said he only saw a couple of cigarette butts along the way. So, not a lot of that kind of trash compared to what I found at Duck Lake State Park earlier in the day. 

So, I tracked down the Park Manager, Jim Gallie, and asked him about that. 

“At least once per month, we have volunteers that come out to the park and they have segments of the beach that they walk and the pick up litter. They pick up cigarette butts, any debris that they find. Anything that they find that is larger than something they can handle, they report that to us. So, we work closely with the Friends of Ludington State Park on that. And that’s, I think at least one reason why are beaches are in pretty good shape,” he said. 

Not all the state, county, township, and city beaches have that extra help on a regular basis. 

But there are annual cleanups and a Great Lakes-wide effort is coming up. 

On September 20th is International Coastal Cleanup. The Alliance for the Great Lakes expect thousands of its Adopt-a-Beach volunteers to clear the beaches of trash at sites across the Great Lakes. I imagine that will include tens of thousands of cigarette butts. If you want to help, take latex or nitrile gloves with you. Picking up cigarette butts is kind of nasty and smelly. Trust me on that one. 

A couple strolls the beach near the main swimming area at Ludington State Park.

Detroit is a manufacturing city and with this comes hazardous waste – toxic, reactive, flammable, and corrosive material that’s dangerous to people. 

So what happens to all this hazardous waste? Federal and State Laws require facilities to obtain a license to store, dispose or treat it. 

That includes EQ Detroit Inc., which operates a hazardous waste site in Midtown near the I-94 and I-75 interchange. The company’s license is up for renewal, and not all residents are in support. 

But public sentiment is not the law, said Tracy Kecskemeti at the public informational meeting on Aug. 13. She’s the acting materials management division director for the Department of Environment Great Lakes and Energy. EGLE is the state regulator that oversees these hazardous waste sites. 

Producer Jack Filbrandt spoke to Detroit Documenters Colleen Cirrocco and Lynelle Herndon to learn more about what community members had to say. The next meeting on this issue is Sept. 4 at Tech Town. 

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Apple lovers will have plenty to pick this fall. 

The Michigan Apple Committee estimates growers will harvest about 30 million bushels of fruit in 2025. That’s about 1.2 billion pounds. 

Good weather helps

The committee’s executive director, Diane Smith, says the weather has been perfect for growing apples.

“We’ve had a little hail here and there, but generally that stays localized and doesn’t affect the overall crop,” she says. 

Michigan has more than 850 family-owned apple farms and over 17 million trees covering 38,000 acres. 

Smith says new farming methods have yielded several bumper crops.

“We’ve gone to more high-density planting,” she says. “So instead of having 250 trees to an acre, you can have up to 2,000 trees per acre.”

The future could look different

While the weather has been ideal, Smith says climate change could eventually affect the industry.

“As temperatures continue to rise, we’re seeing less rain at different times during the summer,” she says. “In 10 or 15 years, there could be a shift in some of the varieties that we grow.”

Michigan is one of the top three apple producing states, behind Washington. It competes with New York for second place. 

Smith says the industry also competes with other fruits, and that could take a bite out of sales.

“People aren’t eating as many apples as maybe they used to,” she says. “You go into the grocery store, and you can get different products year-round that maybe before you couldn’t get.”

Labor is another challenge

Smith says most Michigan apple farms rely on migrant workers to pick the fruit in the fall. She says that’s costly, but necessary.

“We just don’t have enough domestic workers that want to do the harvest,” she says. “Not many people just want a job for six weeks.”

Smith says she is not aware of any immigration raids at Michigan apple farms this summer. She also says tariffs have had little impact, though some producers face higher prices for imported chemicals to spray their crops. But she says most growers utilize organic methods.

“They don’t want to spray unless they absolutely have to,” she says.

Palmer Park provides a peaceful escape from the noisy, hot summer streets of Detroit. 

Spanning roughly 70 acres of forest, the park is home to over one hundred native plant species including treasured, towering oaks — some of which are centuries old. It serves as a sanctuary for wildlife such as pollinator bees, butterflies, birds, deer, and coyotes. 

There are many reasons that Palmer Park is one of the most popular urban parks in Detroit, but taking a closer look at the conditions of the tree canopy has one forestry educator concerned for the future.  

Southeast Michigan forestry educator Jackson Gorland founded the Michigan Forestry Club to share his passion for trees with the public.

Jackson Gorland identifying sassafras in Palmer Park

He recently conducted a forest forensics lesson at Palmer Park on a hot, humid Tuesday where he said that fewer tree species are thriving in the park without human intervention, risking reduced biodiversity.  

“Having a diversity of species in there…not just relying on a couple of species that are shade tolerant,” Gorland says. “Absolutely have beech in there, absolutely have sugar maple in… it’s [about] creating a mosaic of different conditions that promotes biodiversity.”

Gorland stresses that hands-on actions are needed to ensure the survival of Palmer Park’s oaks, which require full sunlight. According to

Gorland, shade-tolerant species are crowding them out. There are also more mature oaks than young saplings, a sign that future survival is in jeopardy.

