Higher Lake Michigan levels have shrunk beach areas and are exacerbating the struggle between public beachgoers and private landowners over access to our shoreline. A prime example can be found at the 60-foot-wide beach access at Reynolds Street in Leland, which for decades has been called “South Beach”.
With Lake Michigan as high as it is right now, 579.6 feet, that means less than one foot of elevation from the water’s edge would require a DEQ permit if a beach owner wanted to “move around” the sand or remove vegetation.
It’s common knowledge that the public can walk along the Lake Michigan shoreline. You can walk it anywhere on public property. That means public road ends, or the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. The question is: how far from the water’s edge can a person legally walk along private property? This is an important issue, since about 70 percent of Michigan’s “third coast” is privately owned. The answer is unclear, because neither courts in Michigan nor in other Great Lakes states have offered a clear and consistent answer.