As Great Lakes Advance, Communities Refuse to Retreat

By Alex Brown

The ongoing disaster striking the coastal communities of the Great Lakes hasn't captured national attention like hurricanes and wildfires in other parts of the country. But from Duluth to Chicago to Cleveland to Buffalo, leaders are reeling from untold billions in damage — and the prospect that climate change will make things worse in the years to come.

Scientists say the only long-term solution is to retreat from the shoreline. But few in the region are willing to have that conversation.

"People are always looking for a technical fix so they don't have to change the way they're behaving," says Paul Roebber, an atmospheric science researcher at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

While climate experts are working to understand the long-term implications of the increasingly volatile Great Lakes, most coastal communities are just trying to make it through the year.

The water treatment plant in Ludington, Michigan, once 100 feet from the shoreline, is now just 8 feet from the breaking waves of Lake Michigan. If the plant is swamped, the city would lose its water supply. Sheboygan, Wisconsin, is looking at costs of more than $30 million to replace water intake and sewer lines near Lake Michigan. Lake County, Ohio, needs $20 million to $30 million in erosion control work on public and private land along Lake Erie. Duluth, Minnesota, has seen $26 million in damage as storms on Lake Superior have struck the city's signature eight-mile lake walk and water treatment plant.

As leaders and residents hang on by their fingernails, no one has a clear idea of the scale of the damage, let alone where the money will come from to fix it. Cities say they're trying to cobble together state and federal funding where they can, but not nearly enough is available.

"It is exhausting to take what is a known need and try to patch it together with every single funding opportunity," says Larson, the Duluth mayor. "So much human capital is being spent on a patchwork approach to something that is imminently dangerous. We need something that is more consistent."

Erosion is altering the shoreline of Lake Michigan in Beverly Shores, Indiana. Wikimedia Commons photo by Ɱ.

Few resources available

The COVID-19 pandemic has slashed city and state revenue, making necessary investments even less likely.

"Some communities are going to be pulling back on investing in projects that were on the books because they have to fund their operating expenses," says Mike Vandersteen, the Republican mayor of Sheboygan, Wisconsin, and chair of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative.

Several leaders complained that the Federal Emergency Management Agency hands out huge sums of money to help communities rebuild from disasters but does not provide the same funding to prevent imminent destruction from happening. Ronda Wuycheck, coastal program manager at the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy, says the state has not been able to access FEMA funding for high-water damage, unlike the states hit by Superstorm Sandy in 2012. She says the federal government should make money for flood-damage work available through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a $300 million annual fund that has traditionally focused on cleaning up pollutants and curtailing invasive species.

Current solutions aren't sustainable

Some states have taken steps to help homeowners. In Michigan, where 80 percent of the shoreline is privately owned, state and federal regulators have seen a surge in shoreline protection permits from residents who want to build seawalls. Through the third quarter of 2020, nearly 1,800 applications had been submitted. That's quadruple the amount for the same period of 2019, when the lakes were already hitting record levels. The permits must be approved by both the state and feds, who have worked to cut the turnaround time from 60 days to 10.

"We're just barely keeping our head above water," says Don Reinke, who heads compliance and enforcement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' Detroit District.

But experts say the rush to armor the shoreline is exactly the wrong approach. Seawalls perpendicular to the shoreline trap sand and compound the erosion problem elsewhere. Those parallel to the shore can multiply the force of the waves, causing the same problem.

"The more protection you put in, the less sand is available to the system," says Scudder Mackey, chief of Ohio's Office of Coastal Management. "You're cutting off the sediment supply that creates and maintains the beaches. We're in a vicious cycle."

Regulators know these structures are making the problem worse, but they have little choice but to rubber-stamp an application when a home is threatened.

"Because a landowner has the general right to protect property from erosion, applications get favorable consideration," Reinke says.

Experts say the biggest disaster in the long run may be the human "fixes" being installed today, rather than the high water itself.

"Putting in structures like seawalls and revetments [retaining walls] is not a permanent solution, because the lakes will keep pounding on them and taking them out," says Norton, the University of Michigan professor. "You're buying in for a lot of ongoing cost, and there's no engineered solution that works without destroying the beach."

Shoreline protection structures can cost $1,000 to $4,000 per foot, and their lifespan is typically 25–30 years — assuming conditions don't change. Leaders acknowledge they're on an unsustainable course, but as they work to save properties in the near term, no level of government has taken the responsibility to blaze the path out of the armoring cycle.

Barriers to change

Norton says that many lakefront properties are owned by wealthy and politically connected residents, who are important to a city's property tax base. That makes it difficult for small, cash-strapped towns to make unpopular decisions on whether such development is sustainable. He adds that there's little appetite to work on solutions when lake levels go down and the threat is less imminent.

Only a few cities in the basin have limited development along the shoreline. One of them, St. Joseph, Michigan, has blocked new construction within 200 feet of Lake Michigan along part of its shoreline. The ordinance passed during a low-water period in 2012, after one home was built on the edge of the lake. Neighbors complained that a proposed seawall to protect the home would cause erosion on their properties, and many were relieved to see the city put a stop to such unsustainable development. Still, some raised objections that the change infringed on the rights of property owners to build on their own land.

In some parts of Michigan, the state says there's irrefutable data that the lakeshore is moving inland. And while it's providing guidance to communities about the unsustainable course they're on, the state maintains it's the responsibility of each city to set its own development rules.

"We are looking at a potential of higher highs than we've known in the past," Wuycheck says. "We are trying to tell communities they need to take these scenarios into account when they make [development] decisions. [But] local government is where we believe wise management should happen."

Local governments say they're looking at changing their guidelines, but given their limited expertise and resources, they need states to play a bigger role.

"Zoning can be strengthened, but zoning is frequently challenged by developers," says Hosier, the South Haven city manager. "If there was a more solidified message from [the state], that would help."

There's even less political will to address existing properties in the path of the advancing shoreline. Duluth's Park Point neighborhood is among those threatened by the high waters, but Larson said residents are not yet ready to discuss retreating from the area — nor does the city have the money to buy out 3,000 homes. But the alternatives aren't much better.

"What's hard about climate change is the anticipation of what comes next," Larson says. "There is no amount of system we can put in place that feels like it will eventually be enough. I cannot bully Mother Nature into behaving."

Alex Brown is a staff writer for Stateline. This story was reprinted with permission from Stateline, an initiative of The Pew Charitable Trusts.