Tag: beaches

Chester the Molting Monk Seal

  • Hawaiian Monk Seal on Sandy Beach (Photo by Ann-Marie Kirk)

This story is about Chester. Chester is one of the
most endangered marine mammals in the US. He’s a Hawaiian
Monk Seal. This year, Chester decided his annual molt will
take place on a popular beach. Anne Keala Kelly
reports:

Transcript

This story is about Chester. Chester is one of the
most endangered marine mammals in the US. He’s a Hawaiian
Monk Seal. This year, Chester decided his annual molt will
take place on a popular beach. Anne Keala Kelly
reports:

Chester is among only 1200 Hawaiian Monk Seals alive today. Most of them live in the
Northwest Hawaiian Islands.

They’re called Monk Seals because they’re solitary animals.
They prefer their own company to socializing with each other, especially during a
molt. Molting is a process that renders them weak and vulnerable.

“This animal is on the beach because it is going through a huge physiological change
right now.”

That’s David Schofield. He’s the marine mammal response coordinator in Honolulu for
NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“It’s shedding all of its skin and fur in a relatively short period of time, keeping
his behavior very minimal. So he is actually not getting into the water, he is not
swimming; he is not expending a lot of energy.”

He says Chester has
chosen to molt on Kailua, an East Oahu beach that attracts thousands of visitors. It’s not a very safe place for a defenseless seal. Because of budget cuts, NOAA relies almost
completely on volunteers to help protect seals when they come on shore. They keep
curious people and their pets away from Chester.

Chester is known here. He’s been seen on a number of Oahu beaches over the years.
Usually he stays along isolated stretches. But he’s never been seen on the busy east side. In
fact, he is the first Monk Seal anyone recalls seeing on Kailua Beach.

DB Dunlap coordinates volunteers for NOAA. He says this is not the first time he’s seen
Chester.

“I met Chester in 2002. And he was emaciated and skinny, I didn’t think he was gonna
make it through the day he was so pathetic looking. Now I realize that he had just
finished a molt, just exactly like he’s doing here and during that process they lose a lot of
weight.”

The molt takes a while. About two weeks into his molt, Chester went missing. He’d rolled into the water. He
probably went into the ocean to eat. A couple of hours later he was back on the beach
about half a mile farther down. The volunteers quickly reassembled the yellow crime
scene tape around him fifteen feet in each direction.

Now, going into day 19, he appears even more lethargic. And… he smells bad if you’re
downwind. Half of his fur is hanging in dying patches on his now loose skin. David
Schofield, with NOAA, describes where Chester is in his molt.

“His belly and his face are pretty much done. That nice silvery coat is the new fur and
the brown stuff on the back is the old molt. So we’re saying right now he’s at about the
50% mark.”

One of the volunteers watching over Chester is a Hawaiian man named Eric Poohina. He
says though the Kumulipo, the Hawaiian
creation chant, native Hawaiians have spiritual ties to seals like Chester. Poohina refers to him as Kalaheo.

“I’m not naming him, I’m just referring to him as a Kalaheo, a Kalaheo is a verb, it’s not a
noun. Kalaheo is a proclamation, a urgent global proclamation. That animal is doomed.”

As Poohina explains the Hawaiian cultural relationship to this animal, he’s also
expressing the frustration many feel over political and economic values that have brought
the Monk Seal to the brink of extinction.

In the main Hawaiian Islands, military and real estate interests have over-developed the
coastline. They’ve been taking over the seal’s habitat. And in the Northwest Hawaiian
Islands where most of the seals live, young seals become easily entangled in fishing
industry debris. The young seals often drown. And, military maneuvers disrupt normal
breeding and nursing of healthy pups.

Schofield: “If this population is gonna recover, it’s gonna take all of us. We need 2900
of them for 20-years to get them off the endangered species list.”

