Private beach wall could dramatically change Empire shoreline

Aerial photos by Joe VanderMeulen / NatureChange

By Jacob Wheeler

Sun editor

The relentless force of Lake Michigan, its fall and winter storms, its pounding surf, spring rains, and record-high water levels in 2020 have devoured beaches up and down Michigan’s west coast and nibbled away at lakeside bluffs. The ensuing erosion has toppled staircases and destroyed decks. In some extreme cases downstate, the lake gobbled up houses placed precariously close to the water. 

Climate change manifests in different ways around the globe—but in each case it brings extreme weather and weather patterns. The Great Lakes region is currently inundated with more water than its human populations, homes, and infrastructure can handle. 

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers measured the water levels in Lakes Michigan and Huron (considered one body of water because they are joined at the Straits of Mackinac) at 582.15 feet above sea level on August 7—that’s 2 inches higher than the previous record set in 1986. Just as telling, Lake Michigan water levels surged from an all-time low in 2013 to their current high in just seven years—a fluctuation that typically takes decades.

Cities and roads flood during torrential rainstorms. Seiches in Lake Michigan submerge the floors of Leland’s Fishtown shanties. Traverse City’s overwhelmed septic system spills E. coli into the Boardman River and fouls West Grand Traverse Bay. Lakeside homeowners with money and resources build artificial walls out of steel and rock in hopes of keeping nature at bay. 

Those homeowners now include members of the Storm Hill Homeowners Association on the high ground between Empire’s public beach and the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore’s Empire Bluff.

Storm Hill’s waterfront owners applied in June to the Army Corps for a permit to armor the base of their bluff near the shoreline with a 740-foot-long steel seawall along 6 properties—that’s the length equivalent of 2.5 football fields. They also applied to place 925 cubic yards of boulder “riprap” along a 10-foot wide stretch across four properties. Storm Hill expects an answer from the Army Corps’ Detroit office within weeks.

Environmental consultant Chris Grobbel, who applied for the permit on behalf of the association, said the steel wall gets pounded down 15 feet below the beach and sticks up 6 feet above ground. Then the front of the wall facing the water gets covered with rock and with gravel filling the voids. The combination helps retain the bluff and mitigate erosion.

“These systems are going in all over the region,” said Grobbel, who is also Empire’s zoning administrator. “The combination of rock and steel is only used as a last resource. If it can be pulled off with just rock, we hope to do that first. But this is one of those triage situations that require a combination of the two.”

The Association already got a green light for the project from Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) because the riprap rock would not be installed in the water and would be above the Ordinary High Water Mark, according to Robyn Schmidt, who serves EGLE’s Water Resources Division out of Cadillac. That means pedestrians, who have a legal right to walk the shoreline including along private property, would not necessarily be impeded by the boulders.

But some Storm Hill homeowners who don’t live on the water oppose the push for a seawall. They argue that the rock riprap could make it difficult to walk the shoreline on days of high waves. They argue that deed restrictions within the Homeowner Association bylines mandate support from two-thirds of members, not just those with homes on the water. And they worry about the long-term effects that steel and rock fortifications will have on the Lake Michigan shoreline as the water rises and potentially falls, and the powerful waves reshape the beach and the sediment below it.

“I don’t want to lose access from the village to the National Park without full consideration of options and balancing interests,” said Lea Ann Sterling, an attorney and member of the Storm Hill association. “Some of us are calling it ‘The Atlantic Wall’.”

Guy Meadows, director of the Marine Engineering Laboratory at Michigan Technological University’s Great Lakes Research Center, worries that hard shoreline barriers affect Lake Michigan’s natural process and will worsen erosion over time. 

“Nothing is more dissipative to wave energy than the natural beach, which is constantly adjusting its above-water and below-water slope. The natural beach can adjust to more frequent and more intense storms,” said Meadows. “Any manmade structure, no matter how well-designed, will reflect the natural waves, causing more turbulence in the near shore zone and more sediment transfer in the offshore zone. The structure may ultimately fail not by being beaten back by waves but by falling forward into the waves.”

Meadows explains that the waves will continually deepen the water depth offshore and ultimately dig under the seawall, though that process may take 20 years.

EGLE approved 1,771 permit applications for shoreline projects between October 1, 2019, and June 30, 2020. That represents a dramatic increase over previous years that, according to Bridge Magazine, “reflects the scope of the crisis facing shoreline owners, as well as efforts by regulators to speed up the permitting process as land owners race to save their properties.”

First wall gets green light

One Storm Hill homeowner, whose waterfront house is currently under construction and who lost 25-30 feet of their bluff and substantial shoreline last fall and spring, already secured permits from both the Army Corp and EGLE last month to install a 165-foot steel seawall and 10 feet of boulder riprap at the toe of their existing bluff. 

