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May 10, 2012

Group pushes beach grooming law

Shoreline owners want to eliminate required permit for maintenance

BY VICTOR SKINNER Special to the Record-Eagle

LANSING — Great Lakes shoreline owners are pushing legislation to allow them to groom beaches to the water's edge without a state permit, a move that's necessary to combat invasive plants, clean up mussel shells and keep E. coli outbreaks at bay, the group contends.

But officials with the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and several environmental and outdoor groups oppose the measure, concerned it could limit public shoreline access and the state's ability to manage wetlands.

Senate Republicans on the Natural Resources, Environment and Great Lakes committee recently approved a bill on a party-line vote, despite strong objections during two recent hearings.

Ernie Krygier, president of the 3,000-member group Save Our Shoreline, said Great Lakes property owners are working with Sen. Tom Casperson, R-Escanaba, to eliminate a required state permit for general beach grooming and maintenance.

Currently, landowners need a $50 DEQ permit and a second permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to maintain Great Lakes coastline in a public trust zone between the water's edge and the "ordinary high water mark" — a specific elevation that's typically several yards inland.

Krygier said the state permit is a redundant step that restricts landowners' efforts to rid beaches of phragmites, invasive tall-growing vegetation that chokes out native wetland habitat. The state permit also makes it more difficult to collect sharp zebra mussel shells and other dangerous or rotten debris that washes ashore, he said.

"Our goal is to just have one application that will be dealing with the Army Corps ... and basic beach maintenance won't fall under the jurisdiction of the DEQ," Krygier said. "We want to be able to mechanically groom the beach down to five inches."

That depth would allow beach owners to remove phragmites and control bacteria outbreaks that have become more common in recent years, he said.

"What we're finding is the best way to deal with E. coli is to turn the sand," Krygier said.

Kim Fish, assistant chief of the DEQ's Water Resource Division, said the bill replaces the "ordinary high water mark" term in the statute with a more obscure "regulatory water mark" and removes a general permit requirement for beach grooming activities. The department opposes the bill because the new language could blur the state's jurisdictional boundaries, threaten public access rights to the lakeshore and complicate efforts to manage wetlands because of the ever-changing water level.

The bill would give property owners authority for "grooming and beach maintenance activities to the water's edge, wherever that is at the moment," Fish said. "The ordinary high water mark, as it is currently described in statute, is described by an elevation on the individual Great Lakes.

"This bill would remove that term out of the statute."

The ordinary high water mark was central to a 2005 Michigan Supreme Court case that established the public's right to walk along the Great Lakes. Kent Wood, legislative affairs manager for Michigan United Conservation Clubs, said the beach grooming bill could jeopardize that legal precedent.

"We're opposed to the bill as written because ... it could open up confusion about where the public can walk, or if they even have the right to walk along the shoreline," he said.

Michigan Environmental Council Policy Director James Clift also expressed concerns about public access and the state's ability to manage emergent wetlands. He said the DEQ has only rejected a handful of permits for general beach maintenance in the last five years. The MEC believes the current process "is working really well."

"We believe that it's a real dangerous precedent to say that we establish this new zone between the lake's edge and the (regulatory water mark) ... to say the state can't regulate beach grooming in that area," Clift said. "If you establish this new regulatory zone you can take away the rights of the public in, what's the next thing ... they are going to take away."

Save Our Shorelines argues the bill will have no impact on the public's right to walk Great Lakes shorelines. It currently awaits a vote before the full Senate. It impacts all property owners along the Great Lakes, including commercial operations, but does not affect inland lake properties, the DEQ's Fish said.

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