(chanting)

Volunteer Eric Poohina is chanting about the sacredness of Chester’s ordeal. 26-days after
he started, Chester has finished his molt. It’s a process that has remained virtually
unchanged in his species’ genetic code for more than 15 million years. Imagine, once a
year, no matter where you are or what you’re doing, nature demands that you just have to
stop and let it all go.

Poohina: “What the chant means is we acknowledging the laws of the universe, yeah.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Anne Keala Kelly.

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Supreme Court to Hear Beach Walking Case?

Shoreline property owners are asking the nation’s highest court to reverse a ruling that says the public has the right to walk along the beaches of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports:

Transcript

Shoreline property owners are asking the nation’s highest court to
reverse a ruling that says the public has the right to walk along the
beaches of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick
Pluta reports:


The property owners are challenging a Michigan Supreme Court
decision. The state court held that the public owns the Great Lakes
beaches from the water to the high water mark. The case was filed by a
woman who was seeking the right to walk along the shoreline of Lake
Huron.


David Powers is an attorney with the property owners group Save Our
Shoreline. He says the Michigan decision rolled back property owners’
rights…


“And so, if the state has taken private property in violation of the
Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court should be very concerned about
that.”


The other side in the case says the Great Lakes shoreline is such a unique
resource that no one person should be allowed to claim exclusive rights
to it.


There’s no word on when the Supreme Court might make a decision on
taking the case. Lakeshore property rights are being litigated in other
Great Lakes states and whatever the Supreme Court decides to do could
have an effect on those cases.


For the GLRC, this is Rick Pluta.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Botulism Kills Beach Birds

  • Interns for Presque Isle State Park in Erie, Pennsylvania walk along a Lake Erie beach picking up dead birds. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Researchers are beginning to understand what’s killing thousands of
Great Lakes shorebirds. It might be part of a larger problem indirectly
caused by humans. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you reports from the series, ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes’ which is now looking at the threat to beaches. Our guide through the series is Lester Graham. He reports that scientists are beginning to understand what’s killing thousands of Great Lakes shorebirds. It might be part of a larger problem indirectly caused by humans.


Researchers are beginning to understand what’s killing thousands of
Great Lakes shorebirds. It might be part of a larger problem indirectly
caused by humans. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:


Along parts of Lake Erie, Lake Ontario, and Lake Huron, large numbers
of dead birds and fish are washing up on shore. If they’re left there, the
disease that killed them can be passed on to other wildlife. That’s why
park officials such as Mike Mumau at Presque Isle State Park at Erie,
Pennsylvania ask their staff to watch out for the dead carcasses.


“Our interns do a great job. They’re the eyes of the staff that are out. So,
there’s probably three to four days a week that they’re out on the
beaches, checking to see if they have anything.”


Since 1998, untold numbers of fish and sometimes hundreds of dead
birds a year have washed up on just these eight miles of Lake Erie beach.


Eventually, researchers figured out the problem: type “E” botulism. It
slowly paralyzes the birds until the respiratory system shuts down. Most
of them don’t make it that long. They get so weak they can’t hold their
heads up out of the water and they drown.


(Sounds of walking and shovel)


Leslie Jones and her fellow interns are headed out to an area to pick up
some dead seagulls on the beach.


“When we’re out here doing migratory bird studies, we might see some
and then we pick them up as soon as possible. A lot of times, we get
radioed from different people like lifeguards and they have us come out
and pick them up so that the disease doesn’t spread throughout the rest of
the ecosystem.”


They find five dead birds rotting on the beach. They bury the maggots
because they could carry the botulism toxin and other birds might eat the
maggots. They shovel the bird carcass into a black plastic garbage bag.


“If they’re very fresh, this one, obviously not very fresh, but, if we get a
fresh one, we actually freeze them and they’re sent off to be tested
botulism, but, something like this we’ll just bag up until we can get them
incinerated to get rid of all the disease.”


The fresh carcasses are shipped to the National Wildlife Health Center in
Madison, Wisconsin.


There, Grace McLaughlin is among the researchers who are beginning to
put the puzzle together.

