Where is the school district's "environmental education" in its action of clear-cutting 65 acres, removing hundreds of landmark trees and implenting a wetland "mitigation" plan that is doomed to failure?

If you have a strong stomach, click here to look at more photos of what's left of the site as of the middle of July, 2005.

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Read the Sierra Club's letters to the Superintendent, neither of which received any real response....

NOTE: read the CRS 9/20/2004 letter to the Sierra Club about our walk of the site with Tilton, the "environmental" consultant !

NOTE: read the essay by J. Mark Finnegan describing how this site hinders rather than promotes walking to school

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We are told the current plan protects many of the site's natural features. However,

• The developers have already failed to comply with Ann Arbor Township or City of Ann Arbor ordinances that pertain to wetland preservation. Land has been cleared inside the 25 foot wetland buffers.
• Environmental studies by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources (MDNR) will show that there is habitat suitable on the site for two threatened species and other "special concern" species.
• Before a no effect letter could be requested from or issued by the MDNR, bushhogs, instead of simple machetes, were used to clear wide swaths for surveying.
• A critical wildlife corridor for fox, deer, coyote and other mammals will be interrupted and have not been given realistic consideration. After construction, we've been told wildlife will be expected to somehow stay in the woodland habitat surrounded by roads, buildings and athletic fields. The wildlife corridor empties onto the newly widened North Maple Road. With the disruption of normal travel patterns, we can expect increased travel by these animals across Maple Road. With widening of Maple Road being considered and with no speed limit reduction or wildlife signage planned for this road, the situation is disastrous for wildlife.

  photos taken near the proposed site of animals regularly using the corridor there

• Wetlands
  • Several small wetlands, not regulated by the MDEQ will be completely destroyed.
  • One of the larger wetlands, a biodiverse pond, is planned to be "moved." This area, popularly known as the "frog pond," including the surrounding buttonbush shrubs, cattail and sedge plants with its frog and toad species and other amphibian and mammal species could never be recreated. It will be bulldozed over and replaced by a football stadium, building or parking lot.
• Wetland displacement, commonly known as mitigation, is often unsuccessful in part because re-creating original filtration qualities, water fluctuations and species diversity is nearly impossible.
• During legal arguments, the developers actually included the stormwater detention areas in their calculations of "wetlands".
• No long term stewardship is in place for any of these plans. Wetland mitigation adjacent to a large high school would be in even greater danger of failure.
• For wetlands that do remain, necessary buffers as measured from the high water mark do not meet minimum requirements suggested byHabitat Management Guidelines for Amphibian and Reptiles of the Midwest. With wetlands at risk throughout the country, the most stringent standards of wetland specialists should be met to save wetlands.
• It has not been proven that the stormwater management system's percolation and filtration capabilities will be adequate. There will be runoff from the adjacent roads, hundreds of cars, and athletic fields. Runoff of oil, transmission fluid, salt, pesticides and fertilizers are just some of the contaminants that would run off or drain into the wetlands. Phosphorous is of particular concern since it contributes to overgrowth. It would travel in runoff to the site's Newport Creek, into Barton Pond and into the Huron River.
• The natural buffer around the site will be extensively reduced in many areas, depleting the natural landscape, particularly in winter, contributing to the negative visual impact of sprawl throughout the county.
• The Oak/Hickory woodlot has already been reduced by 10% since the first site plan was presented.
• The Board says that 2% of the $84 million budgeted for the construction is to be spent on "green equipment". It is seeking LEED certification for an environmentally responsible construction site, however, it will destroy environmental features (on a site which could be preserved as part of the Greenbelt , as Ann Arbor voters overwhelmingly want), in order to build , a 4-story building, 800 parking spaces, 3 baseball fields, a football stadium, a track, two practice fields, 8 tennis courts, and more.
• There is no voluntary compliance with the Ann Arbor City Code (link to the code here, and go to the link at the bottom of that page):
  • Chapter 57 Natural Features
  • Chapter 60 Wetlands Preservation
  • Chapter 63 Stormwater Management, Soil Erosion & Sediment Control
• This land could be acquired for the Greenbelt in and around Ann Arbor. Instead, its complex wetlands and bio-diversity will be retrofitted to meet the needs of the developers merely because the AAPS currently owns the land.

Why rush through a plan which would destroy much of this ecologically special site? Wouldn't the greatest "green" lesson to students be to preserve this land as a park?

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