Posted on April 26, 2018
By Dana Massing, GoErie.com
The 2018 spring beach walk was expected to confirm that spring storms and high water were having a negative effect.
The long and cold winter of 2017-18 provided good ice cover to protect Presque Isle State Park’s beaches. But spring storms and higher Lake Erie water levels have led to erosion.
“Ice in the winter, if we get ice early and keep ice long, it’s a good protection for the peninsula,” said Matt Greene, park operations manager. “But we’re about two and a half feet above the kind of average pool level for Lake Erie and that high water level definitely has enhanced erosional effect on the peninsula.”
Greene and other officials from the park, state Department of Conservation and Natural Resources and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers documented erosion and other conditions Tuesday when they took the annual spring beach walk. The information they gathered will help determine where sand needs to be replenished this coming summer.
In numerous past years, the park has received about $3 million annually for the sand work, with about half coming from state money and the other half from federal funds. Greene anticipates that Pennsylvania will provide between $1 million and $1.5 million this year. However, word on whether any federal money will be available isn’t expected until sometime in May.
In 2016, there was no federal money, but some sand work was done with $1.5 million from the state and $500,000 left from previous projects.
Work in 2017 didn’t start until August because confirmation of that year’s $1.5 million in federal funding wasn’t received until May. That money was paired with an equal sum from the state.
Greene said that federal legislators from the Erie area were continuing what has become an ongoing effort to push for annual federal funding for sand replenishment on Presque Isle.
U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly, R-3rd Dist., and Glenn Thompson, R-5th Dist., and U.S. Sens. Bob Casey, R-Pa., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa., sent a letter dated April 20 to the assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works requesting that sand replenishment for Presque Isle State Park “is made a high-priority project” in the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers fiscal year 2018 work plan and fiscal year 2019 budget.
Calling Presque Isle an “essential economic and natural resource,” the legislators wrote that “continued federal assistance for Presque Isle is needed to combat the detrimental effects of sand erosion, which has increased the likelihood of beach closures, public safety concerns and potential threats to the environment, endangered species and personal property.”
On Tuesday, walk participants made brief stops at Beach 1 and Barracks Beach before hiking from Beach 5 toward Sunset Point. They later visited the park’s easternmost end, Gull Point, where some portions of the trail were under water.
Source: GoErie.com
