Really interesting!

Great article about planned urban shrinkage and creation of city land banks in Flint, MI.

"Instead of waiting for houses to become abandoned and then pulling them down, local leaders are talking about demolishing entire blocks and even whole neighborhoods.

The population would be condensed into a few viable areas. So would stores and services. A city built to manufacture cars would be returned in large measure to the forest primeval.

“Decline in Flint is like gravity, a fact of life,” said Dan Kildee, the Genesee County treasurer and chief spokesman for the movement to shrink Flint. “We need to control it instead of letting it control us.”"

LINK

Detroit...

Unreal.

"People are leaving Michigan at a staggering rate. About 109,000 more people left Michigan last year than moved in. It is one of the worst rates in the nation, quadruple the loss of just eight years ago. The state loses a family every 12 minutes, and the families who are leaving -- young, well-educated high-income earners -- are the people the state desperately needs to rebuild.

...Since 2001, migration has cost Michigan 465,000 people, the equivalent of the combined populations of Grand Rapids, Warren and Sterling Heights -- the state's second-, third- and fourth-largest cities.
Population loss of that magnitude is so rare that its impact has never been studied.

..."These numbers -- my God," said Kurt Metzger, a demographer who heads a local nonprofit. "It's like a perfect storm -- the education, the income, the young people, everything is going in the wrong direction." "

LINK

But, if you stay, there's meat to be had:

"When I arrived in the office one morning, I eagerly told my co-workers about my run-in (almost, but not literally) with a pheasant that crossed my path as I cut through a Highland Park neighborhood. Turns out, such sightings are not all that uncommon.
One guy I work with says locals hunt pheasants and other small game at an east side neighborhood park and they've seen coyotes at the nearby cemetery.
Today, Detroit News writer Charlie LeDuff writes about the Coon Man, a 69-year-old licensed hunter and furrier and retired truck driver who supplements his Social Security check with the sale of raccoon carcasses that go for as much $12 and can serve up to four. The pelts, too, are good for coats and hats and fetch up to $10 a hide.
Charlie writes that a beaver was spotted recently in the Detroit River, fox skulk at the Palmer Park golf course, wild turkey roam vacant fields and bald eagle, hawk and falcon dot the city skies.
Mind you, hunting is prohibited within Detroit city limits. But with things being what they are, "Starvation is cheap," Glemie Dean Beasley says."

LINK

This says so much.

"People filing new claims for unemployment benefits by phone face longer wait times due to a spike in call volume.
The average wait to speak with a customer service representative at the state unemployment division on Monday, the center’s busiest day of the week, was 28 minutes, compared with 15 minutes last year, Raymond A. Filippone, assistant director, income support, for the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training said yesterday.
The state’s caseload of unemployment claims, including new and continuing claims, has nearly doubled in the last year, to 21,000 cases, up from about 11,500 during the same time last year, Filippone said. The volume of new unemployment claims, he said, is up 12.2 percent from a year ago.
Rhode Island’s unemployment rate in August jumped to 8.5 percent, the second-highest in the country after Michigan, where the jobless rate was 8.9 percent. Rhode Island’s unemployment rolls in August swelled to 48,800, the highest level on record." LINK

Nasty fish disease in Lake Michigan

"The deadly fish disease Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia (VHS) has been found in yellow perch in the Lake Michigan waters off Milwaukee. The finding comes a week after VHS was detected in round gobies found dead on beaches in South Milwaukee, the first such finding in southern Lake Michigan. " LINK

Best. Article. Ever. on the Western states water crisis.

Man, I do love me some good Salon writing. Much as James Howard Kunstler's amazing book The Long Emergency ( a must-read for any Doom readers!) predicted, the unsustainable idiocy of building sprawling, lawned suburbs in the freaking desert has led to trouble. Of course, as we all know, the residents of Nevada, Arizona, etc. are looking north to the Great Lakes, rationalizing that if oil can be piped from Alaska, they can have golf courses in Scottsdale. Fail.
This article takes the whole bloody fiasco to the only rational answer- these people have to move back into the emptied cities of the industrial north, where the effing water is.

