Lorenzo Herron

Lorenzo Herron Hello.

Kevin Hawthorne This is Kevin Hawthorne with the Detroit Historical Museum for the oral history project on climate change. And I'm here today With

Lorenzo Herron Lorenzo Heron.

Kevin Hawthorne And could you please spell your name for the record?

Lorenzo Herron L o r e n z o h e r r o n

Kevin Hawthorne All right. And welcome today. Do you live in the city of Detroit?

Lorenzo Herron I do.

Kevin Hawthorne In which neighborhood?

Lorenzo Herron This neighborhood Jefferson Chalmers.

Kevin Hawthorne And how long have you lived in that neighborhood?

Lorenzo Herron 30 years now.

Kevin Hawthorne 30 years? Have you lived in any other neighborhoods in the city?

Lorenzo Herron Have I lived in, off of six mile in Saint Mary's when I was a child, from 0 to 5.

Kevin Hawthorne And you moved to the, Jefferson Chalmers area at the age of five. And you've been here ever since?

Lorenzo Herron Yeah, exactly.

Kevin Hawthorne What's kept you in the area?

Lorenzo Herron Family. Family. And just the. And that's the beauty of the neighborhood. You know, many of the families that we grew up that I grew up with are still, in the homes that, you know, have historically been in for the last three decades. And, you know, it is just a familial vibe. I did spend five years away when I went to school, but, upon graduation, I came back to the city and moved in with my parents. And then I bought a house across the street from them.

Kevin Hawthorne Where did you attend college?

Lorenzo Herron Michigan State.

Kevin Hawthorne Excellent. And, what career are you in?

Lorenzo Herron I'm an entrepreneur. i create my own pathways. But, my educational, career was agricultural business management is degree that I have. I have a garden. I do, a home renovation things. I also Do, finish goods from the garden, and I sell, I do, solar installations too.

Kevin Hawthorne Excellent. So do you do solar installations for the tree house project?

Lorenzo Herron I do not do solar installations for the tree house project. I, I'm a part of a solar cooperative. That myself and, several other, engineer friends of, first of mine started, and we're in the greater Detroit area. We've done installations in several gardens, in, in, in residential also. And commercial spaces too. Yeah.

Kevin Hawthorne Like what? Kind of commercial spaces.

Lorenzo Herron There's there's several, industrial, lots that we have, worked on, like. There's a space over off of, Davidson. The name is slipping me right now, but it was a, relatively large, installation of, 30 200W.

Kevin Hawthorne And, what is the name? Do you have a name for the, organization Family First? Solar family first. And, how long have you been with them?

Lorenzo Herron For the last. Since, 2021. So four years now.

Kevin Hawthorne And, what really made you want to get involved with them?

Lorenzo Herron It just seemed like the next step for, the next step for my personal development, already doing things, in terms of. I feel like. Gardening and doing soil work is already, harvesting the sun's energy. But, you're mostly harvesting it for nutrition. But in the case of solar, you are harvesting for the sake of energy production.

Kevin Hawthorne And have you seen an increase of people wanting to get solar energy in the past couple of years?

Lorenzo Herron Absolutely, absolutely. We have the, Biden, the Biden, tax break for, solar installations. That's really piqued a lot of interest that you can get, about $7,500 immediate cash rebate, for your taxes for any, qualifying solar application. And, just a general, genuine, issues concerning about the. About the reliability of the grid and the, increase of electrical cost has driven a lot of the.

Kevin Hawthorne Like in the past couple of years, Howard has had like two price hikes. Yeah. And you know, for a service of, I'm sure in the Jefferson Chalmers area especially, there's been a lot of power outages during.

Lorenzo Herron The summer, as is, you know, power outages, rate hikes, all of it.

Kevin Hawthorne And have you noticed the solar energy, panels that have helped alleviate that for a lot of people.

Lorenzo Herron It depends on the, system setup that you have, because you can have grid tied solar, which, just supplements and pushes energy back into the grid. Or you can have solar that is, that is, off grid. You know, in, in case of the system failure, you can have, power backup with battery backups and such. But most, most times we, we push people to go ahead and just get a grid tied system. Because a battery backup, is, is fairly expensive. But the prices are coming down.