The park recently did a prescribed burn to help young oaks, but further consistent interventions are needed, says Gorland. 

The Michigan Forestry Club plans to host additional forest forensics classes across parks in Metro Detroit and Ann Arbor.

This story is part of WDET’s ongoing series, The Detroit Tree Canopy Project.

WDET’s Natalie Albrecht contributed to this report.

Editor’s note: Edited on 9/2/25 to correct a misattribution in photo caption. Gorland is identifying sassafras, not saffron. We apologize for the error. 

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) may take legal action after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced the termination of “Solar for All”, a $7 billion national program designed to bring solar energy to low-income areas. This comes after the state awarded funding to more than a dozen pilot projects.

On August 7th, the EPA called for an end to the national Solar for All program, walking back a promised $156 million investment in Michigan’s renewable energy future.

Projects in the city of Detroit, as well as Wayne, Oakland, Chippewa, Berrien, Hillsdale, Kent and Kalamazoo counties are affected, some already under construction. 

EGLE Director Phil Roos said in a statement that the program aimed to lower energy costs, create local jobs, and help vulnerable residents maintain power in extreme weather events.

At this time, EGLE says it is consulting with Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel to determine what actions they can take.

Microplastics are everywhere, including the Great Lakes. They come in many forms, but are typically smaller than 5 millimeters. 

Some wash up on beaches while others end up in the stomachs of fish and birds. 

Scientists are concerned about their impact on human health, too.

The Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy will host its first virtual microplastics summit on October 22.

EGLE environmental quality analyst Eddie Kostelnik says microplastics are ubiquitous.

“We’ve found them in humans and organisms throughout our ecosystem,” he says. 

What are they?

Microplastics come in many types, including scented beads and synthetic clothing fibers. They can also form when larger items such plastic bottles break up over time.

Kostelnik says the summit will explore the risks microplastics pose to human health and the environment.

“I think there are still some holes in terms of human health effects,” he says. “But we have started to see some organism health effects trickle in.”

Experts will also examine how microplastics interact with other contaminants and where they go. 

Researchers make progress, but want to learn more

Kostelnik says research has produced better ways to detect and identify microplastics. He adds it is possible to reduce the amount of microplastics in the lakes.

“There are certainly ways that we can reduce plastic use and replace plastic products with reusable alternatives,” he says.

Kostelnik says anyone who’s interested in the issue can attend the virtual summit, whether they’re experts or not. 

Registration is free.

The Palisades nuclear plant in Covert Township got one step closer to reopening after federal regulators allowed the plant’s owners to load fuel into the facility. Some reporting suggests that Holtec International plans to reopen the reactor by October.  

That move is part of a larger trend. 

In recent years, there’s been a lot more political energy behind opening nuclear reactors. During his time as president, Joe Biden unveiled a plan to ramp up America’s nuclear energy capacity. When he got into office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order with the goal of quadrupling nuclear power in 25 years. 

Many climate change defenders are divided on these decisions. That’s because nuclear energy could provide a ton of clean energy for Americans, but it also has the capacity to kill people and contaminate the earth. That’s why environmentalists have generally stood against the nuclear energy comeback. 

In order to assess nuclear energy in terms of risk and reward, journalist, editor, producer, and co-founder of Foxtopus Inc Laura Krantz joined the show.

She produced the 2022 podcast, “Wild Thing: Going Nuclear,” where she explored the possibilities and drawbacks of nuclear energy. Krantz spoke with Robyn Vincent about why she thinks nuclear energy is important — and what concerns her about nuclear reactors.

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As the temperature has climbed this summer, so have energy bills—and frustrations. These higher costs are driven by more than extreme summer temperatures. Factors like outdated power grids and a recent $217 million rate hike approved for DTE Energy by state regulators earlier this year are also at play.

Meanwhile, federal clean-energy incentives that once encouraged investment in renewable energy are starting to phase out. Michigan was on track to increase its renewable energy capacity by 2035. But with key federal tax credits repealed by the Trump administration, the state faces higher future costs and delayed renewable projects.

At the same time, utility shutoffs in Michigan and nationwide have increased, hitting lower-income and marginalized communities hard. 

Nicholas Schroeck, dean of the University of Detroit Mercy School of Law, and an expert in environmental law and justice, joined The Metro’s Robyn Vincent to discuss energy affordability and sustainability and what residents can do about it.

Editor’s Note: DTE Energy and Consumers Energy are financial supporters of WDET.

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Reforesting urban environments faces one significant yet overlooked hurdle: bringing residents to the table.

Dr. Christine Carmichael recognized this when doing research in Detroit in 2013 with nonprofit group, The Greening of Detroit. What she learned prompted her to create her urban forestry consulting group, Fair Forests, and write her book, “Racist Roots: How Racism Has Affected Trees and People in Our Cities – and What We Can Do About It,” which came out in 2024.

Today, Dr. Carmichael advises forestry efforts on national, state, and local levels on how to best address resident concerns and wants to make tree planting a positive experience for all involved.