Here’s what they think is happening. The invasive species zebra mussels
and quagga mussels create huge mussel beds that begin a complicated
biological phenomenon. Organic matter collects there, and then decays. It
lowers the oxygen level in the immediate area of the mussel beds. Type
“E” botulism spores occur naturally, but when the oxygen level goes
down, they begin reproducing like crazy. The waste they produce is the
toxin.


“That toxin will accumulate in the organic matter as well as in the water
in the immediate vicinity of the mussel beds. As the mussels do their
filter feeding, they will accumulate the toxin in their tissue. They are not
susceptible to the toxin. However, when the fish start coming down
there and eating the mussels, they become intoxicated, lose their ability
to swim properly and become easy prey for the birds that come in.”


The fish that feeds on the mussels the most is another invasive species,
the round goby. Researchers made the connection when they noticed the
botulism started being a problem shortly after round gobies arrived in big
numbers.


The type “E” botulism toxin has killed tens-of-thousands of birds such as
cormorants, terns, loons, ducks, and seagulls.


Back at Presque Isle State Park, Mike Mumau says it’s terrible to see so
many birds die.


“We just do our best on our end to stop the botulism cycle. When we
can, provide samples, and also, keep it a positive recreational experience
for all our visitors. They don’t want to see birds decomposing and
rotting out on the beaches, so we’re pretty diligent with that.”


Researchers say that’s about the best that can be done. Since ocean-
going vessels brought zebra mussels, quagga mussels, and round gobies
to the Great Lakes, all three of the invasive species have flourished. It
will likely be a long time before we’ll ever begin to understand the full
extent of the damage to the native wildlife of the lakes.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Protecting Crumbling Shorelines

  • This is a private beach Charles Shabica developed for a homeowner on Chicago's North Shore. The grasses in the background are native to the area and help stabilize the beach and bluff. They also help trap and filter runoff. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is changing how the shoreline interacts with
the lakes. Humans like to improve on nature. For example, we like to build things to
protect our property. Protecting a home from forces like wind, water and soil erosion can
be a tough job and expensive sometimes. But if your property is along the shore of a
Great Lake, it can be especially difficult. Reporter Shawn Allee looks at one engineer’s
effort to protect lakefront property and nature:

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you reports from the series ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’ Our
guide in the series is Lester Graham. He says the next report looks at protecting property
and protecting nature:


One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is changing how the shoreline interacts with
the lakes. Humans like to improve on nature. For example, we like to build things to
protect our property. Protecting a home from forces like wind, water and soil erosion can
be a tough job and expensive sometimes. But if your property is along the shore of a
Great Lake, it can be especially difficult. Reporter Shawn Allee looks at one engineer’s
effort to protect lakefront property and nature:


Great Lakes shorelines naturally change over time. Beaches erode. Dunes shift.
Sometimes, even the rockiest bluffs collapse.


That’s OK for nature, but maybe not for a house sitting on top of it. So it’s no wonder
that landowners try to stabilize their shorelines. To do that, they sometimes build walls
of steel or concrete to block incoming waves. It’s a tricky process. If the walls are too
short, they won’t stop erosion. But if they’re too long, they trap sand that moves
naturally along the lakeshore.


When nearby beaches can’t get sand, they degrade into muddy or rocky messes.


Charles Shabica is a coastal engineer. He’s been working at the problem for decades
now.


“My dream is to see the shores of the Great Lakes ultimately stabilized, but in a good
way and not a bad way where you’re causing problems.”


Shabica takes me to a small private beach north of Chicago. He engineered it to keep the
shoreline intact. The keys to that are two piles of rock that jut out into the lake.


The piles are just the right size – big enough to protect the shore, but small enough to let
some sand pass by. There’re other elements to the design as well.


Tall, blue-green grasses line the beach’s perimeter.


“Not only do waves tend to move sand around, but wind is also really an important agent,
too. So the beach grass and dune grass tends to stabilize the sand. And what will happen
is, you can see these things are seeding now, wind will blow the seeds and pretty soon
you get that stuff growing all over the place.”


