The public is invited to join FLOW on Tuesday, June 29, from 1:00 p.m. to 2:15 p.m. Eastern for a webinar—Managing High Water & High Tension along the Great Lakes Shoreline—that will provide frontline, scientific, regulatory, and legal insights into efforts at the state and local level to manage high waters and high tensions along Michigan’s Great Lakes shoreline.
While Great Lakes waters have receded from their 2019-2020 historic high levels, surface waters remain higher than their long-term average—except for Lake Ontario. Concerns remain regarding high water levels, construction of seawalls and other armoring, and impacts to public and private property, the environment and wildlife, and public trust rights of people to safely access the shoreline and water.
Presenters will include:
Jim Olson, Founder and Senior Legal Advisor, FLOW
Jerrod Sanders, Assistant Director in the Water Resources Division of the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy
David Bunte, Supervisor of Chikaming Township in Berrien County in Southwest Lower Michigan
Scott Howard, Attorney and Partner, at the law firm of Olson, Bzdok, & Howard in Traverse City
The free webinar will include a question-and-answer session with the panel.
By FLOW Board member Bob Otwell and Traverse City Commissioner Tim Werner
High Lake Michigan water levels are are forcing more water to flow into Traverse City’s wastewater treatment system. This forces city residents to pay more in energy, maintenance and other operational costs.
Wastewater collection systems are designed to transport wastewater (sewage) from homes and businesses to a wastewater treatment plant. Old sewers constructed with clay pipes often have cracks that allow clean groundwater to infiltrate into the system through gaps in both the private sewer leads and the public sewer mains. Some improper building construction also has allowed basement drains to be connected directly to the sewer system. In addition, stormwater inflow can happen during rain events through uncapped cleanouts and faulty manhole covers, and through improper roof-drain connections. See the figure below.
In Michigan, with our glacial soils and humid climate, which means more rainfall than evaporation, groundwater flows downhill to the nearest surface water body. Groundwater behaves similarly to streams that also drain into lakes and rivers. But groundwater is invisible, below the ground surface. If you dig a hole at the beach, the water you encounter is groundwater.
As Great Lakes levels rise, groundwater levels adjacent to the lake rise as well. Last year’s historic high Lake Michigan water levels have increased groundwater levels, and hence increased the volume of unwanted clean groundwater entering the wastewater sewer systems in lakefront communities.
The figure above shows the level of Lake Michigan over the past 100 years. Record high levels were set in 1986, only to be broken in 2020. Record-low levels occurred in the early 1960s and were matched in 2012/2013. The average level has been about 579 feet above sea level, and the difference between high and low lake levels is about 6 feet.
To quantify how much high groundwater levels have impacted wastewater flows in Traverse City, the daily flow into the municipal wastewater plant was compared with Lake Michigan water levels over the past eight years. See the comparison below.
Lake Michigan levels below 579 feet showed relatively constant inflows into the plant (blue dots above), with an average of 2.3 million gallons a day (MGD). As Lake Michigan rose above an elevation of 579 in 2016, daily base flow into the plant increased (red dots). In the first 10 months of 2020, high Lake Michigan water levels created 450 million gallons of extra wastewater flow. This clean groundwater inflow all had to be treated at the wastewater plant.
Where did all of the water come from? Although the city has already completed some rehabilitation of old sewers, more work must be done. In addition, the Union Street dam provides a separation on the Boardman River between the river section affected by Lake Michigan, and the unaffected upper reaches of the river. Wastewater sewers in the near-bay neighborhoods (Slabtown, Downtown, Boardman, Oak Park and the neighborhoods at the base of Old Mission peninsula) are affected by high Lake Michigan levels and are where these excess flows originate. Sewers in neighborhoods farther south (Traverse Heights, Old Town, and much of Central neighborhood) are unaffected by Lake Michigan levels.
