Traverse City's three-year skirmish with the Department of Natural Resources over expanded swimming zones always has been more sharp-toothed than the surface issue: equal access for boaters and swimmers.
It's also a battle over who -- the DNR or city -- has the right to regulate and control the destiny of the Grand Traverse Bay waterfront within city limits.
It's a complicated case that 13th Circuit Judge Thomas Power likened to a "cloud of wasps" before he issued his resounding Jan. 19 ruling in the case.
Traverse City, he said, has the authority to establish and enforce no-boat swim zones under an 1895 state act approved by the Legislature that gave the city "full jurisdiction" over waters a mile out from its shoreline on Grand Traverse Bay.
Power reversed the DNR's denial of city permit requests for buoys to mark expanded swim zones in front of Clinch Park Beach and the volleyball courts. He also said the DNR has authority only "to assist and advise" the city in anchoring the buoys to bottomlands, but no right under state law to control the size or location of the swim zones. He noted that the city, by state law, must mark its swim zones and enforce them.
The court decision is an important win for the city, but the DNR has the right to appeal.
The DNR has since offered a settlement proposal to avoid returning to court. Details have not been disclosed, but the offer could be good news if it means the DNR will be more reasonable than it has been.
City officials must weigh the offer carefully. They cannot give away authority to control the destiny of the city's waterfront. Yet they also must be cognizant of what could happen if the ruling is overturned.
The city is to be commended for the reasonable way it has handled this dispute over the last three years.
It has tried to provide equal access to boaters and swimmers and must continue to do so.
Boats and boaters have the right to access West Bay; the city has the right to regulate them along the shoreline and beaches. The city has never, despite claims to the contrary, tried to ban boaters or boats from the waterfront, and must not now.
The DNR argued that it has the authority to deny the city permits and its authority supersedes the city's. Another key argument was that the state owns Great Lakes bottomlands under the public trust doctrine and has the right to issue buoy permits and deny them to protect the bottomlands as a trust for all the state citizens.
One irksome argument DNR officials have made is that staff have monitored city beach usage since the expanded swim zone requests became an issue and found that few swimmers use them.
This statement indicates how out of touch, some would say deaf, the DNR has been to concerns of city residents and officials. The city's public beaches once were more widely used by swimmers, neighborhood residents, vacationers and families with young children before makeshift marinas materialized and spread in recent years. The significant increase in boats mooring off city beaches in recent years has helped fuel the current dispute.
All that underlines why the city, not the state, must have the right to control the destiny of the city's waterfront, which state legislators clearly understood a century ago.
The city has worked long and hard since the 1930s to clean up its once-dirty industrial waterfront and transform it into the "livable" city and jewel it is today.
It has the right to do that, and it is an important right past, present and future.
We hope the city and DNR find a way to resolve this issue amicably and fairly -- without going back to court -- before the swimming, boating and beach season.
Raw Video: Israeli Embassy Car Attacked
Coroner: Don't Know Houston's Cause of Death Yet
Valentine Greetings Sent Worldwide From Loveland
Greek Austerity Measures Spark Riots
Raw Video: Obama Budget Goes to Capitol Hill
Arab League Wants U.N. Help in Syria
Nordic Festival Puts North Korea in Spotlight
'Rumor Has It' Adele's Rolling in the Grammys
Grohl, Grammy Nominees Cut Up on the Red Carpet
Greece Passes New Austerity Deal Amid Rioting
Raw Video: Greek Rioting Ahead of Austerity Vote
Raw Video: Child Rescued After Kosovo Avalanche
Pop Music Superstar Whitney Houston Dies at 48
Whitney Houston's Church Mourns Her Passing
Reaction to Houston's Death at Clive Davis Party
79 Turtles Seized at Shanghai Airport
Fuel Removal Under Way on Capsized Italian Ship
Police: Houston Found Dead in Her Hotel Room