Kevin Hawthorne Yeah. How do you yourself have solar panels installed in your house?

Lorenzo Herron Absolutely.

Kevin Hawthorne And how long ago did you get those installed in?

Lorenzo Herron Put them up last year.

Kevin Hawthorne Excellent. With solar energy. That's a big, one thing. What about in. So you say you install solar panels, but you don't work with the tree house with them? Are you involved with tree house and any other way?

Lorenzo Herron Yes. I support the work that they do in the community. They're a great organization. Really a stalwart for, what we have going on in Jefferson Chalmers. You see, everybody that came through this meeting came by way of Tammy's, direct, communication, network. You know, no one, not many other organizations in the area have that amount of pull. You can count and feed'em freedom and Treehouse, and they're both on Manistique, funny enough. So, we are, we are blessed to have, such an abundance of, great people in the area.

Kevin Hawthorne And, have you just noticed the community has been, how have you base how would you say the community's response to the tree house has been?

Lorenzo Herron Oh, positive. Wonderful, wonderful. I mean, you see people come out when when, when the name of Tammy rings and tree house rings, is is way to go. So, you know, that that's a testament to, you know, the capacity that, you know, what we what we're, achieving over here.

Kevin Hawthorne And how would you say, you think the, tree House is able to help educate people about climate change? What, you think, like, their main ways are.

Lorenzo Herron So I feel like, Tammy has a full force approach. She has the, tree house, has the, has the garden space. It has community space. It has solar on display. So it's a full frontal, engagement of all of the things that, you know, are going to push us into, climate readiness as a community. I was talking earlier about how, the water retention of gardens is, is is like 1,000% more, soluble, in terms of, infiltrating the water into the soil, as opposed to letting it runoff, to, like, just, a regular grass lawn. So, you know, we have all these garden spaces, you know, incorporated by Tammy and others, like freedom, freedom and myself in the neighborhood. And it just it just really acts as a as, as a carbon sink and as great water infiltration, spaces to mitigate the the the ill effects of climate change.

Kevin Hawthorne And, speaking on the effects of climate change. Obviously, Jefferson Chalmers has had a lot of flooding issues over the years. Have, you experienced anything personally with the floods?

Lorenzo Herron Absolutely, absolutely. When we got flooded out. I have four feet of water in my in my basement, and I'm, you know, I'm super happy to have Tammy in, pull me into this project. Is gonna allow me to put some funds set aside to, to do a, sump pump system. So, you know, once the water comes in, I can just pump it into my garden, and I won't have any issues with anything as long as that system is set up.

Kevin Hawthorne And have a lot of people in the neighborhood have gotten the sump pump system.

Lorenzo Herron Some people have gotten some pumps. Other folks have gotten other things like, backflow present preventers. But all that does is if, if the system starts to back up, then the people that don't have it are going to get hit even worse. So, yeah, because, the issue with the, with the, with the water, flooding is, is I guess is twofold is increase in water, from. You know, just climate change in general. Like, you know, we had, historic amount of rain for the last flood that we had, where FEMA had to come in. But the second issue is the loss. And second, and maybe even more important issues, the loss of green spaces. So, you know, as this neighborhood has gotten more, gentrified aka or, you know, gentrified, many of the green spaces have been taken out, like, just adjacent to this community center was, woodlands, where, you know, me as a child and that from from ages 5 to 14, when they initially did a chop down in this green space, just, right here at the park used to be, nice low forest. They cut it down and, and then the housing market collapsed. So they they cut it down just for no reason. And we used to catch snakes and and chase butterflies and dragonflies all throughout the little park and go swimming in the canals and just had a genuine good time, over there. But, you know, we've seen a lot of this with, this new reimagining of Detroit, and, and, this over. Over. I'm searching for a word of of just management. Micromanagement of the green spaces. We had a green space all up and down the riverfront. The fiat-chrysler, industry took out another huge, woodlot that was a water retention, place, but it replaced it with parking lot. You know, like ten, ten, ten, 12, 10, 12 acres of, just straight parking lot. So none of that water infiltrates, and you just think about the amount of water that is generated off a roof. From a small house. Now, you multiply that out times 10 or 12 acres and you have, you know, hundreds and thousands of gallons of waters that are no longer being infiltriated into the soils. And and they're being washed right into our, water systems and overwhelming us. So, you know, we you know, we we like to, praise some of the small things, you know, oh, we got, you know, new development and well, what's the cost? So, you know, and this is a very clear cost of, you know, cutting down green spaces and then, you know, that says nothing for the, physical changes, you know, from all the, PFAs, further chemicals that are put into the environment from the, the plate facilities as over the air or the, toxic, runoff and all of that. So. Yeah.

