Sterling Heights and Macomb County officials in Michigan cut the ribbon Sept. 1 on a green infrastructure project that converts a mile-plus of an industrial drain into a stormwater filtration corridor feeding the Great Lakes.

The Phase II project retrofits 1.2 miles of the drain corridor from east of Ryan Road to Mound Road, building on 2.5 miles of improvements completed in 2020, the Macomb County Public Works Office said.

The $1.1 million, grant-funded project draws stormwater from a 1,610-acre urban drainage area before it reaches the Clinton River and Lake St. Clair. The work restores 42 additional acres of native habitat, bringing the total to 95 acres, and includes planting 2,500 trees and shrubs, 8,000 native perennial and pollinator plugs, and more than 200 pounds of native and pollinator seed. The finished corridor is expected to capture and filter about 28.2 million gallons of stormwater a year, the office said.

The project also added erosion control and site access improvements, additional trash capture grates, and 3,000 linear feet of shared-use pedestrian path connecting Nelson Park to Ryan Road, according to the office. The county expects to finish the project by November.

The Phase I work completed in 2020 was funded in part by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation's Sustain Our Great Lakes program, according to Hubbell, Roth & Clark, the engineering firm that designed and managed construction of the project.