City Profiles / Medium Cities / Ann Arbor, MI

Ann Arbor, Michigan

Much of Ann Arbor, Michigan's environmental progress owes its origins to the handiwork of grassroots organizations. In fact, Recycle Ann Arbor, a nonprofit organization that launched Michigan's first curbside recycling program in 1978, is still handling the city's waste diversion. It also manages the Environmental House, a resource center of green building and energy-efficiency in the community. Remarkably for a city of a little over 100,000 residents, Ann Arbor hosts over 1,000 nonprofits, many of them green-minded.

The city is working to maintain the city's surrounding rural countryside and farmland (one of their most important goals is to create a self-sufficient food supply) and to prevent urban sprawl. The Greenbelt Millage was overwhelmingly passed by voters in November 2003, and increases green space through the purchase of additional parkland as well as development rights easements on working family farms. In addition to encouraging dense urban development and local food production, this strategy improves drinking water quality, protects farmers, and enhances wildlife habitat.

Ann Arbor is known for its abundant tree cover, hence its name. But an infestation of the destructive, non-native emerald ash borer is predicted to destroy 19 percent of its canopy (10,000 trees have already been removed from public spaces). The city is aggressively replanting trees, funded in part by money collected in stormwater management fees, which are based on the amount of impervious surfaces on a property. Property owners wishing to reduce their fees can examine online infrared aerial photos of their land to pinpoint nonporous surfaces. They can then install rain barrels, increase greenery, or take other measures to reduce stormwater runoff, which prevents pollution from reaching the Huron River.