Kevin Hawthorne No, absolutely. And you mentioned gentrification with things like, you know, getting rid of green spaces for parking lots. Have you noticed any adverse effects from that as well? And do you think that intersects a lot with climate change?

Lorenzo Herron Absolutely. The block that I live on, is known for its trees and. Generally when you have this gentrification wave. When gentrifiers come into this space. They don't they they. They have to change they're climate, chaos makers. So they come into the space, they remove trees, they, cut up, Oak Grove. This whole park is just a prime example that someone, quote unquote, tested the, soil for, contaminants in, I guess a red hot for, you know, all of the bad things that are in the soil, trees that have been here for 120, 150 years just disappeared over the course of a of a season. So they cut them all down. They dug up all the saw. And these are trees that, you know, we grew up with in this neighborhood. And, it's just it looks like a barren wasteland now. And they're. You know, they say they're going to bring in all of this soil to replace it, but it's so. So you go to the park and, you know, you the one of the things you would notice was it would be so cool down there. But now you go down there and it's like it's it's is oven pan is is cooking is hot. It's it's desolate. It is is devoid of life. We used to have breeding eagles that come and nest up over here. But they took it all out. And you know, the, the we question the validity of the report or the accuracy of the danger, the risks that was proposed by the, quote, unquote, contaminants in the soil because, the community is, is literally right up to the park. So whatever's in the park is in the community. Also, you know, there's no delineation between this park right here and the the next four blocks. There's there's there's no mountain range or, or anything that will stop soil or contaminants from going from that place into the community. So if it was a legitimate thing that was an issue, it would have it would have, crossed all into the neighborhoods. But I think that that wasn't an issue as much as they truly had made it out to be. In addition to, the Grosse Pointe Park that is directly adjacent to, our park doesn't have those quote unquote contaminants either. So it just kind of leaves you with, where you feel feeling that this is just an underplay for the overplay, as they say

Kevin Hawthorne No, absolutely. And, what do you think they could be doing to, you know, obviously, like people sometimes think with gentrifying like, oh, we're helping revitalize an area without realizing the damage that are causing. What do you think could be more positive actions that people could take instead?

Lorenzo Herron Well, to get some community consensus before they do things, with, impunity that, you know, they don't have any discourse or recourse for. I just was, hey, the the parks is poisoned and we're going to cut the trees out and close on a park for the year. Too bad. So sad. And, that was that was our, that was our discourse with the city. And the city was just like, all right. Yeah, we're going to drop this nice little $10 million, community center down there, too. And, we're going to completely revitalize or redo this park in the same time. And it's just it's been kind of of, a very, ungentle process, and the whole thing.

Kevin Hawthorne And so throughout the city. Obviously you've outlined some of your issues with how they've handled it. But if you you could see them implement some solar panels and other green technology, would you be for that?

