The Place Where Ludington Talks
Trailblazing the Lakeshore: Footprints of Foolishness
Nine months ago, it was revealed that $342,141 was to be awarded this year for projects that comprehensively plan for local, regional, or statewide coastal water trails along Michigan’s Great Lakes. According to the grant-provider, the Michigan DEQ, the grants enhance public access to coastal areas; encourage stewardship of coastal, cultural, and historic resources; increase accessibility for all users; support local and regional waterfront redevelopment plans; and facilitate water trail development within Michigan and among its neighboring states.
A partnership between the Mason-Lake Conservation District and the Oceana Conservation District received $12,590 for assessing a coastal Water Trail between Little Sable Point lighthouse and Big Sable Point lighthouse and flagging invasive aquatic plant species along the way.
One of the ideas is to link seven Lake Michigan Watershed outflows: Stony Creek Silver Lake, Pentwater River, Bass Lake, Pere Marquette River, Lincoln River, Hamlin Lake and the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant. Effectively linking the Silver Lake State Park (at Little Sable Point) with the Ludington State Park (Big Sable Point) hence the name that was developed was the Sable Points Coastal Water Trail.
The project was expected to exhibit signs expounding safety concerns and explaining the different areas people might be paddling near. It was hoped it may increase accessibility for all for places like Summit Township beach and Buttersville Park as potential stops.
The DEQ showed the following about this project, note the generous grant to LIAA just above it:
Note that the grant is stated to cover only planning, mapping, and marketing actions for this 'water trail'. This last week, the local media gave updates on this water trail, probably getting notified by a news release: MCP article on water trail and COLDNews Article on Water Trail. We get some supplementary information that the Community Foundation of Mason County has added $2000 more to the till.
The Conservation Manager says the mission of his district is to work with private land owners to preserve and protect the environment, creating the water trail on public lands will create awareness of the district’s mission and promote conservationism.
The trail basically ties together the aforementioned facilities and assets and provides guidance to outdoors enthusiasts through the publication of a guidebook and signage at the destinations. A planned guidebook about the trail is to come out Memorial Day weekend and 12 signs are going up at township and state parks in Mason County.
We are expending just under $15,000 to put twelve informational and safety signs in the water near places of interest, get a spot on the state's website of water trails, and put out a bunch of colorful flyers with maps of this trail. Let me get this straight.
We are somehow preserving, protecting, and conserving the environment by putting up far-from-natural signs in scenic areas, and by making lots of superfluous pamphlets with all the wood pulp that entails, and of which you can bet some will be left behind in those scenic areas?
I may be strange, but informational signs tend to detract from my aesthetic enjoyment of natural settings, and marketing brochures produced for a limited audience usually find themselves thrown out in bulk after a while. And I would add, the Michigan DEQ apparently is given too much money each year if they provide a third of a million dollars in grant money to make water trails that only rob the general public of the enjoyment of the quality of their environment and their natural resources.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Willy on
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I agree X. This is a monumental waste of money. If someone is interested in boating along the coast they certainly don't need a new waterway guidebook. All the information needed is already on nautical maps, State maps or county maps that are readily available. This stupid scheme highlights a major problem with Government and that is the wasteful squandering of our tax dollars on frivolous projects like this one and the proposed beach sidewalk at the end of Ludington ave. Shameful is as shameful does. Has any of the foolish bureaucrats who waste our money given any thought to signs installed in the water along the shore? What's going to happen to those signs when thousands of tons of ice bear down on them in the winter. I'm with you. I don't like signs in scenic places unless they say "politicians keep out".
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Permalink Reply by AQUAMAN on
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Well said Willy, I totally agree with all your points. This has to be one of the most stupid excuses for wastes of money I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. Who thinks this crap up?
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Permalink Reply by XLFD on
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To answer your question, Aquaman, it's the same people that are in control of our water quality, the Michigan DEQ. They grant this largess, our tax dollars, while both the Ludington Wastewater Treatment Plant and Oxychem (Dow Chemical) goes into its third year without any discharge permit.
And they grant this after the widespread disturbance of the topsoil at 428 E Dowland was brought to their attention, and the spreading of that polluted topsoil was spread onto my front lawn. The Michigan Department of Environmental Quality now wants you to paddle your kayak into the polluted waters they have helped make possible by their neglect of duty.
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Nice to see you develop a healthy strain of libertarianism, EyE. I should have said "presumed to have control" instead of "control", because individuals in this day and age generally cede their natural rights to government agencies whose public duties span regulating certain aspects.