"Bill Richardson, governor of arid New Mexico, had his region's plight in mind when he told the Las Vegas Sun that Northern states need to start sharing their water: "I want a national water policy. We need a dialogue between states to deal with issues like water conservation, water reuse technology, water delivery and water production. States like Wisconsin are awash in water." (emphasis mine)

Sun Belters, there's a man in Detroit with the answer to your water problems. "They can have all the water they want," says Hugh McDiarmid Jr. of the Michigan Environmental Council. "All they have to do is move here." There's plenty of room. Some Detroit neighborhoods are so bereft of houses that pheasants hide in the vacant lots. And the cost of living is unbeatable. Earlier this year, an auctioneer was trying to unload a bungalow for $18,000. When no one would bid, he reminded his audience, "You get the land under the house, too."

OK, so Detroit's a tough place to find a job. How about Cleveland? It's half the size it used to be, which means 500,000 people are driving on freeways built for a million. Commuting is a breeze. Syracuse would love to have you, too. They've lost a higher proportion of young people than any other city in the U.S., perhaps because they engineered their own demise, being the headquarters of Carrier Air Conditioning, the appliance that made the Sun Belt possible."

Read this article, please- funny, concise, and dead on point. We can't keep doing this anymore.

Link to fantastic article.

this is why I have this blog.

Human arrogance vs. the Great Lakes. And the loser is....

Us.

"Study: Man-Made 'Drain Hole' Slowly Emptying Lake Michigan
Wednesday, August 15, 2007

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — A "drain hole" in the St. Clair River caused by dredging and other commercial projects is costing Lakes Huron and Michigan a combined 2.5 billion gallons of water each day, according to a Canadian study released Tuesday.

That exceeds the amount diverted from Lake Michigan to provide Chicago's daily water supply.

The drainage hole has caused an overall water level decline of nearly 2 feet since 1970, the study said. The outflow goes into Lake Erie, then east to Lake Ontario and eventually through the St. Lawrence River to the Atlantic Ocean." LINK

About 1 out of every 300 people in the US lost power in the ice storm. Wow.

Ok, is my math off on this? This is astonishing. The ice storm has knocked out power to

135,000 homes and businesses in New York and New Hampshire
312,000 homes and businesses in Missouri
112,000 homes and businesses in Oklahoma
127,000 homes and businesses in Michigan
---------
686,000 homes and businesses

Assuming (roughly) 2 people per domicile, so roughly 1.2 million people, that's (roughly) 1 out of every 300 Americans who are sitting in the dark right now. That's some kick-ass weather.

Dr. Master's weather blog

is usually awesome, and I love to read what he has to say. Today he scared the hell out of me, though. I'll put a couple of quotes, but seriously, his blog is a joy to read- clear, not-too-technical writing about weather from a seriously respected meteorologist. The forums there can be fun, but watch out for the nutjobs- cyclonebuster, I'm talking about you. Actually, unless you have epic patience, avoid the forums, but go for Dr. Master's blog. Quotes in bold.

The lack of snow across the entire Northern Hemisphere has been remarkable both in its areal coverage and depth, thanks to December temperatures 5-20 degrees F above normal. Minneapolis, Minnesota--which normally receives over 18 inches of snow by this time of year--has had a paltry one inch of snow so far this winter.

When my nephew Cody eagerly unwrapped his new snow board this Christmas and asked me when he might get a chance to use it, I told him, "What are you thinking? This is Michigan in the 21st century! There's not going to be any more snow." I exaggerate slightly, but I don't recommend that anyone invest in the winter sports equipment industry this year. The latest 2-week forecast from the GFS model shows no end in sight for the warm conditions in North America.

Now, let's talk about sea ice in the Arctic. The Arctic Ice Cap has shrunk by about 20% since 1979, and at the end of November this year, the amount of sea ice in the Arctic was about 2 million square kilometers less than had even been seen in any previous November. December has also seen the lowest sea ice coverage for any December on record. All this exposed water provides a huge source of heat and moisture in the Arctic that retards the formation of the usual cold air masses over the adjacent regions of Canada and Siberia. It's impossible to know how much of an effect this has without doing some detailed model studies, but I think the record low sea ice in the Arctic is probably a significant contributor to this winter's record warmth. The Arctic Ice Cap is expected to continue to decline, due to human-caused global warming, according to the 2004 study by 300 scientists, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA). Many of us who are used to the reality of a white Christmas will find it only a dream in the coming years. I expect that the unnaturally warm winters we've experienced the past two years in the U.S. will become the norm ten years from now--and may already be the new norm.