Solutions
Different techniques are available to reduce the impact of infiltration and inflow on a community’s wastewater treatment system. Within the public system, old mainline sewers can be either replaced, orimproved with trenchless rehabilitation that re-lines the sewer. Manholes can be inspected, and leaks can be sealed, and leaky covers replaced.
On private property, stormwater downpipes and basement drains need to be disconnected from the wastewater system. Broken laterals need to be replaced or re-lined.
To determine where the majority of inflow and infiltration originates, a proactive, systematic analysis of a community’s wastewater system needs to be completed. Different techniques are available to assess the problem.
TV inspection—Inspect the inside of sewers by using a small camera that travels down the length of a pipe to produce a visual representation of the pipe’s condition. The camera can also spot excessive lateral inflow.
Manhole inspections—These inspections can identify leaks from joints due to tree root intrusion, settling, or design issues. Manholes can contribute to significant inflow through leaky covers as well.
Smoke testing—This testing locates inflow and infiltration sources by identifying stormwater drain cross connections, broken pipes and laterals, and unsealed manholes.
Private property inspections—The inspection of private properties consists of visual assessments of the stormwater and wastewater networks within a property.
A planned course of action is important to conserve and protect our resources. Water—and the energy to move it—is too precious to waste.
Facing the Reality of a Climate Change along the Great Lakes
Beach erosion photo by Roger Cargill
By Jim Olson
Water levels in Lake Huron and Lake Michigan won’t drop anytime soon. Private waterfront homeowners rush to save their homes from loss. Citizens seek to preserve their public right to a walkable beach along the shore below the natural high water mark, and the State of Michigan and municipalities struggle to save valuable infrastructure for water, sewage, roads, dams, parks, and recreation. (See FLOW’s continuing high-water coverage here).
One of the most controversial struggles pits landowners on the Great Lakes against the public who flock to the beaches for access for fishing, swimming, and strolling along the shore. Landowners rush to gain permits from the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) under emergency laws to install seawalls or riprap. This hard armoring inevitably impairs, if not blocks, beach-walking and erodes beach and property next door, kicking off a domino effect of one protective structure after another.
Ironically, both landowners and the public suffer losses to rights to use and enjoy these Great Lakes and their shores. No one wins with high water. The erosion of beach and bluffs by wave action is inevitable, and the shore becomes impassable either from obstruction or topographical and geographical features—skilled rock climbers aside, I’ve yet to see a private landowner build a dock or citizen walk the shore of a precipitous clay bank or cliff.
It is time for all of us to face reality—the new normal.
Public Trust Doctrine Establishes and Prioritizes Public Rights to Access Water
Conflicts in this country over the rights of private waterfront landowners and the public have been around since the American Revolution. When Benjamin Mundy took the oysters from the beds Robert Arnold had prepared in the mudflats of New Jersey, the dispute soon ended up in the state’s Supreme Court. In 1821, following common law and custom from England with roots in the Magna Carta, the court ruled that Mundy had a right to walk the bottomlands and gather the oysters, because the waters and bottomlands below the high water mark were held in trust for the public for access, fishing, navigation and sustenance. Not long after, our state courts and the United States Supreme Court recognized the public trust doctrine in all navigable waters.
In 1892, the U.S. Supreme Court held that on joining the Union, a state as sovereign takes title in trust for the public to all of the navigable waters and bottomlands to the ordinary or natural high water mark.[1] As a result, the Court ruled that this trust—known as the public trust doctrine—extended to the navigable waters of the Great Lakes, including Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, scientifically a single hydrologic lake system. Michigan follows this same public trust doctrine.[2]
Under the public trust doctrine, the rights of the public are exclusive and legally superior to private shore owners provided the public use remains below the high water mark and does not interfere with the private landowner’s riparian rights for mooring and docking boats, navigation, and reasonable use of the water in connection with the upland.[3] These public rights include access, navigation, fishing, boating, swimming, and beachwalking,[4] but these rights do not include picnicking and sunbathing; these occupancy type uses must take place at road ends or public beaches. The public trust is perpetual, meaning it extends to future generations, and that the government has a duty to protect the trust and these public rights from interference or impairment by private owners or others. The state title is exclusive to the natural or ordinary highwater mark, and the public trust and public rights cannot be repealed by a legislature because they are embedded in the common law.[5]
But if Mundy had taken anything from Arnold’s land above the normal or ordinary high water mark above the mudflats, he would have been liable for trespass. The shore and land above the natural or ordinary high water mark belongs exclusively to the owner, and the owner has the exclusive rights attached to the soil for docking, mooring, and enjoying access for her or his boats to the navigable waters. Below this high water mark, the public has every right to enjoy protected public trust uses without interference from the owner. It’s often said that the riparian and public rights are to be exercised side-by-side—more aptly put, where possible a principle of accommodation between the public and riparian owners over the use of the common zone between the water’s edge and the high water mark.
