Introduction to Red Cedar Stories

Welcome to Red Cedar Stories, a podcast for meandering the currents of the Red Cedar River at Michigan State University, past, present, and future.

I'm your host, Eric Tanz, and in this inaugural episode, I'll introduce myself and share about why I'm doing a podcast on the river and what you can expect to learn from listening to Red Cedar Stories.

I'm the Environmental Sciences Librarian at MSU, where I've worked for over a decade in the main library, just a stone's throw from the banks of the Red Cedar River.

As part of my work, I've researched the history of the Red Cedar and its relationship to MSU, and something that really struck me while studying the river is something I call the paradox of the Red Cedar.

Michigan State University is proud of its beautiful campus, featuring agricultural fields, gardens of all types, and a mix of historical and modern buildings.

And for many, the most beautiful part is the Red Cedar River that flows through the heart of campus.

the line between the north and south sides of the campus and creating a park-like corridor.

The Red Cedar River is a beloved part of campus that not only sustains our sense of community but also defines what it means to be an MSU Spartan.

And then this is where we would play a clip of the fight song and some other things.

Yes, that's the opening line of the MSU fight song, played at sports games and other events, celebrating MSU as a school on the banks of the Red Cedar.

But the story of the Red Cedar and Michigan State University is more complicated than the fight song would have it seem.

Before MSU, the Red Cedar was a pristine stream that supported fishing and transportation for the indigenous Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Pottawatomie tribes.

The river was included in the 1819 Treaty of Saginaw and ceded to the United States.

After the Michigan Legislature,

approved the founding of the State Agricultural College in 1855, the river provided the raw materials for transforming the landscape and building the school.

The bricks that built the first educational buildings on campus came from clay deposits on the banks of the Red Cedar, as did the drain tiles that changed the land from wetland to farmland.

But as the school grew, the river suffered.

The riverfront became industrial, housing buildings like the campus boiler, physical plant, and coal sheds.

And as was common at the time, the river became a dumping ground, absorbing and carrying garbage and sewage downstream from campus.

Water quality declined, and the Red Cedar developed a reputation for being polluted, unclean, and unsafe.

And once a reputation is set, it is difficult to change.

Rivers, however, are dynamic, ever-changing systems, and that is true of the Red Cedar at MSU as well.

Over time, the industrial center of campus shifted away from the river, opening up the riverfront to be reimagined as a waterfront park.

Improvements in wastewater treatment, along with the Clean Water Act of 1972, helped the water quality improve dramatically.

And although the river still faces issues with stormwater runoff and agricultural and urban pollution, It is once again a healthy river ecosystem.

And although the turning point for some of these changes happened over 50 years ago, the river's reputation is stickier.

Perceptions of the river as unhealthy and unsafe are still common today, and some folks still refer to it as the Dead Cedar or Red Sewer River.

But like the Red Cedar itself, MSU's relationship to it also continues to be a very good idea.

To grow and change.

The river has long been viewed as a campus resource, providing water to boilers, clay for bricks, and removing waste from campus.

The Red Cedar has also been a site for recreation, a classroom for teaching, and a laboratory for research, and a home for thriving ecosystem of fish, amphibians, invertebrates, birds, and mammals.

And today is an exciting time of new developments for the Red Cedar River at Michigan State University.

MSU is leading or supporting several projects related to the river, both on campus and in the community.

MSU is coordinating campus river cleanup events every semester, partnering with the recreational paddling community to create a Red Cedar River water trail to help connect canoe and kayak enthusiasts to the river, and even recently lifted the ban on fishing from campus, just to name three recent examples.

the positive activity on and around the river, I'm starting the Red Cedar Stories podcast to record and share stories of the amazing things being done on the river in our community.

I'll interview people from the MSU campus and mid-Michigan communities with ties to the Red Cedar River, including researchers, campus managers, community leaders, and students.

Our conversations will center on the river and will feature a blend of professional expertise and personal reflections because each person has a unique history and relationship with the river and providing a space to share river stories from both perspectives is important to me.

My hope for Red Cedar Stories is that it will amplify the great work being done all throughout the Red Cedar watershed.

It will connect people to a beloved source of MSU community and it will change minds and the narrative of the Red Cedar River.

I love the Red Cedar and hopefully after listening to Red Cedar Stories you will too, if you don't already.

And while Red Cedar Stories has a clear MSU perspective, and I believe can be of particular interest for members of the broader MSU community, it's not just for Spartans.

We all live within a local watershed, and the issues that are relevant here in mid-Michigan are relevant in many communities.

So I hope you'll stick around to hear all the amazing stories of the Red Cedar River.

Before I go, I'll leave you with one final thought.

Rivers naturally meander.

They flow over and around landscapes, winding through communities and across jurisdictions.

And they also connect individuals and communities not just to each other, but also to complex histories across both time and space.

But for many rivers, humans have stripped away that complexity by removing the meanders, both physically and in the stories we tell about them.

A channelized river is constrained to follow a single narrow

path, and we can also channelize our thinking.

We limit what we believe a river is or can be, but I want to encourage a meandering imagination when it comes to rivers like the Red Cedar.

A wider perspective, more open to possibility, wonder, and making meaning.

The conversations in the episodes to come will meander as well, but that's part of the fun of exploring, and I hope you'll join me.

Thanks for listening, and take care.