Conservation Letter 2
A Cleaner, Greener Land:
What Kalamazoo Ought to Do
The following remarks were made by Richard Brewer at the Kalamazoo Earth Day Celebration 24 April 2004 at Kalamazoo Valley Community College.
When I agreed to give a talk at Earth Day, I asked my wife what I should talk about. She said, "It's Earth Day. Talk about positive, forward-looking things."
"What should I call the talk?" I said.
"Use the title of the last chapter in your book."
So today I'm talking about positive, forward-looking things going on in the area or the state, and the title is "A Cleaner, Greener Land."
I added the subtitle myself.
A few months ago, I heard Dave Poulson speak just across the hall in KVCC's Eye on Environment series. Poulson spent several years as the environmental reporter for the Booth newspapers, the only environmental reporter in the state as far as I know. He had just left that job to join an environmental journalism center at Michigan State University when he spoke here.
In his talk Poulson said that of all the issues he had reported on in his years of covering the environment in Michigan, he had concluded that the most important one, the central one where all the rest came together, was land use. As someone with a special interest in land conservation, I think that's a sound conclusion, at least for the local and state level.
Today I'm going to mention a few hopeful land use actions that have been done or begun or at least been mentioned. I'll also add a couple of other hopeful things that ought to be started.
1. First, I think this Earth Day is an encouraging sign in itself. I remember the first Earth Day in 1970 in Kalamazoo. Lew Batts spoke to a large audience at Nazareth College.
For the last several years, there has been no evident continuing civic commitment to Earth Day in Kalamazoo. Nevertheless, every year some group has stepped forward and put on something. I remember a couple of years ago, the Food Co-op, seeing that nobody else had planned anything, did the best they could in the space next to Kraftbrau.
The groups that I know of that have been working on Earth Day this year are the Kalamazoo Environmental Council and KVCC. I'm sure representatives of other groups and just plain individual environmentalists have contributed also. Today gives every indication of being one of the best celebrations in a long time, but just the fact that official neglect hasn't managed to kill off Earth Day in Kalamazoo has to be seen as a hopeful sign.
2. The biggest story on the front page of the Kalamazoo Gazette a month or so ago (28 March 2004) had the headline "Highway Upgrades Bypass Schoolcraft." It's one of those typical newspaper headings that don't tell you what the article is about. What the story said was that the Michigan Department of Transportation has for the time being given up any plans to study, then plan and build a 4-lane $250 million 131 bypass around Schoolcraft.
This was not news; MDOT had made the announcement in December 2003. The reason is that there's no money for new highway projects these days because of the poor economy. The Gazette article admits this but also spins the story to blame the people in the region for not embracing the idea of a bypass years ago.
The postponement is good land use news. Any of the bypass routes would eat up farmland that is probably the best in the state. Most of the routes would also destroy woods and marshes and would obliterate landmarks and relicts of Prairie Ronde, the 20-odd square miles of tall-grass prairie that once occupied the land around Schoolcraft. The bypass itself, depending on the exact route, could be four miles long and would occupy perhaps 600 acres and disturb much more in the construction. Interchanges and later business development would knock out additional acreages of farmland and natural land.
Only total cancellation of the whole idea of having a four-lane expressway all the way from Cadillac to the Indiana border would be better news for farmers and all opponents of sprawl.
3. Today's Gazette had more good news. After a long process, a Declaration of Conservation Restrictions and Management Framework for the Asylum Lake Preserve was approved last Friday (16 April) by the Western Michigan University (WMU) Board of Trustees. This way of protecting such land is not as strong as a conservation easement held by a land trust provided with an adequate defense endowment. But all in all, I'd say that the Asylum Lake property is now more secure than at any time since 1985. Continued vigilance by area citizens will still be needed. In the long run, their outrage at proposed violations is the only permanent protection. (There is more about Asylum Lake in Conservation Letter 1.)
4. The Michigan Land Use Institute of Beulah has done good things in land (and water) use for Michigan in its nine years of existence. It was heavily involved in the Michigan Land Use Leadership Council (MLULC), appointed by Governor Jennifer Granholm soon after her inauguration and has pushed MLULC's recommendations since they were released in August 2003. Judging from the Institute's website and publications, one shortcoming seems to be the Institute's lack of knowledge of land trusts and how they contribute to sustainable land use. Perhaps this lack will be remedied in the future.
5. One of the major issues identified in the MLULC's report was "supporting efforts to make Michigan cities more livable...." Given the tag of "Cool Cities," this is one of the recommendations being pushed by Governor Granholm. I recently heard an elected official of Kalamazoo indicate that the city was behind the Cool Cities initiative and, further, that hopeful things were happening. A couple of things that were mentioned were improved inter-governmental cooperation (shown by most units of government in the county signing on to the 911 emergency number) and approval of a tunnel under route 131 to connect the Kal-Haven Trail with one that will run through Kalamazoo and on eastward to Calhoun County.