It should also be noted that the owner’s and public trust rights often are on the same side against threats from others or natural causes—low and high waters are a case in point. Both the public and private landowners lose shoreline and the enjoyment of public and private rights. But the alignment is not always harmonious. During low water, the beach is wide, in some instances hundreds of feet, so there is little conflict, except for the threat of large-scale diversions of water out of Lakes Michigan and Huron, now prohibited by the Great Lakes Compact.
The Invisible Line Between Private Shoreline and Public Bottomlands
In the last several months, Michigan legislators passed and Governor Whitmer signed amendments to the Shoreland Protection Act (“SPA”)[6] that provide emergency relief for homeowners so they can quickly obtain permits to install seawalls, sheets of steel, or riprap (large, rounded stones) to curtail the effects of unprecedented high water attributable to climate change.[7] However, this law regulates and allows these structures on the shore above the high water mark, not below it, and requires a consideration of impacts on the public trust and neighboring riparian landowners’ shore.
If a landowner wants to install structures below the high water mark, another law applies, the Great Lakes Submerged Lands Act (“GLSA”),[8] which codifies the protection of waters, bottomlands, and public rights under the public trust doctrine. Under the GLSLA, except for seasonal docks and overnight mooring, any permanent occupancy, structure, or alteration of these public trust waters and bottomlands is prohibited except where a riparian owner applies for and obtains authorization based on a showing that the proposed conduct falls within one of two narrow exceptions: (1) the proposed use promotes an improvement of the public trust, such as a public fishing dock or marina, or habitat work; or (2) there is no impairment or interference with the public trust or public trust uses such as, fishing, swimming, or beach-walking. The GLSLA also requires notice and in some instances the consent of adjacent riparian landowners and the local government where the land and waters in question are located.
The conflicts between the riparian owners under the SPA and the public under the public trust and GLSLA are readily apparent. Owners face significant financial and property loss, but the structures block public trust rights and exacerbate erosion and loss of beach on adjacent properties, triggering a domino effect of one owner after another being forced to build intrusive protective structures, casting the damage on to others, the shore, and public trust uses and natural resources.
The right to walk a beach does not end if riprap or a seawall is installed, but it creates a dilemma—walk over the riprap or through the water. If you walk above the normal high water mark, as long as there is immediate evidence of the presence of water or wave action on the riprap or beach in front of it, you are likely protected by the public trust doctrine, and not trespassing, although it is not necessarily safe. If it is impassable, there are two choices: turn back or walk above the seawall or riprap to avoid the danger. In the common law, a person’s trespass is sometimes justified if danger is imminent and the trespass is necessary to avoid it—sometimes called the “choice of evils” defense. But the choice may not avoid a conflict with the owner, should a landowner contest your right to do so. So, if you can ask permission, do so; if not, it’s a matter of good judgment.
It is not only members of the public who have a right to oppose interference with the use of the public trust beach area. An adjacent riparian landowner may also oppose a structure that will worsen the erosion to her or his property. Quite often, adjacent riparians will oppose a seawall or riprap not only to protect their property, but to also preserve their own rights as members of the public to enjoy walking along the beach.
