PORTER – There’s sand on the beach, but there should be more, and the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore has a plan to do just that.
The plan calls for sand and small, natural stones to be replaced along the beach near Mount Baldy, at a cost of $26 million over 20 years, and for sand to be replaced at the Portage Lakefront and Riverfront at a cost of $25 million over 20 years.
When the work, which would be done annually with sand dredged from Lake Michigan and the stones mined from a permitted site, will begin hasn’t been scheduled, given the price tag, but the goal is to protect the beach and nearby communities from further erosion.
There’s been a long history of erosion of parts of the Indiana dunes shoreline, said Bruce Rowe, supervisory park ranger and public information officer for the national lakeshore. “It’s damaging to park resources and any structures that are normally protected by that beach.”
Since the early 1990s, the Army Corps of Engineers has been doing periodic “beach nourishment” along the beach at Mount Baldy as it’s needed and as funding permits, said Lynne Whelan, public information officer for the corps’ Chicago office. That costs well under $1 million each time it’s done
While the national lakeshore now has a more intensive plan to replace lost sand, the corps does not yet have a directive to move forward, she said.
“We don’t know when this will all start because of the funding,” Rowe said.
The National Park Service decided in 2008 to address erosion. The plan released last month addresses erosion on two different stretches of its beaches, one at the eastern end of the park, around Mount Baldy, and the second on the west side, by the Portage Lakefront.
Before announcing the final plan, officials with the National Park Service considered several options and got public input before coming up with the sand and sand/stone mix that now makes up the project.
Plans for both stretches of the beach call for annual replenishment of lost sand. Around Mount Baldy, that means 135,600 cubic yards of sand and stones a year.
“That will make it less difficult to be eroded away by waves,” Rowe said, adding the Portage Lakefront would receive 74,000 cubic yards of sand a year.
In the winter, northerly winds and waves erode sand from the beaches. In the summer, that sand should be replaced by sediment brought in from the waves but man-made structures, such as the harbor in Michigan City east of Mount Baldy, intercept that sand.
That makes for shallow spots along the shoreline, and less sand on the beaches.
“You’re still getting that erosion in the winter, but you’re not getting that sand built back up in the summer,” Rowe said.
Geoff Benson, president of the Beverly Shores Town Council, said his community is particularly concerned about beach erosion because, in the 1960s, “Beverly Shores mostly fell into the lake because of it.”
The National Park Service had proposed a cobble berm, made of the small stones, for the eastern part of the park, but Benson and others didn’t like the idea, so the plan was modified for a mix of stones and sand.
“I’m not sure how much better it is because in a lot of ways, it’s a moot point because it costs a lot of money,” Benson said. “I won’t get excited until they have the money.”
Nicole Barker, executive director of Save the Dunes, is more optimistic about the park’s plans to address erosion concerns, though the cost is an issue of federal dollars.
The park service did a “great job” of synthesizing comments from the public and coming up with hybrid solutions for the erosion.
“Parts of our shoreline are eroding away while others are building up. I hope the status quo doesn’t remain because we have to do better,” she said.