Posted on November 22, 2021
TRAVERSE CITY — State environmental regulators denied a Long Lake Township property owner’s permit request to dredge in Long Lake and on its shore to build a boat house, basin and channel to them.
The Department of Great Lakes, Environment and Energy found the request from the Carrie C. Barnes Trust would have an adverse impact, and that the same purpose could be served by a dock. A township resident who opposed the request called it good news, while the applicant is planning to appeal.
“This was not a surprise, because the agency’s answer typically is ‘No’ the first time around,” said Joseph Quandt, the applicant’s attorney.
A possible appeal was similarly unsurprising to Anne Morrison Perry, a lakeside resident who opposed the request over a slew of concerns, including its potential impacts to water quality, wildlife and fish habitat.
The landowner wanted to dredge an approximately 7,432-square-foot area of the lake bed, removing around 507 cubic yards in the process — Quandt said the applicant significantly shrank that in response to EGLE’s concerns. Plans were to create a channel in the lake bed leading up to another one cut into the lakeshore, all linking to a basin over roughly half of which a boathouse with spaces for five boats and six personal watercraft would be built.
Other aspects included a 120-foot-long seasonal dock in Long Lake, removing some seawall from the property and replacing it with rocks, coir logs and native plantings, as previously reported.
Plans were for a property along the lake’s south edge of South Long Lake Road, and included a new house and more, as previously reported.
While Quandt previously pointed to the project’s various aspects as an improvement, others worried about negative impacts to the lake, its waters and its wildlife. And they feared it could set a precedent for dredging more channels along the lake’s edge.
That’s what about 170 people Perry called a concerned citizens group is focused on now, she said.
“I think that our goal as a group … is we understand now that someone else could come along, so we need to make sure that our ordinances at our township level are as strong as possible so it can’t happen, because it does set a precedence for all other lakes in Michigan if it does happen someplace,” she said.
Perry said she and the group are asking for a moratorium on any dredging in lakes within Long Lake Township, and stronger language to keep buildings farther back from the lakes’ ordinary high water mark.
Township Supervisor Ron Lemcool said he and other township officials are researching what other local governments have done, and just how much is in their control versus the state’s.
He agreed it’s an issue worth looking into.
“I live on Long Lake, I grew up on Long Lake, and so it’s trying to figure out how best to preserve the lakes and make sure that people in the future can enjoy them,” he said.
In the Nov. 12 denial letter, EGLE District Supervisor Joseph Haas cited findings that a “feasible and prudent” alternative — namely, a dock — would provide the same benefit without the negative impacts.
Those included not only lasting impacts to the lake’s nearshore habitat, but dredging impacts that would be perpetuated by the need for constant maintenance, according to written comments from EGLE Inland Lakes Analyst Eric Calabro. And state Department of Natural Resources Inland Lakes Habitat Analyst Joe Nohner agreed that the channel dredging would harm fish and aquatic resources, documents show.
Those analyses had Perry hopeful that the permit denial would survive an appeal, she said.
Quandt said he believed the appeal would prevail, calling conclusions about the project’s negative impacts overblown. He also scoffed at the suggested alternative, calling it “absurd.”
“I mean, how do you compare a seasonal dock with the project purpose, which is to have a four-season boathouse? They’re not even comparable,” he said. “So when you look at one being a feasible and prudent alternative for the other, it’s not an alternative, period, let alone a feasible or prudent one.”
EGLE officials agreed that some of the concerns expressed in public comments were likely unfounded, documents show — a nearby loon nesting location, for example, is more than 300 yards away and at least 20 lakeside homes are closer.
Quandt said he expects to file an appeal next week and, based on past experience, figured the state would have a hearing within six months.
