Posted on April 15, 2019
Time is not on the side of the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk.
With the Indiana legislature preparing to finalize the state’s biennial budget this month, advocates working to save the riverwalk from further erosion and the resulting damage said receiving $1 million in state funds now toward beach nourishment and a study on long-term solutions is critical.
“Time is not on our side,” said Lorelei Weimer, executive director of Indiana Dunes Tourism, one of several partners that banded together with the National Parks Conservation Association to fight for the funding.
“It’s not one of those things where we’re crying wolf and we don’t need to cry wolf,” she continued. “Nature has its own timeline.”
Waiting for the next budget cycle, said Colin Deverell, Midwest program manager for the conservation association, would push back the short-term solution of bringing dredged sand to the shore of the facility, part of the Indiana Dunes National Park, as well as any long-term solutions for a number of years, especially since the study takes more than two years to complete.
The riverwalk has been losing beach to the Lake Michigan shoreline for several years, resulting in the collapse of a viewing platform and the loss of a handicap accessible ramp to the beach.
Last year alone, the park lost 12 feet of beach because of one big storm, Deverell said, and he and others have said the pavilion at the park, protected by a rapidly shrinking dune, could be its next casualty.
“It may be just one more powerful storm before that dune is breached,” he said.
Of the $1 million funding request, $400,000 would be used for beach nourishment and the rest would go toward a local match for a study of long-term solutions conducted by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The communities of Portage and Ogden Dunes are already contributing $200,000 and $50,000, respectively, for the local match, Deverell said.
The study, Deverell and Weimer said, is a requirement to receive federal dollars toward any long-term solution to the erosion.
“If we don’t get into that budget, we don’t know what the path forward is to getting that funding,” Weimer said.
The conservation association and others have been working on the issue for more than a decade, Deverell said, and the state legislature is in the position to get long-needed solutions on the table.
He’s optimistic that the legislature will move forward with the funding.
“It is attractive to Republicans and Democrats alike because it is protecting an asset that the state takes great pride in,” he said. “It’s the right thing to do, not just for Indiana Dunes National Park, but the state’s economy. Now that Indiana Dunes is a national park, we all need to be prepared to protect it at a higher level.”
State Sen. Karen Tallian, D-Portage, said the senate budget will be presented Thursday morning.
“I am working hard and cautiously optimistic,” she said.
At stake is what officials have said is a $20 million taxpayer investment into the riverwalk, a partnership between Portage and the National Park Service which opened in 2008.
Additionally, Deverell and Weimer said, the natural resources at the park and the tourism it drives are in jeopardy.
Quality of place is important in terms of economic vitality, Weimer said, and the national park is a benefit not only to the area’s visitors, but also to businesses looking to locate in the area.
In all, 80% of the visitors to the park are from outside the region, and 60% are from outside the state, a figure Weimer expects to increase with the change of the park’s designation from a lakeshore earlier this year.
“We have go to protect this asset,” she said.
Deverell agreed, and said high lake levels and increasingly intense storms only put the riverwalk and surrounding beaches further at risk.
“Every month that goes by, every year that goes by, the beach will continue to erode into the lake,” he said.
Amy Lavalley is a freelance reporter for the Post-Tribune.
Source: chicagotribune.com