But then you erred in equating the Michigan DEQ with the DNR, they are separate agencies, as of 1995, the DEQ being a spin-off. You will notice that they also recombined in 2009 as the MI DNRE, but then split again in 2011 back to the DNR and DEQ. Also, in that same link, you will see they have developed quite a bit of control over our drinking water from the first executive order onward.
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Libertarianism is not a bad appellation, unless applied to a sensitive statist. It is a political philosophy epitomized by Henry Thoreau, Ayn Rand, and Ron Paul and many early founding fathers who believe(d) in minimal state involvement. Research it and tell us what you think of it.
Most regulatory state agencies seem to be at least in conflict with their stated purposes, if not broken. I'd like to see Governor Snyder rein them more in, but it looks like he is continuing the Granholm trend of allowing them as much power as they need.
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There is a funny story about the native American in the poster X put in this discussion. He's actually an Italian who was born with the name " Espera Oscar de Corti". He got into movies and became an Indian impersonator.
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Eye. After picking myself up off the floor from my seizure caused by your agreement with my statement, which also left me speechless, I can only say that I totally agree with your last sentence.
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I didn't misspell it I used "your" in the wrong context and have been doing so for years. I guess I should throw my English degree out the window and fall back on my degree in catering.
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I know. Me to. But your right about "your". It's a bad habit but it's stuck in my mental speller.
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From the COLDNews, an update on this trail. I have to admit that purchasing the signs and pamphlets still sounds silly, even though I do think there could be some benefit by marketing a water trail on the internet. This, of course, would really cost nothing extra and not intrude on nature by putting out more signs out in the water, so that it is not even considered an option.
Posted on Mar 28, 2014
by Steve Begnoche
Paddling trail in Mason, Oceana counties would be included in a larger trail system, too
A proposed Sable Points Coastal Water Trail that would be part of a larger water trail potentially circling Lake Michigan was the topic of a meeting Thursday night in Ludington.
According to Jordan DeVries, administrator/MAEAP technician with the Mason-Lake Conservation District who helped write a grant with the Oceana Conservation District to design the trail and assess the potential access sites, the trail will be a collaborative effort with the state and local governments, hopefully supported by communities along it.
He said the goal is for the water trail to be an enjoyable recreational opportunity that can help communities and businesses, and also encourage an “ethos of conservation and protecting our natural resources.”
Because, as envisioned, the trail uses Lake Michigan and adjoining and nearby waterways such as Hamlin, Pere Marquette and Bass lakes, and rivers such as the Lincoln, the Pere Marquette and the Pentwater, there is little cost in developing the actual trail.
“It’s already there. That’s what’s so great about it,” he said. “It doesn’t cost a lot of investment . What it takes is getting people there.”
The access sites are mostly in place, provided in the form of township, municipal and state park accesses. The trail seeks to connect those, both in a local and regional manner.
The expense will be in creating signage and a planned guide book that would include information about each segment of the trail, facilities at access sites, and information about invasive plant species, among other information.
“We haven’t finalized our drafts of the signs or the guidebooks,” DeVries said. “We really want to get some input so it isn’t just our project. It is a community project.”
Funding so far has been from a coastal waterways grant with local support from grants from the community foundations for Mason and Oceana counties and the Pere Marquette Watershed Council.
DeVries said the plan is to try to incorporate the water trail with the various trails being developed in Mason County that will be promoted through efforts of the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
With a baker’s dozen of people in attendance, there was talk about safety, about the nature of some of the access sites, about sustainability and certain problem points such as the Ludington Pumped Storage Plant with its 2.5 mile long fish exclusion net that has no safe way to go through. DeVries said if a kayaker or canoeist were to go around the net, would make for an 8-mile paddle between access points in Summit Township and Buttersville Peninsula. It was noted the goal is to have some sort of access at least every 5 miles of paddling.
Representatives of West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission are working on a Lake Michigan Water Trail that would include the Sable Points Water Trail. They took input about what kind of information should be included on their website and map concerning access points, amenities, and information a paddler along the trail might find useful.
DeVries said this meeting is the beginning of the public awareness phase.
He said such trails are already in place on the Wisconsin side of the lake. “We’re just trying to catch up over here. We’re just trying to make Sable Points Water Trail the best part of the water trail and a destination.”
He said he hopes the trail guide is completed by Memorial Day and the trail can launch this year.
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