A lot of homeowners and city planners applaud Shabica’s work. But not everyone does.


Some environmental groups say, once a landowner builds a wall or rock formation,
others have to follow suit, just to preserve their own sandy shoreline.


The environmental groups’ alternative? Keep development farther away from shorelines
and allow more natural erosion.


But that hands-off approach is not likely to happen. The majority of Great Lakes
shoreline is privately owned. And in many states, landowners often prevail in court when
they try to protect their investments.


Keith Schneider of the Michigan Land Use Institute says the question isn’t whether to
build near the shore, but how to do it.


He says, in the past, landowners tried to get off cheap. They didn’t pay for quality
construction or get expert advice on local geological systems.


“If you don’t pay a lot of attention to these systems, it’s gonna cost you a lot of money.
And if you build inappropriate structures or inappropriate recreational facilities, you’re
going to either be paying a lot of money to sustain them or you’re gonna lose them.”


A lot of coastal geologists agree that, for much of the Great Lakes coast, private
shoreline protection efforts – even the bad ones – are here to stay.


In urban or suburban areas, housing developments near the shore often include a buffer or
wall.


Michael Chrzastowski is with Illinois’ Geological Survey. He says, in these cases, the
shore can look natural…


“But it’s going to be a managed, engineered facility, because wherever you are on the
shore, you’re influenced by some other construction or historical development along the
shore that’s altered the processes where you are.”


That’s definitely the case along highly-developed, urban coastlines, such as Illinois’.
Other parts of the region are catching up, though.


“What’s going to happen is, other places along the great lakes as they become more
developed and they become more urbanized, they’re going to use Illinois as a model.”


That could bring more projects like Charles Shabica’s little beach. Shabica says that’s
not necessarily a bad thing.


It’s just a way to come to terms with our presence along the lakes.


“Human beings are here to stay. It’s our responsibility I think to make our environment
better for us, but not at the expense of the biological community, and your neighbors.”


That sounds reasonable enough. But it will ultimately mean the vast, natural coastlines of
the Great Lakes will be engineered, one beach at a time.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Rethinking Urban Runoff

  • Everybody's got a gutter... and they're part of the urban runoff problem. Rain picks up dirty soot and other chemicals from roofs and heads into the gutter. During storms, the dirty water rushes down the gutters and down streets into storm drains... and can pollute beaches, drinking water and wildlife habitat. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

One of the ten threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is nonpoint
source runoff. It’s a catchall category for pollution that’s not being spewed from one identifiable
source. The federal government’s finding that rain washing off concrete and asphalt in cities and
suburbs poses as big a threat to the Great Lakes as waste coming out of a factory pipe. Shawn
Allee has a look at the government’s effort to cut water pollution by remaking the urban
landscape:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series on Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide through the series. Today a look at a broad problem
with no simple solution:


One of the ten threats to the Great Lakes identified by experts across the region is nonpoint
source runoff. It’s a catchall category for pollution that’s not being spewed from one identifiable
source. The federal government’s finding that rain washing off concrete and asphalt in cities and
suburbs poses as big a threat to the Great Lakes as waste coming out of a factory pipe. Shawn
Allee has a look at the government’s effort to cut water pollution by remaking the urban
landscape:


(rain running into a sewer)


Water from a rain gutter is pouring into a nearby storm sewer drain. That protects property from
water damage and flooding. But at the same time, they pose an environmental problem for the
Great Lakes.


Roofs, streets and parking lots are made of hard materials like concrete or asphalt. During
storms, rain rushes off these surfaces into storm drains.


The problem is this: the runoff isn’t pure.


Brian Bell’s a storm water expert with the Environmental Protection Agency. He says rain picks
up pollutants on all those roofs and streets, things such as:


“Antifreeze from cars, motor oil, brake fluid, copper from the brake pads, cigarette butts from
trash, household hazardous waste, pesticides that may be overapplied.”


And for most sewer systems, that’s not the worst of it.