It’s unclear whether the boulder riprap would reach into the water. Designs drawn by Grobbel on March 23, and revised on both April 22 and June 24, which were submitted with the homeowner’s permit application, suggest the rocks would stop at just below 582 feet above sea level. The Ordinary High Water Mark, where the public has a legal right to walk, is 581.5 feet. But the lake is currently above 582 feet.

“The steel wall and the rock will be installed right at the toe of the bluff, not in the water,” said Grobbel. “This will help knock down future storms that have eroded the bluff by keeping the water out and the land in.”

The Empire Village Council on July 28 approved use of Niagara Street, which runs west to the public beach, and use of 30 feet at the very southern end of the beach, for the Storm Hill homeowner to haul supplies, build a ramp down to the beach and install thousands of dollars worth of rock rip rap to reinforce their bluff. Work may commence after September 5.

Most of these projects are accessed from the beach, said Grobbel. In some cases, the materials are transported on a barge. But the beach in front of Storm Hill is too shallow to accommodate a barge.

The Storm Hill Association will present more information about its plan of action at the next Village Council meeting on August 25, pending approval or rejection by the Army Corps of Engineers of its larger permit to install steel walls for all six waterfront homeowners.

Once their project is complete, association president Carey Ford said that, as a show of thanks, Storm Hill will pay to refortify the Village of Empire’s public beach with additional riprap to supplement the shoreline boulders that have been compromised by waves in recent years. “It’s a win-win for everyone,” Ford said. “In the end, they’ll get additional riprap.”

One wall leads to the next

The initial homeowner’s decision to install a barrier convinced the other waterfront owners to follow suit. Ford said the homeowners—all of whom had lost significant bluff and shoreline over the fall and winter—held a conference call in April to discuss their steps. They decided to hire Grobbel as their environmental consultant, as he had worked with the first homeowner, whose house broke ground in April but whose construction was delayed by the Coronavirus pandemic through much of the spring.

“These landowners decided as a group, if everyone is contiguous and connected, it’s going to be better for all,” said Grobbel.

A steel wall and riprap along Storm Hill beach could force neighbors, including the Village of Empire to deal with more erosion and beach loss, if they don’t fortify their own shoreline, said Michigan Tech’s Guy Meadows.

“This structure more vertical than the beach will reflect waves, which will cause scouring on the bottom and move more sediment offshore. Those waves deprived of sand in front of the revetment will pick up sand at unprotected beaches,” said Meadows. “In Leelanau, the most dominant and severe waves come from the southwest, so most of the impact will be felt on the (Empire Village) public beach to the north.”

Meadows says the rock riprap will help absorb some of the force of the waves. A steel wall by itself would be the worst-case scenario for mitigating wave erosion. A natural beach would be the best-case scenario. A wall and rock riprap are somewhere in the middle. He recommended that the Storm Hill homeowners consider adding more sand in front of the riprap to create a natural barrier against Lake Michigan.

“If these people are set on a hard solution, and if they can’t move their houses back, it would be wonderful if they would provide natural beach by adding sediment in front of the structure so that the waves never arrive at the structure,” said Meadows. “That would also preserve the public’s right to access the beach. The best solution is natural sand.”

“I feel bad for the homeowner who built too close to the lake,” said Sterling, the Storm Hill resident who opposes building a wall. “But when one armors their beach, others must follow suit or suffer preferential erosion. … The first domino will fall.”

Ford acknowledges the concerns of neighbors. She has heard them while walking the beach this summer.

“People like the natural beauty of the shore,” she said. “But these (homeowners) are faced with saving their property, which is disappearing into Lake Michigan. If you lose the dune, you can’t rebuild the dune.”

“If they could spend their money a different way, they’d do it. But until it’s fortified and stabilized, the erosion will only continue.”

Storm Hill lakefront homeowners also understand that they can’t control Lake Michigan, and they don’t know if, and to what degree, lake levels will rise or fall.

“Chris Grobbel shared with us at the beginning of all this that nature will do what nature will do,” said Ford. “There’s no guarantee on any of this.”

If the lake recedes …

Michigan Tech’s Guy Meadows, who lives in Houghton on the Upper Peninsula’s Keweenaw Peninsula which juts into Lake Superior, offered a reason for hope: water levels in Lake Superior, the largest of the Great Lakes, are receding this year after setting their all-time record in 2019.

According to the Army Corps’ measurement on August 7, Lake Superior water levels were 3 inches below their mark a year ago. Lake Superior contains 53% of the total water in the Great Lakes and is often a predictor of what’s to come for the other lakes.

Receding water levels decreases the need for beach walls and reduces the stress on coastal bluffs, said Meadows. If the artificial barriers are built, receding lake levels creates more beach between the structures and the water. But will the waters recede, and how quickly? And once they do, will they swell to record heights again in a matter of years, as they did between the all-time low of 2013 and the all-time high of 2020? 

Only nature knows.