In an average year, Michigan gets about 31.5 inches of rain. But 2019 wasn’t an average year — more than 41.5 inches came down and wreaked havoc across the state.

Since 2014, the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department has shut off the water to 141,000 households whose bills were past due. Last year, more than 23,000 households reportedly had their water shut off.

The term “environmental justice” still may be unfamiliar to some people, but you don’t have to be familiar with it to understand what it means when you see it. With the Flint water crisis and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the people who were hit hardest were poor and black.

Abir Ali describes herself as a city builder. Her career has included architecture, philanthropy, design and real estate—with specialized positions across disciplines.

Talk of how automation and artificial intelligence would change the workforce once conjured images of robots taking our jobs. But so far, the robots have not replaced humans on the factory floor — or the cubicle row.

Automation and AI will change the nature of work, said Automation Alley CEO and Executive Director Tom Kelly. "You may not have a person in every truck driving on the highway, but you're still going to need all kinds of people in logistics," he said.

It may be frigid outside, but plenty of Metro Detroiters are still getting out on their local trails frequently. What they may not know is that some trails stretch all the way across the state.

In the past, a girl who wanted to wrestle or play ice hockey would have had to join a boys’ team. Now, more girls and women are getting their own teams, and interest is growing among girls and women in sports that once were almost exclusively for boys and men.

The benefits kids reap from nature are well documented, which is part of the reason school field trips often involve excursions into the Great Outdoors. Children with disabilities, however, sometimes get left behind.

What does sustainability look like in Detroit, a city that is going through changes that some consider a renaissance? The Erb Institute talked with five people who are working to make Detroit more sustainable—in wildly divergent ways, from bees, to dirt, to real estate development, to stormwater.

At the Chicago Marathon..., Cheseto ran the world’s fastest known time for a double lower-limb amputee. Wearing running prostheses, he covered the 26.2 miles in 2:37:23, surpassing his own previous best of 2:42:24, which he ran at the Boston Marathon in April.

Seven amputees who found themselves atop a 19,347-foot volcano in Ecuador last month probably never envisioned themselves there together.

Some benefits of yoga – such as improved flexibility and balance — are well known. So it makes sense for athletes to take advantage of yoga disciplines. But athletes across a range of sports use yoga to improve their performance in ways that may be less obvious.

Conference expos are major revenue generators, but the standard booth-maze model is past its prime. Today, both exhibitors and attendees expect associations to offer something better.

Detroit Dirt makes waste into a commodity. It takes food waste, green waste, spent grains and herbivore manure and uses an aerobic process to make it into high-quality compost.

Young people reap numerous benefits from participating in sports, including improved health and self-esteem, and when girls don’t play, they miss out. Research shows that girls are less likely to participate in sports than boys, and, if they do play, they are more likely to drop out.

Nicole Ver Kuilen has gone from running on a prosthetic leg ill-suited for the sport to completing a personal 1,500-mile triathlon along the West Coast — a journey she dubbed “Forrest Stump” — to getting her first running blade, to climbing a mountain in Ecuador, to finishing first in her category at the USA Paratriathlon National Championships in July.

A little over two years ago, Timothy Paule and Nicole Lindsey started the nonprofit Detroit Hives, transforming vacant lots into urban bee farms. They also teach the community about the importance of honeybees and conservation.

Any race that is longer than a marathon (26.2 miles) is considered an ultramarathon or ultra. While most marathons are road races, many ultras are run on trails. And people seem to flock to them for different reasons, including the opportunity to be immersed in nature as part of the athletic experience.

Across the state of Michigan, talented athletes are excelling at their sports in women's pro and semi-pro leagues. The teams generally have devoted fans but lack the numbers that their male counterparts draw. But these aren't casual, recreational teams.