Project Summary

Project Title: “Integrating Nature-Based Solutions into a Comprehensive Stormwater Strategy for Southeast Michigan”

What if wetlands, trees, and green parks could help protect cities from floods just as well as concrete pipes and pumps? That’s the idea driving a major Southeast Michigan project combining natural and built systems to reduce flood damage and improve water quality.

Using advanced mapping, modeling, and community design, researchers are helping Detroit and neighboring cities redesign vacant land and riverfront areas into green infrastructure that absorbs and filters stormwater. The work not only prevents flooding but also creates new recreation spaces, improves wildlife habitat, and generates jobs in green construction.

For neighborhoods that have suffered most from flooding, these solutions are about more than infrastructure—they’re about restoring safety, health, and hope.

This project was designed to address the persistent and increasing threat of flooding and water quality degradation across Southeast Michigan, especially in metropolitan Detroit. Lessons learned can be applied to other communities in the Great Lakes Basin. By combining nature-based solutions with conventional infrastructure, it aimed to create a regional framework for resilient, equitable, and sustainable stormwater management.

The rationale stems from mounting climate challenges. Extreme precipitation events, like Detroit’s historic floods in 2021, exposed the critical limitations of aging infrastructure and the combined sewer systems that discharge untreated sewage into waterways during flooding. These events threaten public health, urban quality of life, and aquatic ecosystems, and disproportionately harm marginalized communities on Detroit’s coast and its inner suburbs. Existing systems cannot accommodate rising climate variability, while fragmented municipal regulatory structures and historic racial and economic disparities hamper regional coordination. The project, therefore, sought to overcome institutional, technical, and social barriers that have led to intractable feedback loops and hinder regional solutions. 

The project’s overarching goal was to chart a new course for flood resilience and healthy watersheds by integrating nature-based solutions into regional planning. Three major state universities—University of Michigan, Michigan State University, Wayne State University—partnered with technical experts and local water agencies, including the Great Lakes Water Authority and Detroit Water and Sewerage Department. They set out to:

• Capitalize on urban land assets for flood storage by restoring historic stream channels and floodplains.
• Integrate gray infrastructure (pipes, tanks, and sewers) with green systems (wetlands, rain gardens, permeable surfaces).
• Build “climate justice” solutions focused on inclusive benefits for vulnerable urban communities.
• Restore and create habitat for critical species, mitigate operational impacts on wildlife, and prepare urban areas for fluctuating Great Lakes levels.
  The approach was anchored in robust stakeholder engagement, technical modeling, landscape visualization, and innovative financial analysis.

The project progressed through several coordinated activities:

• Community Engagement and Environmental Justice: Built local capacity and trust through consultation with neighborhood groups, environmental advocates, and regulatory authorities, ensuring that regional plans incorporated lived experience and prioritized equity.
• Visioning and Land Use Visualization: Mapped opportunities using advanced tools to integrate nature-based and stormwater management solutions into neighborhood and site designs, including prototypes for community recreation spaces and new jobs in green infrastructure.
• Technical Modeling and System Analysis: Compiled comprehensive geodatabases, mapped and evaluated natural infrastructure opportunities, and synthesized conventional and green solutions to maximize flood protection and ecosystem benefits.
• Fish and Wildlife Benefits Analysis: Crafted actionable plans to restore aquatic and terrestrial habitat, drawing from best practices and input from wildlife agencies and restoration experts, such as daylighted stream channels and large open space basins.
• Financial and Policy Analysis: Assessed economic impacts, including reduced flood insurance rates, increased property values, and job creation. These analyses helped demonstrate cost savings and the broader return on investment of nature-based approaches at municipal and regional scales.
• Project Management and Assessment: Coordinated activities among academic, technical, governmental, and community partners to ensure impactful outcomes and ongoing stakeholder engagement.
  Key deliverables included a regional stakeholder engagement framework, open-source planning datasets, direct prototyping and design concepts, meta-analyses of success factors, and a suite of transfer-ready materials.

Anticipated outcomes included elevated regional capacity for innovation in stormwater management; scalable solutions to climate-driven flooding; improved ecosystem health and habitat connectivity; socioeconomic gains for neighborhoods through workforce development, increased property values, and improved public health; and a strengthened pipeline from planning to implementation for future projects in Southeast Michigan and beyond.

Broader Impacts

This project’s impacts are lasting and far-reaching, providing Southeast Michigan and Detroit with a model for addressing fragmented governance, limited resources, and social inequities through a transferable framework for nature-based stormwater solutions. By demonstrating the co-benefits of NbS—such as green recreation spaces, improved wildlife habitat, and enhanced water quality—the project strengthens healthier and more connected communities across racial, economic, and municipal lines.

Looking ahead, the project will actively advocate for the integration of nature-based solutions within Southeast Michigan’s regional stormwater plan, positioning NbS as a critical component of a balanced portfolio that combines “gray” and “green” infrastructure systems. As a national model, the initiative equips local governments and residents with tools to plan and manage water equitably, emphasizing climate resilience and environmental justice.

The project also lays important groundwork for future regional collaboration, aligning with open space initiatives, public park retrofits, and school-based green infrastructure projects already underway across Detroit. As extreme weather becomes more frequent, these interventions will continue to reduce flood damage, safeguard infrastructure, and nurture biodiversity—while empowering a new generation of climate leaders and resilient Great Lakes communities.

Funder: Michigan National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF)

Budget: $500,000

Partners: University of Michigan, Wayne State University, Michigan State University and Limnotech, Inc.

Period of Performance: 2024-2026