The new Ford Rouge Center assembly plant construction is one of the largest industrial redevelopment projects in the US.

The company has installed thin rolls of sedum, a water and heat-absorbing, low-growing ground cover on the roof of the 1.1 million-sf truck assembly plant. More than 454,000 sf of sedum is being installed on the roof, says Schneider, and encouraged to grow as plant life on the roof.

The sedum is supposed to cool the interior during the summer, keep things warm in the winter and cleanse rain water flowing off the building, Schneider explains.

The Ford family is also installing 22 acres of wetlands at the building's entrance, and covered the plant's 15-acre parking lot with a porous surface through which water is filtered, cleansed and stored in underground basins to be slowly released into canals and wetlands. The plants walls will be covered with ivy to cool the building and produce oxygen.

"The 'green' approach is designed to save Ford $35 million, when compared with the cost of installing a conventional treatment system," Schneider says.

For more than 85 years, the Ford Rouge Center represented a key element of Henry Ford's vision of vertical integration--a self-contained Manufacturing complex, where most vehicle components were made from raw materials and assembled into a finished product.

Construction of the new assembly plant is scheduled to be completed by late 2003, with assembly operations beginning in 2004.

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