“The problem with storm water is, once its mobilized and goes into a storm sewer system, that
system does not treat the waste, so all of those things go to the local waterway untreated.”


In this region, runoff flows into the Great Lakes, where it pollutes beaches, drinking water, and
wildlife habitat.


To fight this, the EPA’s trying something new. It wants to make hard, urban landscapes softer.
The idea’s to replace concrete and asphalt with more soil and plants. That way, water can sink
into the ground and stay out of storm drains.


But how do you do that?


Well, the EPA’s working with places like the Chicago Center for Green Technology to show people
how. The city hopes residents and developers will use what they see here in their own projects.


(city sounds in)


Grace Troccolo’s guiding a tour of the facility.


First stop?


“Our parking lot is slightly pitched, so all of our rainwater flows off into these vegetated bioswales,
which when I’m not with people in the business, I call ‘ditch with plants.'”

The plants aren’t typical bushes or flowers. They’re mostly tall, prairie grasses native to the
Midwest. Their roots help water seep deep into the ground. The Center has several bio-swales,
and they all keep runoff on site and in the ground.


Another stop on the tour is a 40-foot section of the building’s roof. It’s covered with a matt of
short, tangled creeping plants. Grace explains why they’re here.


“So here we are at our green roof. Again, getting back to our issue of storm water management,
the city would like to see more vegetated surfaces and of course, in the city like Chicago there are
a lot of roof surfaces and so this section of the roof is designed to hold all of the rainwater that
falls on it during a one-inch storm.”


Again, the roof’s vegetation retains water and keeps it out of storm drains. Because of these
technologies, the building is an urban runoff success story.


All told, the Center releases less than half as much water to storm drains as similar buildings do.


The EPA wants the average home or business owner to follow suit, but price might keep that from
happening. Green roofs, for example, are more expensive than conventional ones.


But some observers say the biggest obstacles in fighting urban runoff are political. Stephen
Bocking teaches environmental policy at Trent University. He says the public’s used to pointing
fingers at a handful of big, industrial polluters.


People just aren’t used to seeing every house and business as a source of pollution.


“It’s much more difficult to deal with the problem when you’re talking about millions of separate
sources. People can’t just say well, it’s the job of industry or the job of the government to deal with
it. It’s the job of everyone to deal with it in some way.”


In other words, we’re all to blame.


Every new building in a city, or home in a subdivision, creates more hard surfaces, such as new
driveways, new parking lots and new roofs.


“It’s pretty hard to deal with a form of development which is intrinsic to our way of life. It involves
thinking about how we live our lives and how design and build our cities.”


Bocking says the EPA’s plan might not be enough to make up for all the roads and other hard
surfaces we’re building. He says, to succeed, we’ll need to change how we develop land.


There’s not much political support to stop that kind of development right now, so for the time
being, hard surfaces will continue to win out.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Epa Finalizing Sewage Blending Policy

  • Heavy rains can overwhelm sewer systems. The EPA's proposed solution, blending, is a topic of debate. (photo by Sarah Griggs)

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing
a policy that will allow sewage treatment operators to send largely untreated sewage directly into rivers and lakes. It’s a cost-savings effort pushed by the Bush administration. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is finalizing a policy that will allow sewage treatment operators to send largely untreated sewage directly into rivers and lakes. It’s a cost-savings effort pushed by the Bush administration. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The process is called blending. If too much sewage is coming in to treat completely, this policy allows operators to “blend” mostly untreated sewage with already treated waste water, then release it into the waterways. That saves the federal government money by not having to pay for sewage plant expansions.


Environmentalists don’t like it. Nancy Stoner is with the group Natural Resources Defense Council.


“They’re saying that they’re going to save money by providing less treatment now even though that pushes the cost onto the public by contaminating our drinking water supply, by killing fish, by contaminating shellfish so it cant be sold, by closing beaches.”


