DEADLINE: IJNR Detroit River Institute

IJNR invites applications for its Detroit River Institute, an expenses-paid learning expedition that will explore natural resource, agricultural, economic and human health issues in and around Detroit, Michigan on October 22-26, 2014. Content of the fellowship program will be relevant not only to journalists in the Great Lakes Basin, but to those working throughout North American cities as well. Radio, television, print and online journalists of all ages and experience levels are eligible to apply. 

While the agenda for the Detroit River Institute is still being completed, current planned stops will introduce journalists to:  

• The Detroit River, which holds the hopes of a proposed redevelopment highlighting its ecological and economic comeback, while also bearing the burden of outflow from one the nation's largest single-site (and most problematic) wastewater treatment plants.

• Life in the 48217 zip code, a neighborhood of Arab, African-American and Latino residents surrounded by heavy industries like steel plants and the Marathon Petroleum refinery. The EPA's toxicity score for the area is 45 times higher than the state average, leading to myriad health and environmental justice concerns.

• Eastern Market, a historic urban marketplace working to not only connect consumers to locally grown, fresh food but to also procure some of that food from Detroit's urban gardens and help inner-city agriculture flourish in the city.

• The city planners, farmers and organizations working to grow and organize Detroit's urban agriculture landscape now that unused land is plentiful and official zoning regulations are on the books.

• Ford Motor Company's Wayne County Plant, where the industry that gave birth to "Motor City" is attempting to reinvent both itself and the technology that made Detroit possible by building new electric and hybrid cars and planning for a much different auto industry future.

These are just a few of the issues currently being considered for an Institute that will use Detroit as its hub and visit several locations both in and around the city over the course of four to five days. The trip may also include programming like: Lake St. Clair dredging and its impact of Great Lakes water levels and the shipping industry; Belle Isle, the newly created Michigan state park in downtown Detroit, and the move to adopt more "deconstruction" versus demolition of abandoned houses.