I agree that both are good developments. I hope that thought is being given to design so that the tunnel will be also be useful for salamanders, snakes, turtles, and possums. For example, the ground ought to be contoured in a drift fence arrangement to direct the movement of animals heading for the highway to the tunnel. I also hope that future road construction in and around Kalamazoo will have tunnels that will allow the movement of animals from side to the other. Certainly, the four-lane road along the west side of Asylum Lake should have included such tunnels.
I would like to believe that Kalamazoo city government and the boards and staffs elsewhere in the county embrace Smart Growth and the idea of Kalamazoo becoming a cool city, but I don't. Cool cities are ones that appeal to people such as the city hopes to attract--intelligent, educated, creative, civic-minded, prosperous or about to be. If good employees are attracted to the city, good businesses will be too. What makes a city appealing to these people is the same as what makes a city appealing to most of us in this room--hiking and biking trails, nature preserves, open space of all kinds, the Kalamazoo Nature Center, an active Audubon Society and other similar organizations, good libraries, a symphony orchestra and Fontana Chamber Music Society, a farmers' market with organic food, colleges and universities with the literature, art, music, and intellectual stimulation they bring--to name a few.
The actual, original meaning of "Smart Growth" is narrower than the sense in which most people now use it; it refers to switching public money and other support to the sorts of things just mentioned that will make an area a better place to live. If the city is going to give away public money, the money ought to be going to these and not to trying to attract the kind of businesses that, if they come, we'll wish they hadn't.
6. This point and the next deal with proposals--good things that aren't being done but ought to be.
The elected official I mentioned before brought up the human population growth rate in our area as a sign of its not being cool. From July 2002 to July 2003, Kalamazoo County grew 0.6%. Barry County had the highest growth rate in the region, 1.1%. Cass County lost population slightly.
It may or may not be a fact that Cass and Calhoun, which grew only 0.1%, aren't cool, but southwest Michigan's slow growth is another example of good news. Sprawl comes from two sources. One is our hypertrophied appetites for space; the other is population growth. We have plenty of sprawl just from the first; we don't need the second.
Slow growth gives us an opportunity that needs to be grabbed. Land values are high here compared to 20 years ago, but they're low compared with Marin or Teton counties, or even Washtenaw. Those of us interested in protecting land need to find ways to buy big parcels of land while it's still possible.
Preserving small pieces of pristine land of high biodiversity or possessing threatened or endangered species is important and needs to be continued. But big pieces of land, no matter where they are and no matter if they're less interesting biologically are needed, the more the better. They'll get better with time, through natural processes or by restoration if necessary.
Cities, townships, and counties should divert money to buying parkland. Conservation organizations need to understand the opportunity and feel the urgency. Foundations and rich people need to support such efforts.
In the Great Plains, also a region of slow growth, people are talking of the American Prairie Restoration Project in which 835,000 acres in Montana will be bought to connect with nearly 3 million acres of public land. Southwest Michigan could do the same. We need a Wood Frog Commons or a Scarlet Tanager Restoration Project.
7.. An asymmetry exists between the forces that profit from sprawl and the citizens who question the wisdom of development decisions. The asymmetry takes two forms: money and knowledge. In a typical situation, a corporation, let us say Y'all-Mart, takes out an option on land in a zone that does not allow construction of the enormous store and parking lot they propose. Their application for a variance leads to the formation of a citizens group, Friends of the Creek, opposing the variance.
In the hearings that follow, before the Planning Board and the City or Township Commission, the asymmetry becomes evident. The developer has a high-powered lawyer and experts of several sorts. They know the statutes, the regulations, and the process. The City Commission gets a slick presentation and a thinly veiled threat that if they turn down the variance they'll have a lawsuit on their hands. The Friends may have gotten a little pro bono help from a couple of local professors and, if they passed the hat, some bargain basement legal advice.
What I suggest is that we need a well-funded non-profit organization that will offer training to citizen groups, new (and old) planning board members, and new (and old) elected officials. They need to be taught the fundamentals of land use that includes its environmental and societal bases and also the law connected with land use decisions. The emphasis needs to be on the full range of options available, not on ways to grease the skids for every rezoning request.
If a city or township courageously turns down the variance, it gets sued. If it grants the variance, it probably doesn't. The reason is obvious: For the developer, hiring lawyers and expert witnesses and all the other expenses are costs of doing business. For the citizens opposing the variance, the costs come out of their own pockets, or their hides. For this reason, what is also needed is a foundation that will provide no-interest loans or outright grants to hire experts and lawyers or, at the least, free legal and technical help whenever citizens become involved in a battle against sprawl.
In such ways, the asymmetry will be reduced. We can remove some of the tilt from the playing field.
These are some good things that are happening or could happen on this, the 34th anniversary of Earth Day.