Watershed planning gets under way

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Susan Morley looks shows the area near the Boardman River's headwaters in northeast Kalkaska County. Record-Eagle/Loraine Anderson

June 28, 2012

Watershed planning gets under way

Open houses the first step toward development

By LORAINE ANDERSON landerson@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Thu Jun 28, 2012, 07:14 AM EDT

KALKASKA — Susan Morley lives near the headwaters of the Boardman River in northeast Kalkaska County.

She attended an open house on the Boardman River watershed plan Tuesday at the Kalkaska Public Library for two reasons — her ecological commitment to the river and her concern that the dam removal and river restoration project in Grand Traverse County might affect Kalkaska's Mill Pond.

"It won't," said Andy Knott, executive director of the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay.

Morley said Mill Pond is an asset to Kalkaska.

"It makes the Boardman River watershed visible to us," she said.

The Kalkaska open house was the first of three scheduled this week in the 291 square-mile watershed. Another was last night at the Boardman River Nature Center, with a third set for tonight at Ranch Rudolph from 5 - 7:30 p.m.

They are the first step over the next year toward developing a Boardman River Watershed Prosperity Plan for the river, which runs through Kalkaska and Grand Traverse counties and drains into West Bay.

Typical watershed plans follow and meet Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency criteria, said John Iancoangeli, a principal at Beckett & Raeder, an Ann Arbor consulting firm.

A prosperity plan includes those components but goes beyond, he said.

"It looks at quality of life and prosperity as measures of several indicators — ecological, social, cultural," he said. "It has a greater commitment to preserving the quality of the watershed and hopefully that will spin off into quality of life and place-making, which are indicators of future prosperity."

Maps and information panels along the Kalkaska Public Library's walls showed the river's tributaries, wetlands, recreational trails, trout streams, boat launches and campgrounds. It also identified manufacturing sites, restaurants, wineries, education and health care facilities and active oil and gas wells.

Jim Gurr, a newly retired teacher and property rights advocate from the Alden area, is a member of a Grand Traverse group opposed to the Boardman River dam removal and restoration project.

"I don't think they accurately have gauged the impact this project has on property owners, he said.

Bob Burgin, a village planning commission member and co-owner of Northern Land Co., came to learn more about the plan, which he sees as a boon for Kalkaska.

"The health of the village equates to the health of Kalkaska County," he said. "We need to reinvigorate the downtown business district.

"There is so much potential here — the people, nearby state lands and water, infrastructure, a state-of-the-art sewage system," he continued. "We're a hub of rails and trails and the Merit Network, the rural cable effort, is coming."