The State of Michigan’s Dilemma during High Water
Given these competing or conflicting positions, the state often faces difficult choices between helping landowners and protecting the public and trust resources. Because the public trust rights are superior, the state must first assure that its choice will do no harm to the public trust; second, the state must determine whether the proposed seawall, riprap, or other structure meets the permitting requirements of the SPA and GLSLA, described above. Generally, this means the structure cannot interfere with or impair the public trust and neighboring riparian property. If there are alternatives to the proposed intervention or interference, the landower would have to implement the alternative so long as it is not cost prohibitive. If possible, the state should seek to accommodate the landowner’s need to protect a home so long as the impairment is kept to a minimum and public trust or public rights are not substantially impaired. In some instances, a well-designed riprap installation using round, smooth stones work best because the multiple curved surfaces dissipate the energy and lessen erosive effects.
Over the long-term, the reality is that high water erodes shoreline along Lake Michigan and Lake Huron year after year. Bluffs recede over time (although not so much in the dry, low water level years), significantly during years of high water, and dramatically during the unprecedented all-time high water levels in 2020 and the foreseeable future. We should also be aware that everyone in Michigan and along Lakes Huron and Michigan faces major damage and loss. So, the best approach is one of balancing and accommodation, if protective measures can be made that do not impair or significantly interfere with public trust resources and rights. This means communication, common sense, and compliance with the SPA, GLSLA, and the paramount rights of the public, including future generations. Communication can be critical for the landowner, because consent from adjacent riparian landowners and local governments may be required. This requires the government, landowners, and the public to understand that the integrity of our shores, beaches, lakebed, habitat, water quality, and fishing come first. In some cases, it may mean moving a home back from the bluff. In others it may mean accepting some riprap that provides necessary protection and minimizes loss of neighboring properties and interference with public passage.
The decision in each case will depend on the circumstances, awareness, and involvement of all neighbors and the public, keeping in mind the overarching public trust principles and the topographical and geographical conditions at each location. In times of high water, if the public keeps their feet in the water or wet the zone created from wave action, the exercise of public trust rights generally will be lawful. As noted at the outset, not every shoreline during high water is safe for any activity. I have yet to see anyone beach-walk the face of a rocky cliff no matter where the water level is. Ultimately, the exercise of public trust rights always turns on personal judgment that it is safe to walk the beach. The same is true for riparian owners.
Climate Change and High Water are the New Reality
High water levels like those in 2020 mean change, now and for the foreseeable future. And, high water levels are not just about beach walking or building seawalls and riprap. Water levels affect parks, breakwalls and marinas, water-dependent or shoreline businesses, near shore or lowland private and community septic and sewage systems, water sources, roads, bridges, dams like the recent failure in Midland County, drainage and storm-water systems, wetlands and floodplains, land use, zoning, and capital expenditures. Existing infrastructure is obsolete, both because of age or failure and the fact that it was designed in an era where rainfall or precipitation was considered stable. Most drainage, erosion measures, septic and sewage systems, and structures are designed for 25 to 100-year back-to-back storm events. As experience taught us with the dam failure in Midland a few weeks ago, the road and bridge damage in the western Upper Peninsula last year, and Manistee County a few years back, precipitation or storm events previously thought to occur every 500 or 1000 years have become far more frequent and intense.
Some massive losses will be unavoidable, but others can be minimized or even avoided. Federal, state, and local governments must enact laws and ordinances that provide for smart planning, land use, water protection, health, and safety—in short, government officials and all of us must accept the reality, and work together to shift to a new paradigm of what we can and cannot do because of the uncertainty of unpredictable extreme weather caused by climate change and natural forces.
We must seek resiliency, for ourselves, others, communities, and the natural world on which our life depends. We must make wise choices about capital expenditures to avoid wasted resources and continuing damage. For example, wetlands that prevent flooding, provide critical habitat for wildlife, and recharge clean water into groundwater or lakes and streams will disappear and become submerged. Floodplains will become wetlands. Lowlands will become floodplains. Or, closer to home on Lakes Huron and Michigan, the government, property owners, and the public can work together to find the best long-term resilient actions through shared cost and responsibility.