The EPA says blending untreated sewage with treated sewage dilutes it so that it meets federal standards. The agency also argues that the policy merely sanctions a practice that already happens every time a sewer system gets swamped by heavy rains.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Record Beach Closings on Lake Michigan

A new report shows Lake Michigan beaches were closed a record number of times last year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

A new report shows Lake Michigan beaches were closed a record number of times last
year. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has more:


The Lake Michigan Federation says communities in the basin reported more than 1400
beach closings last year. It’s the most the group has recorded in seven years.


Joel Brammeier is the Federation’s acting executive director. He says many local health
officials are expanding their beach testing programs. Last summer, that meant more
beach closings.


“The monitoring and understanding the levels of contamination is the first step towards
restoring confidence in Great Lakes beaches. To keep that confidence up, that
contamination has to be eliminated so people can access those beaches whenever they
want to.”


Brammeier says Great Lakes beaches continue to be polluted by animal and human
waste. He says while beach testing is improving, most communities need a lot of money
to clean up those pollution sources.


That money could come from Congress. The Senate and House are debating bills calling
for four to six billion dollars for Great Lakes cleanup and restoration.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Spring Storms Trigger Sewage Dumping

  • An overflow point in a combined sewer line. The overflow is designed to relieve pressure on an overburdened sewer system. (Photo courtesy of the USEPA)

The wet weather of the last few weeks has caused some communities to dump sewage into the Great Lakes. That’s triggering health concerns for this summer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The wet weather of the last few weeks has caused some communities to
dump sewage into the Great Lakes. That’s triggering health concerns
for this summer. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:


Frequent heavy downpours have overwhelmed some lakeside sewer
systems. Some cities have dumped partly treated or untreated sewage
into the Great Lakes, instead of causing sewer backups in local basements.


Jeffery Foran is an aquatic toxicologist and president of the Midwest Center for
Environmental Science and Public Policy. He says the sewage contains pathogens –
bacteria and microorganisms – that can cause disease in humans. He’s worried about the
material spreading along the lakeshore.


“Probably accumulating at the beaches, in the sand, and in the cladophora, this algae that
washes up in the lake and rocks, and other structures that occur along the shoreline.”


The sewerage district in Foran’s home city of Milwaukee has already dumped about two
billion gallons of sewage into Lake Michigan this spring. He says the large volume of
water in the lake will dilute some of the sewage. But Foran is still expecting some beach
closings this summer.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Report: Aging Sewer Systems Plague Ontario

A new report finds outdated sewage systems are polluting waters throughout Ontario. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

A new report finds outdated sewage systems are polluting waters throughout Ontario. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


The report says aging treatment plants are dumping improperly treated sewage into Ontario
waterways, especially when rain or snow overload the system.


It’s a problem that’s found all over North America.


The latest report comes from the Ontario Environmental Commissioner. It says 38 percent of the
province’s sewage is released into Lake Ontario. Commissioner Gord Miller says that waste
threatens the ecosystem.


“You can actually get the risk of fish kills, of fish avoidance, loss of fish habitat, and then you can
get discharges of actual toxic materials, like ammonia.”


Miller says the sewage is not threatening people’s drinking water. But it’s harming fish and
wildlife, and leading to the closure of beaches.


He wants to see Ontario study and address the problem.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I”m Karen Kelly.

Related Links

Drawing the Line on Beachfront Properties

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state… landowners are pushing legislation to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:

Transcript

Some homeowners on Great Lakes coasts are concerned about how state governments decide
where the lake ends and private property begins. In one state, land owners are pushing legislation
to protect their private property rights. But the bill worries recreation and environmental
activists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Julie Grant reports:


Dennis Bring is a big, burly guy who looks like he wouldn’t be scared of anything. But he says
he is scared. He’s afraid of the bureaucrats at the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.
They say the land he once owned is no longer his, simply because of the erosion caused by Lake
Erie’s waves.


