Wetlands revival money rains down 'for now' on Muskegon County http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/inde ... ins_d.html Includes photos.
09/27/11 By John S. Hausman | Muskegon Chronicle , Photos by Ken Stevens|Muskegon Chronicle
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After many years of funding drought, a gentle rain has been falling on Muskegon County's damaged wetlands the last couple of years.
It probably won't last. So environmental groups are doing what they can to restore the wetlands that nourish Mona, White and Muskegon lakes before the money dries up again.
The stakes of success include stopping toxic algae blooms, restoring fish and wildlife populations and boosting public recreation opportunities on those lakes, all of which empty into Lake Michigan.
The biggest funding source has been the federal government's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, launched in 2009 through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
To highlight projects funded or proposed for grants, a national environmental alliance — Ducks Unlimited and Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition — last week hosted a bus tour of Muskegon County wetland remediation sites, one of several the groups have conducted around the Great Lakes. Nearly three dozen representatives of environmental groups and local governments, as well as staffers of federal lawmakers, took part in the tour. Most of the sites were former celery flats.
“Telling success stories” was the point, said Jennifer Hill, field director for Healing Our Waters. Organizers' main message to lawmakers and the public: “This is a really good federal investment,” Hill said.
Participants in the tour stressed three concepts:
• Partnership — the need for multiple agencies, groups and individuals to cooperate to get projects done, and the success in getting that to happen in Muskegon County.
“We need partners,” said Brenda Moore, the sole, part-time staffer for the Mona Lake Watershed Council. “Without them, there's no way we could get out of the water.” She credited many agencies and individuals for helping the council's research, planning and remedial work.
• Planning — the importance of getting ducks in a row, so to speak, during the long lean years when funding dries up. That makes for “shovel ready” projects once the money comes.
“You're having a good day, but it's a long time coming,” said Tom Hamilton of Whitehall Township, a retired fisheries biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service who works as a volunteer on natural-resource projects.
Hamilton credited Muskegon County's recent success in getting Great Lakes grants to the help of scores of volunteers “doing the boring stuff” like attending meetings and writing planning documents during the long years of no funding.
• Economic development — the potential for recreational or other growth once cleanup is completed.
In some cases, that might include redevelopment of blighted sites. Kathy Evans, environmental planner for the West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission, said that's the hope for the former Zephyr oil refinery site in Muskegon Township, which pollutes wetlands around Muskegon Lake and Bear Creek.
The Sept. 20 road trip featured six stops.
Mona Lake Celery Flats
Just upstream from Mona Lake, the old celery flats along Black Creek in Fruitport Township — reflooded in 1996 after celery production ceased — have been the chief source of tremendously high levels of phosphorus flowing into the lake.
Sampling of the celery flats' water and sediment in 2009 was eye-opening. “What we found was quite astonishing,” said Mary Ogdahl of Grand Valley State University's Annis Water Resources Institute. “There's a ton of phosphorus in those flats, and it is getting into Mona Lake.”
The results for the lake have included blooms of toxic blue-green algae, elevated bacteria and public beach closings.
Remediation of this site is still in the planning stages. But — as Hamilton, the fisheries biologist, noted — planning is crucial to making a site “shovel ready.” And this site is just about there, with hopes for Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding in the next grant cycle.
The Mona Lake Watershed Council's Moore credits numerous partners for getting it there, including a $24,000 gift through the Community Foundation for Muskegon County and cooperation from the Muskegon Conservation District, Ducks Unlimited, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality, the federal Natural Resource Conservation Service and the Muskegon Count drain commissioner and wastewater management system.
Black Creek Filter Marsh
Further upstream in the Black Creek-Mona Lake watershed, a 102-acre patch of Moorland Township ground at the Muskegon County Wastewater Management System site will be flooded soon to create a manmade wetland — a filter or flow-through marsh.
Funded by a nearly $1 million Great Lakes Restoration Initiative grant already awarded, the marsh will help keep phosphorus from entering Black Creek upstream of the celery flats. It will also alleviate flooding in part of Moorland Township and improve drainage in a large portion of the county.
In addition to cutting phosphorus intake, planners hope the new marsh will capture a lot of sediment, improving the fish habitat of Black Creek — traditionally a trout stream, but not anymore because of excessive sediment, said Dana Strouse of the DEQ's nonpoint source program in Grand Rapids.
Bosma property, Muskegon Township
This 80-acre site on the Muskegon River's north bank, in Muskegon Township a short distance upstream of the Causeway, is also a former celery-growing site.
Privately owned by the Bosma family, the property next to the old Zephyr Oil site is targeted for a hoped-for eventual purchase for protection, habitat restoration and public recreation. The goal for the site, which is still being de-watered by pumps, is to restore it to a protected wetland status. That's expected to help with the effort to clean up the Muskegon Lake watershed to the point where it's removed from the federal government's Great Lakes Areas of Concern list of toxic hot spots.
Any grant funding would require local matching funds, which so far have not materialized. But planners aren't giving up. “We haven't quit trying to raise money,” Evans said.
