Oct 11 2009
MI Brownfield Sites Have Green Potential: Scientific American
The well-respected magazine Scientific American has a solid story related to reuse of Michigan and Lake Erie brownfield sites as wind and solar power production areas. It is a RECOMMENDED read. Excerpt and link:
The EPA in November will kick off a series of five national workshops to allow state and local leaders, renewable energy developers and conservation groups to brainstorm. “The idea is to get them all together and say, ‘Okay, we have all this great (disturbed) land, we don’t want to see development of greenfield sites, what do we do next?’ ” Swingle said. The kickoff meeting is scheduled in Detroit, in part because Michigan has some of the best brownfield redevelopment potential.
Researchers this year identified 44,000 acres of brownfield sites in the state that are suitable for harvesting wind and solar power, according to a study conducted by Michigan State University’s Land Policy Institute and the National Center for Neighborhood and Brownfields Redevelopment at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
If each site was redeveloped with solar arrays and wind farms, according to the study, they could produce an estimated 5,855 megawatts of electricity–enough to power 1.8 million homes, or roughly half the homes in Michigan.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=green-shoots-from-brown
Just an additional note on this. SE Michigan land conservation groups and other stakeholders have been meeting to discuss coordinating efforts within the city of Detroit. Currently there’s significant overlap among the groups. This is only in the very early stage of discussions. Groups such as the Greening of Detroit, DWEJ, Friends of the Rouge, and MTGA are also involved.