It started more than twenty years ago. That’s when high waters on Lake Erie started to batter his
shoreline property and erode the bluff. Bring decided to use concrete and large limestone blocks
to protect it. The Ohio Department of Natural Resources required him to get surveys, pay for
engineering, and construction. It cost thousands of dollars. Then he was told he had to sign a
lease agreement, to lease the land that he thought he already owned.


“They said it wasn’t a big thing. But when we got it, we found out it was 17 to 20 pages long and
basically they had the rights to our property and we had basically no rights and they could come
on our property at any time.”


The cost of the lease isn’t that much, but Bring’s deed says he owns that land. It’s been in the
family for three generations and he pays taxes on it. But the state also wanted him to carry a
million dollars worth of liability insurance on the erosion protection structure.


So he called the Ohio Department of Natural Resources to complain. A state regulator told Bring
that he no longer owns the land because anything up to the high water mark, including the eroded
part that once belonged to Bring, actually belongs to the state.


“And I asked him, I said, ‘You’re telling me the lake is your property, correct?’ And he said ‘Yes,
that’s our property.’ And I said, ‘According to my gist on this, is that your property is damaging
my property. I’m trying to protect this property.’ But I said, ‘In turn you’re making me pay back
what is already mine.’ He said, ‘And we could tear your structure out if we wanted to.’ And then
I hung up the phone, and my wife and I were scared to death.


The state plans to enforce its claim that it owns up to the high water mark. But many lakefront
owners say the state is taking more than its share. They want Ohio’s jurisdiction pushed back
toward the lake – to the low water mark. The difference between the two adds up to thousands of
acres along Ohio’s 262 miles of coast.


Brian Preston grew up fishing in the marshes around Toledo. Speaking at a public meeting on
behalf of the environmental group, the National Wildlife Federation, he argued that the state is
right, anything the lake touches belongs to all the people, not just those who own the adjacent
private land.


“We’re not talking about their land; proximity doesn’t imply ownership. Those 262 miles in the
land going into the water is our land. Just because it’s in front of their house doesn’t make it their
land”.


But property owners disagree. They’ve pushed a bill in the Ohio legislature to move state
ownership back toward the lake. It would also take away much of the state’s authority to regulate
the shoreline. The private land owners say the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers already monitors
the Great Lakes shoreline. Homeowner Jim O’conner says that’s enough regulation.


“For years, shoreline structures have been built along the lake and have been fine. The Army
Corps has kept a pretty close eye on it. But now this program has turned into a radical mess by a
few people that have extreme radical views on what private property owners, shoreline owners,
should relinquish. In order to live on the lake you’ve got to relinquish your property.”


The state says without its additional regulation there would be all kinds of problems. That’s
because in the past houses and other structures have been built too close to the shore and
eventually storms eroded the dirt from underneath them and they fell into the lake. Some
scientists are also concerned that the engineered structures that protect the land from erosion end
up destroying public property. State geologist Don Guy says erosion provides the sand size
material that builds Ohio’s beaches.


“And by armoring the shore, we’re eliminating that source of beach-building material. And as
waves continue through natural processes to carry sediment, at least along this part from east to
west, eventually the sand is eroded from the beach at a given site and there’s nothing to replenish
that beach. So that’s maybe the hidden impact of all the shore protection.”


And that’s one reason the Ohio Department of Natural Resources wants to protect the beach.
State representative Tim Grendell sponsored the bill that would change the boundary from the
high water mark to the low water mark. He says it won’t have any negative impact on the
lakeshore or the environment. He says the state has taken control over more land than it should.
He notes that property deeds often say landownership stretches to the low water mark. Grendell
says state shouldn’t regulate beyond that.


“It recognizes what the Ohio constitution recognizes, that a government agency of the state has no
power to take away people’s property by redefining what they own.”


But most Great Lakes states regulate to the same boundary as Ohio. They say state ownership is
at the high water mark. The state of Ohio says it’s willing to drop some of the things it mandates.
For example, it might drop insurance requirements and help pay engineering costs of shoreline
structures it approves. But Ohio says it will not support turning public ownership over to private
landowners.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Julie Grant.

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