Heckema tract, city of Whitehall
At this 100-acre site near the mouth of the White River — yet another old celery farm — the organizers had news last week: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service had just approved funding for the city of Whitehall to acquire the property. The Muskegon Conservation District, holding a conservation easement, will restore and manage it as a permanently protected wetland, restoring bird and wildlife habitat. The acquisition will be part of a $1 million North American Wetlands Conservation Act grant for wetlands protection and restoration in a 12-county area of West Michigan.
As with the other projects, long years of planning was essential to the eventual funding. “We've been working on it for 15 years,” said Jeff Auch, executive director of the Muskegon Conservation District.
Wetland restoration here and at other White Lake shoreline sites, a total of some 1,000 acres, is expected to help get the lake removed from the Areas of Concern list.
White Lake Causeway
Here, participants viewed the early stages of one of seven White Lake shoreline sites that are undergoing habitat restoration as part of a $2.1 million, federally funded project. At the causeway site, native Michigan plants have been planted on a 20- to 30-foot-wide shoreline strip, and dead trees have been laid in the shallows to create a habitat for small fish and aquatic birds such as the great blue heron and green heron.
Altogether, the seven projects will restore more than 35 acres of wetlands and aquatic habitat, restore more than 5,000 feet of shoreline, reconnect eight acres of now-disconnected habitats and remove more than 27,000 cubic yards of shoreline debris. These projects, too, will help White Lake move toward “de-listing” as an Area of Concern.
Willbrandt Property
Once again, a former celery farm. The Willbrandt property is on Bear Creek at the mouth of Bear Lake, part of the Muskegon Lake Area of Concern.
The West Michigan Shoreline Regional Development Commission is working with the city of North Muskegon and the Muskegon Lake Watershed Partnership on wetlands restoration. Evans said the plan is to test sediment for phosphorus and other contaminants and eventually re-create the wetland. In addition to an existing federal grant to WMSRDC to design the project, Evans said, the city was just awarded a grant to acquire the property.
Editorial: Wetlands revival: Federal, state investment pays off in Muskegon County
http://www.mlive.com/opinion/muskegon/i ... l_fed.html
09/29/11 By Paula Holmes-Greeley | The Muskegon Chronicle The Muskegon Chronicle
A recent tour of Muskegon County environmental toxic hot spots did two things. It demonstrated how far this area has come in cleaning up and restoring its shoreline — and how far it has to go.
It also showed the impact federal and state grants can have on the restoration process, especially during this poor economy.
Hopefully, tour organizers mentioned the results of a recent Grand Valley State University study that estimated a 6-to-1 return on the $10 million federal investment in Muskegon Lake shoreline restoration, including a $1 million annual increase in tourism spending. A similar impact is expected from the $2.1 million investment in White Lake restoration efforts, which began in July, and would be felt from projects on Mona Lake as well.
Even at the lower estimate of a 2007 Brookings Institution study of a 2-1 return in economic development from federal investment in shoreline restoration, any project is a proven benefit to Muskegon County and a worthwhile use of federal funds.
While the tour emphasized the lengthy planning process involved in cleanup efforts and the importance of having projects “shovel ready,” the organizers also stressed the importance of partherships and subsequent economic development.
They should add community involvement and perseverance to the list.
Without the hard work of area officials, environmentalists and citizens over the last three decades, restoration efforts on Mona, Muskegon and White lakes would not be this far along. These citizens have attended meetings, lobbied lawmakers, created public advisory councils for each lake, demanded action and refused to back down.
Without this hard work, Muskegon County never would have gotten the attention it has. Originally, this area's toxic hot spots were at the bottom of the state's cleanup list.
Muskegon County is home to two of Michigan's 14 designated Great Lakes toxic hot spots —Muskegon Lake and White Lake. That means there have been limitations on the uses of the lakes including frequent beach closings, a loss of fish and wildlife habitat, and restrictions on fish and wildlife consumption.
The Muskegon and White lakes environmental disaster areas are among 43 Great Lakes Areas of Concern identified in 1985. About 30 of the toxic hot spots are in the U.S. and only one site, located in New York, has been cleaned up enough that it could be formally de-listed.
But the major cleanup efforts ongoing in Muskegon County have moved White Lake within a few years of being removed from the Areas of Concern list.
Muskegon Lake, which is much larger, is still more than a decade away from reaching that goal.
The six stops on the Sept. 20 bus tour, hosted by Ducks Unlimited and Healing Our Waters-Great Lakes Coalition, were a mix of sites that have been funded and are undergoing restoration and sites that need restoration but have yet to be funded. While the tour stopped at only one of the major cleanup sites, on the White Lake causeway, it pointed out ongoing efforts at smaller sites, contaminated either by industry or agriculture, to prevent additional pollution from flowing into Mona, Muskegon and White lakes and eventually into Lake Michigan.
Clearly, shoreline restoration will be a decades-long effort in Muskegon County that will require a determined, coordinated effort and continued federal funding. And, in order to protect that federal investment, new regulations must be put in place to protect the environment from whomever develops or uses property near sensitive environmental resources.
Area residents must work as hard at protecting the restored shoreline as they have in reclaiming it.