Common Groundwater

The country roads around the small town of Albion are some of the prettiest you'll see in Michigan. Take it from this podcast host, who would run them with his cross country teammates at Albion College.

Now, there are new neighbors out among the corn and soy and old trees, stunning in their own way but undeniably different: solar panels. Over 4,000 acres of them, generating enough electricity to power 60,000 homes.

Bonnie Lord noticed these panels, too. She's the editor-in-chief of the Albion Pleiad, Albion College's student-run newspaper. She spent hours and hours researching the solar farms, meeting with local government and business leaders, and talking to folks living nearby. Then, she put all she learned into a three-part news comic series.

Bonnie joins Common Groundwater for the start of our miniseries on solar energy development. Michigan will be powered by 100% clean energy by 2040, but local, state and national forces appear bent to keep this from happening. 

Bonnie's story—and the area's—is grounded in truth and compassion, and they serve as a bit of a microcosm of the larger state of solar, showing us all the goodness (and worry) this renewable energy can bring to a community.

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Read Bonnie's comic news series on Calhoun County's solar renaissance here.

Check out other stories from the Albion Pleiad here. (And if you like what you see, support local journalism with a donation!)

Learn more about the Environmental Council's latest clean energy efforts here.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Michigan's crops are the second-most diverse of any state. We tried to replicate that point of pride that in this episode. We went to two seemingly disparate places to talk about the critical relationship farms have with pollinators.

First, we took the train to small-town Dowagiac in southwest Michigan to talk to Merry Clark about the history and benefits of organic and regenerative farming. Then, we drove over to Detroit's Brightmoor neighborhood to meet Brittney Rooney of Beaverland Farms to get a personal perspective of it all.

What unites both Merry and Brittney is organic farming. Merry's mother founded the movement behind it here in the state and Brittney is living it out 50 years later. Both also serve on the board of the Michigan Organic Food & Farm Alliance.

So join us as we learn about the economic, health and, of course, environmental benefits of embracing a more natural, holistic way of growing food.

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Learn more about the Michigan Organic Food & Farm Alliance here.

Read about the woman behind Michigan's organic farming movement by purchasing Merry's book, Dandelion Roots Run Deep, here.

Learn more about Beaverland Farms by visiting its website here or by reading its feature in Planet Detroit.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

In the mid-1900s, governments and industries across the globe were using the pesticide dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT.

Then came Silent Spring, a book by Rachel Carson that thoroughly documented the harm caused by DDT to waters, to wildlife and to people. It galvanized a movement that ultimately led to the chemical’s large-scale ban.

Now some are saying a new Silent Spring movement must happen, because a pesticide 5,000 to 7,000 times more potent than DDT is here: neonicotinoids, which are used on millions of acres of soybeans, corn and other crops in the United States alone.

To Dan Raichel of NRDC, this is “public enemy number one” to pollinators. Fortunately, just like DDT, we can make systemic change for the benefit of farmers, food and nature alike. Canadian provinces already have. In our next Common Groundwater podcast episode, Dan breaks down the potency, popularity and persistence of ‘neonics’ and the plan to address them.

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To learn more about NRDC's pollinator work, click here.

Are you part of a Michigan-based group or business interested in protecting pollinators and saving farmers money? Email Dan for more information: [email protected].

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Swallow-wort. A vine with beautiful, star-shaped flowers. It tricks insects into laying eggs on its leaves. When the eggs hatch, the larvae eat the leaves—and die with a one hundred percent mortality rate.

Lesser celandine. A plant with bright, glossy, yellow flowers. It blooms early in the spring, outcompeting other plants only to offer little nutritional value to insects fresh out of hibernation. It then dies and leaves a bare patch of ground for other harmful plants to inhabit.

Both these plants are invasive species. They not only contribute to the suffering of pollinator insects, they do the same to the native plants those pollinators and other creatures depend on. Entire ecosystems thus suffer.

Enter the world of Dr. Shikha Singh, biologist and coordinator of the Jackson, Lenawee and Washtenaw Cooperative Invasive Species Management Area.

In our latest podcast episode on pollinators, Singh talks about the great relationship between pollinators and ecosystems, the toxic relationships invasive species create, and Tim Horton’s, the best coffee and donut chain.

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Learn more about Singh's organization here. Or find an invasive species group near you here.

