Fix the damn lake!
Climate justice is being challenged on the shores of Lake Michigan.
“Our” Lake Michigan is rising. You can see the effects: beach erosion, flooding, waterfront destruction.
The seasonal evaporation cycle has changed. Surface water is lingering in places where in years past it would have evaporated. Tree roots are “drowning.” Native woodlands — think 60+ age trees — are “swamping out.”
So what are lake communities and residents doing?
As a priority, protecting private property. As a solution, protecting private property. As a remedy, protecting private property. But like the pandemic, the lake doesn’t discriminate between property owners and the community at large. All are affected. All are vulnerable. The vicissitudes of global warming pose a problem to the coastal landowner who sees property along a changing shoreline suddenly vulnerable.
Seen through the lens of “protecting private property” the lakeshore is beginning to look like the beaches of Dunkirk, anticipating an assault. Steel revetments, concrete heaps, boulders, and sand bags dot the shoreline.
Seen through the lens of climate justice, the shoreline is becoming economically bifurcated. The local, “indigenous appeal,” of the area, the fuel of so many summertime memories is being challenged by an economy of conspicuous consumption and those who find themselves indentured to serving it: an economy of the wealthy and those who are paid to help support and maintain the property values of the wealthy.
A tangible specimen of this bifurcation is a physical demarcation: 4 lane Red Arrow Highway which connects the string of shoreline village clusters of rental cottages and boutiques, “hobby businesses” in south west Michigan. On the “lake side” of Red Arrow what were “family camps” loosely aligned along ethnic and racial groups have been replaced by “neighborhood associations,” and privately owned estates.
On the “land side” of Red Arrow what were agricultural fields and orchards have been developed as platted properties, yielding streets and lanes of single family unattached residences. Along the highway itself the traveler can find small businesses serving transport, food, home maintenance and medical/professional needs.
On the “lake side,” the absence of utility poles is remarkable — the lines are buried. Privately maintained dirt roads provide access to multi-million dollar estates. On the “land side,” utility poles are visible. County and township maintained paved roads are common.
The demarcation is also revealed in real estate sales. As one realtor puts it, “I’ve never sold anything over $1 million on the land side of Red Arrow; on the lake side, that’s a different story entirely.” As one denizen “second home owner,” warned a recent home purchaser, “Don’t buy on the land side, you’ll have trouble reselling. Everyone knows the land side is the ‘wrong side’ of Red Arrow.”
Landowners have protected land values the old fashioned way, by division and unequal distribution of services. Until last year when the lake started to rise and the beach protecting jetties started to grow out into the lake. Almost overnight, coastal land values were vulnerable. And the man-made assault on the rising lake became serious. The lake side of Red Arrow was eroding. The land side of Red Arrow was “swamping out.” Residents of both sides of Red Arrow were finding themselves victims of global warming.
Prior to several seasons of rising lake levels, the primary legal struggle coastal land owners waged was a boundary struggle on where. private property at the shoreline ended. Now with the lake chewing away the shoreline, the boundary struggle for determining private beach area has changed from claiming lake front to advocating for permission to build and maintain revetments designed to prevent beach erosion. The formative concept used in both legal strategies is protecting private property.
For state, county and local governing bodies — taxing entities — the response(s) have been consistently vague and “shoot from the hip.” Recently, I received an on-line questionnaire from my US Senator’s office asking “What are your priorities for the new Biden-Harris Administration?”
I was presented with 6 choices:
“Protecting Our Great Lakes;
Climate Crisis and the Environment;
Keeping Communities safe from COVID-19;
Rebuilding our economy;
Ensuring everyone has access to quality, affordable Health Care;
Other.”
I checked all but “Protecting Our Great Lakes,” presuming that this choice, in my opinion, a local consequence of a global crisis, was eclipsed by “Climate Crisis and the Environment.” But then I did a double-take: for whom did this survey define as “protecting our Great Lakes?”
Three questions emerge in the discussions around “whose Great Lakes?” First, what are we protecting? Second, what results/consequences are acceptable? Third, on whose dime? Judging from the pace of beach erosion and mature tree loss, the stakeholders do not have much time for discussion and the ubiquitous let’s-study-the-problem-when-discussion-stalls.
At a recent local meeting of a lake front Township to discuss alternatives to man-made revetments and concrete deposits, the two factions — wealthy property owners and climate justice advocates — delivered their arguments. The argument defending revetments was couched in terms favorable to sustaining property and land values: without revetments, property values would decline, lenders would balk at financing land sales and development, tax receipts would dwindle. The argument defending climate justice was couched in terms of addressing “welfare” distribution from affordable access to lake front recreation to sustaining businesses built on tourism. Both sides squared off while Township officials looked on rationalizing that both sides were “right:” something had to be done.
At the meeting were members of a local environmental advocacy group, Chikaming Open Lands. Founded in 1999, Chikaming Open Lands assists in finding and securing open space through the instrument of putting land “in trust,” thereby providing tax benefits to land owners for selling their land to the trust. Working methodically to secure 40 acres here, seventy-five there, Chikaming Open Lands over the twenty-odd years of their stewardship has amassed over 1800 acres, a patchwork of fields, woods, streams, ponds and lots of native fauna.
Unlike the revetments, COL’s work is slow. Compared to the revetments, the cost of maintaining these eco-buffers is modest. Unlike the revetments these “open lands” are self-sustaining.
The popular bromide tossed about in climate justice debates is “what will benefit future generations.” Unfortunately, the “future” in the era of climate change is the last card in the deck. Michigan, which is not home to hurricanes and fires has had nonetheless a notable year of climate related risk including a dam break in Midland and the increasing vulnerability of its shoreline. Water, of which Michigan enjoys a plenitude, is threatening habitation on several levels, environmental and economic. Metaphorically, water is Michigan’s back yard and is lapping at Michigan’s foundations.
For now, state and county authorities are blocking expanding revetment building through restricting permits. In the aforementioned local Township, the Board of Trustees have authorized the use of geo tubes and sand to replace the visually and materially intrusive revetments. So a compromise, not a solution, has been proposed and passed. The lake will continue its seasonal churning and redepositing of sand, blockage or no blockage. A rising lake “floats all boats.” In the meantime visitors to the lakeshore in the summer are unable to experience a sunset swim or simply a sitting moment looking out at a watery horizon: the public beach access stairs are sitting in water, the beach gone, the access closed.
