Posted on October 5, 2020
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has, since August, been dredging sand to ease navigation at the Port of Indiana-Burns Harbor.
Because of that effort, an estimated 45,000 cubic yards of sand is being deposited on the beach at Portage Lakefront Park and Riverwalk, said Bruce Rowe, public information officer for Indiana Dunes National Park.
Portage’s beach is growing rapidly and record high lake levels are predicted to drop, he said.
The National Park Service is paying about $455,000 for the sand, Rowe said.
“This kind of worked out really well,” Rowe said. With the pandemic, less staff was needed this summer, so the savings helped pay for the beach nourishment project.
Visitors to the park can’t use the beach while it’s closed for the work, but they can watch the work as it’s underway.
How it works
A barge with the dredge is moved offshore, guided by a tugboat, and connects to a giant pipe that acts like a fire hose, spewing sand in a plume the size of a bulldozer onto the beach.
A bulldozer moves the sand into position to help recreate the beach.
The work is nearly finished. It was to have been completed already, but dredging is best done on a calm day and not amid high waves.
Battling erosion
Like elsewhere along the Great Lakes, the Portage park has been battered by erosion in recent years.
An observation deck fell into Lake Michigan after waves removed the dune underneath it. A wheelchair-accessible walkway had to be closed after sections were washed away. A piece of sidewalk remains half exposed, hanging over empty space because storms destroyed the high dune that was supporting it.
Now a wide beach stands where just a few weeks ago there were sections of concrete in the water, visible reminders of nature’s wrath.
Ogden Dunes
The beach will be a joy to the park’s visitors, but it should cheer Ogden Dunes residents, too.
They stand to benefit from the littoral drift of the sand as wave action moves sand farther west.
Ogden Dunes decided to do emergency repairs this summer to protect homes and infrastructure from collapse. A section of seawall gave way to brutal waves.
Now the town is repairing its armor and hoping to restore its beach.
Earlier this year, the town filed a lawsuit against the National Park Service for fighting the shoreline protection work. The park service had issued citations in May to stop contractors, too.
Now the National Park Service’s sand will help replenish the Ogden Dunes beach over time.
Beverly Shores
Beverly Shores officials are watching what’s happening in Portage, too.
“I thought that was very fascinating,” Beverly Shores Town Council President Geof Benson said. He hopes the National Park Service will do beach nourishment at Central Avenue beach, which would help Beverly Shores as the grains of sand inevitably drift along the lakeshore.
Homes and Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores have been threatened.
Tenants of two historic homes owned by the National Park Service — the Florida Tropical House and the Wieboldt-Rostone House brought to the town from the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago — are paying for seawall repairs.
“The section of Lake Front Drive and a parking area that collapsed are expected to be paved any day now,” Benson said. “Currently, we are still working on the armor stone, the riprap and the beach nourishment.”
By armor stone, he means boulders. Big ones.
Each of the stones weighs four to five tons. A truckload of them carries just four or five stones, coming from 90 minutes away in Monon or near Hebron.
“It’s just a long process to get the rocks up here,” Benson said. “It’s hard to get enough rocks. It’s hard on the trucks.”
“Hopefully, we’re on the downhill part of this, pushing rocks up the hill,” he said.
This week, the Porter County Board of Commissioners extended its declared state of emergency along the shoreline for another 30 days. That allows municipalities to seek federal assistance with needed repairs.
“We’re just leaving the window open for them,” board President Jeff Good, R-Center, said. “That’s really the only thing as a county we can do for them.”
In Beverly Shores, the erosion exposed the sewer line underneath Lake Front Drive. Drivers often forget how much infrastructure lies underneath the road surface — sewer lines, natural gas lines and more.
“We took out a $5 million bond that the town is paying for, and we’ve spent about half of it,” Benson said. This is an emergency. That’s really what we felt, that this was the line in the sand that we had to draw.”
It’s a fight that has been brought by record high lake levels, but it’s not unprecedented.
“This has been a fight for a long time against the lake,” Benson said. With sand washed away, previous efforts to protect homes along the beach have been uncovered.
“We’re trying to fix the holes in the previous work,” he said.
Benson, executive director of the Indiana Dunes Learning Center, understand the effects of climate on erosion.
“Last year was a warm winter, so we never had our shelf ice,” he said. “We’re hoping for a cold winter to freeze it so we keep the waves away from our shore.”
More good news
Benson pointed to a Corps of Engineers report that shows lake levels are expected to decline.
In early August, the Corps said four of the Great Lakes — Lake Superior is the exception—– have likely reached their peak levels are expected to drop. Lake Michigan was expected to drop two inches by the end of September.
Lake levels are cyclical. In 1986 the lake level was nearly as high as in 2020. But they are seasonal as well. The lake level is projected to drop sharply through the next several months.
But that precipitous drop depends on precipitation. With climate change, precipitation is expected to increase in spring and fall; summers are expected to see less rainfall, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.
“By February 2021, we’ll be saying, where’s our lake,” Benson predicted.
When the water level drops and the beach grows, residents will see what Benson’s students at the Dunes Learning Center see. Dunes are restored, native plants come back, and the beach is wide enough to enjoy – even with social distancing factored in.
Source: nwitimes