This episode is part of a pollinator miniseries produced in partnership with NRDC. Learn about its latest pollinator work in Michigan here.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Yes, the pollinators of Michigan are the animals and insects, like bees and hummingbirds, that help plants grow and reproduce by moving flower to flower.

But "The Pollinators" is also the name for Carly and David Cirilli, co-founders of the nonprofit Plymouth Pollinators. Over the past few years, the Cirillis and an ever-growing list of gardeners have created a string of beautiful, functional and even critical gardens just for pollinators in their slice of Metro Detroit.

Carly, David and host Beau Brockett discuss this work and why it and the flora and fauna it benefits are so crucial to the suburbs.

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Learn more about Plymouth Pollinators or to get started on your own native garden here.

This episode is part of a pollinator miniseries produced in partnership with NRDC. Learn about its latest pollinator work in Michigan here.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Eli Cooper likes he to say he was "born to ride." He grew up taking buses and subways in The Bronx. Now, as Oakland County's transit manager, he helps the residents, workers and visitors of Michigan's second-most-populous county get to where they want or need to go.

Hired after citizens voted to expand transit in all Oakland communities, he and the system operators—SMART and WOTA and NOTA and more—have made it the easiest it's ever been to travel within and past the county. But they've never strayed away from their, as Eli says, 'bread and butter': fixed-route buses. 

Eli and host Beau Brockett have more.

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Learn more about the transit services offered in Oakland County by going to oakgov.com/community/oakland-transit.

Learn about transportation efforts and opportunities through the Michigan Environmental Council. You can also subscribe via email and follow on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Wexford County in the northwest Lower Peninsula of Michigan has about 33,500 residents across it’s 575 square miles. The WexExpress, the county’s transit system, provided 155,000 rides last year alone... and that number is rising.

Parents use it take toddlers to Head Start programs. Teens take it to class and after-school activities. Adults take it for manufacturing jobs. Seniors take it to get to the doctor’s. All sorts of people take it for appointments and fun trips and rides home from the bar. It's for everyday life.

Carrie Thompson, executive director of WexExpress joined Common Groundwater to discuss the unique needs a rural county like Wexford has, how transit serves them and what challenges still exist. Transit is a small-town value.

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To learn more about the WexExpress and its programs, go to wexexpress.us. To help expand funding for WexExpress and the transit agency that serves you, click here.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

New Urbanist Memes for Transit-Oriented Teens. "The European Mind Cannot Comprehend This." City Beautiful.

These are the (respective) internet communities, memes and influencers that have brought America's rising generations together around transit. As Petra Mihelko of Transportation Riders United puts it, these phenomena "put into words" what the youth want: Beautiful, useful, connective places that can be traveled within and traveled to in all sorts of ways.

Mihalko, a Gen Zer, and Beau Brockett, a questionable Millennial, talk about how and why so many young Michiganders (and older folks, too) want good buses, trains and more.

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To learn more about transit efforts across the state, check out Transportation Riders United and the Michigan Environmental Council.

All credit for this episode's title goes to The Go! Team.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

It's Season 2 of Common Groundwater! We'll be taking this podcast on the road across the state to the places where the problems, stories and solutions to the topics we talk about are happening. Plus, we'll be leaning on you, the listener, to ask us questions and shape our discussions. We can't wait!

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Now's the time to expand transit. Well, we at the Environmental Council would argue any time’s a good time. But with a rising cost of living, swelling support and major state funding discussions, Michigan has a unique opportunity to capitalize on the moment and reverse the longstanding trend of disinvestment. 

Ross Gavin, the Environmental Council's urban land use and infrastructure policy director, has more.

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Learn about transportation efforts and opportunities through the Michigan Environmental Council. You can also subscribe via email and follow on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.

Last year, dozens of folks came to Saugatuck to hear the plans of legislators to restore protections for dunes and their neighboring communities against destructive, risky development. 

Michigan's globally unique dunes are nearly universally loved. So was that love met with new laws? Can consensus be found? Our Michigan Environmental Council teammate Emily Smith has more.

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Learn about Great Lakes coasts and other ecosystems through the Michigan Environmental Council. You can also subscribe via email and follow on Facebook, Instagram or LinkedIn.

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Common Groundwater is hosted by the Michigan Environmental Council and Beau Brockett Jr.

Our music is "The Four Seasons" by Antonio Vivaldi, arranged by Derek Zhang and performed by Jackson resident Taj Wallace.