Lorenzo Herron Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, we we need to have true, power, going to the, you know, residents and stuff. And I also sit on the, the task force, for the city where we're imagining these solutions now, in that same sense. So. We don't need to protect billionaires. These folks already have what they what they're going to have. They've, they've they've taken so much out of, of what it is to community well-being to be that. We should really think about our own interests now. So there's a concept called agrophotonics. And that is a, that is a concept where and it's a proven concept that works with, with theory and in practice where you take fields and you put solar panels in fields and you supply the neighborhoods, corresponding to the fields. And what does Detroit have? Plenty of fields, you know, fields with, vacancy issues. Fields of plenty. Fields of of of trash. Fields of of nature. Also, you know, we we have nature thing, nature spaces, I see, I see turkey vultures, groundhogs, bald eagles, all types of plant and, animal life, here in the city of Detroit. But we could do a a so much. Better, integration and get people employed in the process, employed and engaged in the process of of of. Loving their community by just doing something simple like engage in a community and agro vortex where you you put out community solar farms that supply the neighborhood with affordable power that is, that either subsidizes their DTE or replaces it because, you know, there's no DTE solution that works for the Detroiters. You know, just because a guy donates, a couple, a couple grand to you, a company donates a couple grand to your, your, reelection campaign or your election campaign. That doesn't mean they should be able to stick their hand up in you in your in your, puppet and make you talk and do every interest for them. And it doesn't make sense anymore. Doesn't make it didn't make sense in to to just be, a puppet. So now we have to deal with those issues. And, community solar is a great one. We can partner that with, with, you know, when you say agroc, so you, you have the solar up top and then you have something underneath, maybe something like a mushroom farm that can supplement people's, food, eating, and so, so many things to do with agro photonics. But to explore that concept, greater would be, very wise for the city. But time will tell what we'll do with it or what we want to do with it.

Kevin Hawthorne Absolutely. That was wonderful. Thank you. So two final questions about climate change. One, what would you say to someone who says, I believe climate change is an issue? What can I be doing?

Lorenzo Herron Start a garden.

Kevin Hawthorne Start a garden. Excellent. And on the inverse. More difficult. What would you say to someone who says. I don't believe climate change is an issue?

Lorenzo Herron Start a garden.

Kevin Hawthorne Start a garden for either one. That's excellent.

Lorenzo Herron You know. And because even if you don't believe in climate change, it kind of happening, you'd be stupid. But, you know, it's not. It's not, it's not for me to convince anybody to what to believe in or not, but in that same sense, everybody feels a pinch of rising food crisis costs. And, you know, if we are able to, you know, capture a little bit of, something from the, from our front yards, you know, to make some delicious foods or, you know, some herbs or something, then we should do that.

Kevin Hawthorne Right. And is there anything, on climate change or anything we've talked about that you feel like you have? If you haven't, we haven't spoken about that you'd like to voice.

Lorenzo Herron Yeah. We just need to have a very, very open mind, to tackle this. Impending, collapse or whatever. We need to just, you know, have a open mind to, you know, how we can best thwart and control of the situations, with ingenuity, with community and with togetherness.

Kevin Hawthorne And then just, at the end right here, I'm going to do a couple more rapid fire questions about, Covid 19. Obviously, it is 2024, and it feels easy to say we live in a post-Covid world, but obviously we do now. We are still in the midst of it. But obviously in 2024, we're no longer in the most adverse effects. But just very generally, how did Covid affect your life?

Lorenzo Herron I mean, it was a global shutdown, so I enjoyed it thoroughly. I enjoy the ability to go in and just be introspective. And, it validated many things and many decisions that I made in my life. I didn't feel panicked. I didn't feel like the world was in. And I felt like the world was. Readjusting to reality that was, false.

Kevin Hawthorne And did you, catch Covid 19 during this four year period?

Lorenzo Herron Absolutely.

Kevin Hawthorne And how was your experience with that?

Lorenzo Herron Wonderful. It was. It was a little, you know little heat Had a high temperature and a headache and I was sick for a couple of, days and got over it, you know.

Kevin Hawthorne And, are you in your lifetime worried about seeing another, disease on the scale of Covid within our lifetimes?

Lorenzo Herron I think it'll happen for sure, but, I don't think I'm worried. You know, we all got to die someday.

Kevin Hawthorne all right, well, thank you so much for being here today with me.

Lorenzo Herron No problem. All right.