Her work focuses on the unique roles community members, arborists, nonprofits and governments play in urban forestry.

In her words, “How can we think about who has what type of power, and how can we share that better, and provide people with the resources they need to address all these issues around tree canopy?”

Carmichael emphasizes connecting with neighborhoods and learning their heritage narratives to see how they’ve experienced change over time.

How history shapes the tree canopy today

During the time of its peak population, Detroit had such a dense tree canopy that it was called “Tree City.” Then a combination of disease, invasive pests and neglect killed half a million trees while magnifying injustices in the city’s landscape.

A lot of people want to move on from the past, but failing to see the bigger picture avoids key issues that created our modern tree canopy.

“People are living in the present consequences of the past decisions,” Carmichael says, reflecting on how historic racist policies like redlining still impact rates of homeownership among Black Americans today. “And we need to change those decisions to make things better.”

A result of redlining in the city

Carmichael says that when she started her work around a decade ago, the ties between redlining and reduced tree canopy weren’t proven. But foresters noticed that disadvantaged neighborhoods tended to have fewer trees and less healthy trees.

Redlining was the 1930s policy of evaluating property as “hazardous” if its occupants were Black. Owners of redlined property were ineligible for government housing investment funds.

Redlined neighborhoods are often recognized as environmental justice areas today.

Environmental injustice can include the dumping of waste, the placement and lax regulation of polluting industrial sites by the city, neglecting to address infrastructural issues, and more.  Carmichael adds, “A common way to think about it is that people are being treated unfairly and are not being meaningfully included in decisions about the environment that they’re living in.”

Having outsiders make decisions on what happened to the environment in these neighborhoods has negative consequences. Redlining segregated neighborhoods and denied people the help needed to care for their property.

It’s only logical that people lost trust in the city and outside organizations.

Not only are trees more vulnerable to disease and hazardous when they aren’t maintained properly, but the lack of tree canopy has an impact on people’s health. “So, people experiencing higher heat-related issues, more air quality issues, mental health, cardiac…” Carmichael lists.

Detroit as an epicenter

Carmichael said that Detroit and its near-monoculture of elm trees made it an epicenter for Dutch elm disease.

When Dutch elm disease swept through the city at the same time as the ’67 Rebellion, the mass removal of elm trees with little notice was another injustice residents suffered.

It created a unique heritage narrative that Carmichael noticed among residents she interviewed. “Many, most of whom had lived during the ’67 Rebellion, had this feeling that the trees were removed because the government wanted to surveil neighborhoods from overhead in helicopters, not because the trees were diseased.”

The consistent exclusion and lack of resources given to certain neighborhoods created environmental injustices that worsened as the city lost much of its population to white flight. The forestry department shrank, and diseased and dead trees were left to languish in residential areas.

When emerald ash borers struck in the ’90s, more trees were lost and damaged. Again, residents were not as informed or engaged as they should have been.

“It was more like a reactionary, oh, these trees are dying, we’ll just take them down,” says Carmichael. “There were limits to urban foresters’ understanding of how to manage those things. They were new threats, but I think there could have been a lot more proactive effort to organize with the community.”

Despite being at the forefront of these ecological issues, Detroit missed an opportunity to address environmental injustice, according to Dr. Carmichael. The same failures can be seen in other urban environments that followed.

Detroit could have been an example of how to better protect the tree canopy with environmental justice in mind.

Modern approaches to inclusive urban forestry

As Detroit was less able to fund municipalities like forestry departments, neighborhood community groups stepped up to care for their lands. When nonprofits came onto the stage to fill the gaps left by forestry departments, there was a need to engage better with residents on the ground level that wasn’t being met at the time of Carmichael’s research.

Meaningful engagement between outside tree planting groups and neighborhoods requires a lot of funding. Carmichael credits the Inflation Reduction Act for allowing urban forestry groups to begin to make the necessary efforts to reduce barriers for the communities they work with.

But now that funding is reduced, and nonprofits have to work with fewer resources once more. That may mean that they can’t prioritize residents as much as they need to, as getting trees in the ground and similar metrics are what appeals to funders.

Still, Carmichael argues that it’s essential to look at reforesting efforts beyond the lens of efficiency and profit maximization. It’s not just about how many trees you can plant, the shade provided and the carbon sequestered, but also about the people who will be impacted by those trees.

Those same people are paramount when it comes to long-term maintenance of the tree. If urban foresters can show them specific things to look out for, residents can make sure the trees stay healthy and don’t become hazards like they have in the past.

“Essentially, it’s about educating,” says Carmichael. It’s not about the benefits of trees, as most residents already know all the good a tree can do; they just need support on making sure those benefits come without so many drawbacks. “The emphasis should be more on educating the funders about what activities are needed to both increase the canopy and support the residents.”

This story is part of WDET’s ongoing series, The Detroit Tree Canopy Project.

Editors Note: This article was edited on 8/1/25 to correct the statement that IRA funding for urban forestry is gone. IRA funds are still supporting efforts in Michigan, but have been reduced. We deeply apologize for the error.