We Forget that the Water Cycle and the Life Cycle Are One
If we are willing to face the reality and build resilience into our lives, not unlike COVID-19 or the movement for racial equality that has erupted once more in the last few weeks, we will make it, maybe not with the same expectations, but with greater security of life, property, community, and economy—and with the peace that finally we will face the new reality. This shift had been needed for a long time. Let’s not only protect the public trust in our beaches; let’s protect and respect the entire water cycle as a public trust.
“We forget that the water cycle and the life cycle are one,” Jacques Cousteau famously said. And, at the same time, let’s restore the public trust in government at all levels and in ourselves! Let’s follow the good that can come out of this, no matter where we live or who we are.
Footnotes
[1] Illinois Central Railroad v Illinois, 146 U.S. 387 (1892).
[2] Obrecht v National Gypsum Co., 361 Mich 399 (1960).
[3] Glass v Goeckel, 473 Mich 667 (2005).
[4] Id.; Gunderson v State of Indiana, 67 N.E.3d 1050 (2018).
[5] Id.
[6] Part 323, NREPA, MCL 324.32301 et seq.; see https://www.michigan.gov/egle/0,9429,7-135-3313_3677_3700—,00.html
This story originally appeared on NatureChange.org, Joe VanderMeulen’s online publication that features conversations about conservation and climate in northern Michigan.
The beaches along Michigan’s west coast have all but disappeared under the rising water levels of Lake Michigan as well as the other Great Lakes. In fact, lake levels haven’t been this high in well over 100 years. They reached an all-time low in 2013 before a meteoric rise brought them to an all-time high in just 7 years.
If you love taking long walks along the lake shore, the high water and waves might just push you inland and on to private property. What can you do? Do you still have a right to walk the Great Lakes shorelines?
Jim Olson, J.D., LL.M
NatureChange.org talked with FLOW founder, president, and highly-respected environmental attorney, Jim Olson, about the changing coastline of Lake Michigan and the public’s right to walk the lake shore. As Olson describes, the land under the waters of Lake Michigan (and the water itself) along Michigan’s coast is held in public trust by the State. For a very long time, the public has had the right to walk along the beach below the Ordinary Natural High Water Mark — an obvious physical line of topography and vegetation created over many years by wave action. However, the rapid change in water levels and coastal erosion has overwhelmed the Ordinary Natural High Water Mark. So, where can we walk?
Mark Breederland
Olson says, “you have the right to still walk the beach, but you’re going to have to have your toe in the water or walk in the wet sand to be [legally] safe because we don’t know where that new natural ordinary high is. But we certainly know that if you’re within the wet sand, you’re certainly within the wave action and have a right under the public trust doctrine to access and walk along the beaches and shoreline of the Great Lakes.”
An educator for Michigan Sea Grant, Mark Breederland adds that the water levels in Lake Michigan are predicted to continue breaking records for many months, causing even more coastal erosion. In many places, high shore land bluffs and fallen trees can present real hazards to beach walkers. And if beach walkers need help to get out of a difficult situation, the first responders will be put at risk too.
Linda Dewey
“I think,” Breederland says, “our beach walking is going to have to be adjusted, for sure, for 2020.”
Linda Dewey, a journalist for the Glen Arbor Sun newspaper and Lake Michigan shoreline property owner, reminds everyone that walking the shoreline of Lake Michigan is a delightful, shared activity — with limits. When in front of private property, walkers are not permitted to stop, sit and settle in. That has always been true, but now there are new hazards. Where there are fallen trees, private docks or other structures blocking the shoreline, beach walkers are not allowed to walk inland on private property.
According to Dewey, if you encounter an obstruction and can’t go around it in the water, “You’re going to have to turn around.”
The following 4-minute video offers clear explanations and illustrations.
