Services
The Southeast Michigan RD&D Council provides a framework for partnerships between citizens, businesses and governments to solve resource concerns, manage and utilize resources wisely.
Services provided by the council vary from time to time, based upon resource concerns and needs within southeast Michigan. Currently, the council is focusing on two major issues, stream bank stabilization using soft engineering techniques, and the emerald ash borer outbreak. Council efforts in these two areas are explained below.
Conservation Buffer Initiative
The RC&D council currently provides access to soft engineering and conservation buffer techniques and technology through a Clean Water Act, section 319 grant that offers workshops and demonstration projects throughout the seven-county area to assist local people in learning and applying these valuable conservation practices.
Ash Utilization Options Project
The Emerald Ash Borer is a destructive, exotic pest of ash (Fraxinus species) in the United States. Ash is an economically important tree species in the eastern U.S. It is a major component of hardwood forests in the region and is also a predominant urban street tree species.
The RC&D Council is implementing a grant from the U.S. Forest Service to help address the Emerald Ash Borer problem in a positive way. The short-term goal of this project is to demonstrate how the woody material (logs, limbs and bark) created in implementing the quarantine can be recycled into products, thus reducing the amount of material requiring disposal.