High Lake Michigan water levels have overwhelmed popular beaches, such as this one at East Bay Park at the base of East Grand Traverse Bay. Photo by Holly Wright.
By Dave Dempsey and Jim Olson
This spring, water levels on all five of the Great Lakes have reached, or are approaching, record highs.The result of unusually high winter and spring precipitation, increased winter ice cover and reduced evaporation, these new highs are the latest in a never-ending series of Great Lakes level fluctuations.The levels have typically fluctuated by as much as 7 feet in recent geologic times. However, studies show that climate change is causing or contributing to more rapid swings between high and low water levels.Just six years ago, Great Lakes levels were below normal, and in some portions of the Great Lakes watershed, citizens clamored for new underwater structures to hold back water in an attempt to boost upstream water artificially.
Now the problem is high water, which creates several concerns:
The residences of lakeshore property owners may be at risk of foundational erosion, flooding and even toppling into the lake.
Coastal infrastructure, such as roads and bridges, is vulnerable to erosion damage and destruction.
Public access to the shoreline may be limited, both because of inundation of prime publicly-owned coastal land and because high water will intrude beyond the ordinary or naturalhigh-water mark, the limit of access adjacent to private property.
Taxpayers may be asked to pay the bill for erosion control, moving of structures away from the lake, and/or damages.
In a recent article published in The Conversation (an online magazine devoted to “academic rigor and journalistic flair”), University of Michigan scientists Drew Gronewald and Richard Roodsay they “believe rapid transitions between extreme high and low water levels in the Great Lakes represent the ‘new normal.’ Our view is based on interactions between global climate variability and the components of the regional hydrological cycle. Increasing precipitation, the threat of recurring periods of high evaporation, and a combination of both routine and unusual climate events – such as extreme cold air outbursts – are putting the region in uncharted territory.”
Supporting their observations, water levels have also tumbled dramatically in the last several decades.In 1998-99, the water levels of Lakes Michigan and Huron dropped 25 inches in 12 months.
The public often asks whether governments can do something to raise or lower levels.But the fact is that human engineering can do little in this regard.While there are laws for setting or modifying inland lake levels, increasing outflow from one lake to the next often has a ripple effect downstream. The problem will only worsen with increased precipitation and water levels now experienced in the Great Lakes region. Similarly, manipulation of water level control structures to address lower water levels can, in turn, lower any one of the lakes only a few inches. Only one percent of the volume of the Great Lakes flows out of the system annually. Far bigger influences are precipitation and evaporation.
Members of the public also ask whether they can still walk the beach when water levels are above the ordinary or high-water mark that defines the boundary between state ownership and private riparian ownership. As a practical matter, the public should still be able to enjoy a right to walk the beach and shores of the Great Lakes—provided it is safe—so long as they remain in the zone along the water’s edge that is wet or compacted by recent wave and other natural forces of nature.
The International Joint Commission (IJC) observes, “Unlike oceans, where tides are constant and predictable, water levels on the Great Lakes can vary significantly in frequency and magnitude making them difficult to accurately predict.” A US-Canada treaty body, the IJC is responsible for maintaining control structures at Sault Ste. Marie, Niagara Falls and the meeting point of Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River.
A popular misconception is that warming temperatures associated with climate change will significantly lower Great Lakes water levels. But the effect of climate change on these levels is unclear. Warmer air holds more moisture, leading to an increasing number of heavy rain and snow storms. In fact, some models predict rising Great Lakes levels as a result of climate change.
To minimize our contribution to climate change and to protect our Great Lakes ecosystem, we should reduce our use of fossil fuels and we should push our elected leaders to act on climate change. However, given that human effort can do relatively little to alter quickly-changing Great Lakes water levels, adaptation should be our societal response.
In Michigan, with our glacial soils and humid climate, which means more rainfall than evaporation, groundwater flows downhill to the nearest surface water body. Groundwater behaves similarly to streams that also drain into lakes and rivers. But groundwater is invisible, below the ground surface. If you dig a hole at the beach, the water you encounter is groundwater.
