Shoreline residents frustrated by Lake Huron erosion
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The cousins who run Gordon’s Shoreline Marine in Corunna will be in court Jan. 24 for operating without a permit in Blue Point, a lakeside town on the north side of Plympton-Wyoming with multi-million-dollar cottages and a deteriorating coastline.
Taylor Gordon and Curtis Gordon don’t deny they skirted regulations when constructing an erosion prevention structure two years ago. But their case underscores a problem festering on the southern shore of Lake Huron, where red tape and regulations have made it difficult to rescue expensive shoreline properties from near-certain erosion.
“We’ve been trying to work with the conservation (authority) to get permits and such for Blue Point,” Taylor Gordon, part owner of Gordon’s Shoreline Marine, said. “There’s so many factors that they come up with; the bluff is too big to be able to do any safe shoreline restoration there . . . they want to go to extravagant lengths that the homeowner cannot pay for, like (drilling) down to get core samples.”
Costs for erosion prevention can run homeowners and municipalities tens of thousands of dollars, and many projects run over $100,000 after engineering and assessment costs. For residents of Blue Point, even those with expensive properties, that cost is difficult to stomach.
“It’s something that the city might be able to afford,” Gordon said. “Not individuals.”
Some shoreline erosion prevention has been done in Brights Grove and along the St. Clair River. But the conservation authority relies on provincial grant money — through the $5 million Water Erosion Control Infrastructure Program — which fluctuates each year.
That up-and-down funding makes long-term projects difficult to plan. And it doesn’t help homeowners, as the erosion control program only covers projects on public land.
“(Our funding) has actually been fairly successful over the last couple of years,” Steve Arnold, mayor of St. Clair Township and chair of the board of directors with the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority, said. “Up until about two years ago they had dropped it to $2.5 million dollars, so there’s very little dollars for us there.”
There is a shoreline management plan, Dallas Cundick, who handles planning and regulations with the conservation authority, said. For those with private land along the shoreline, the conservation authority tries to help prepare them for permit applications.
“We try to give landowners all the information we need,” Cundick said.
But that process can take more than a year. Some people, like Blue Point’s Don Jones, says there should be more effort by the conservation authority to prioritize the shoreline in places like Blue Point.
“The sad thing is there’s a lot of people who don’t have the money to put into the erosion problem,” Jones said. “I’ve not once in 13 years got a call or a letter, or any idea of a proposal (from the conservation) asking me to come to a meeting.”
Arnold, on the other hand, said he has not heard the concerns of people living in Blue Point.
“If people have issues then they have to send those notes in,” Arnold said. “If they’ve having problems with the process, or if it’s too slow, or if they don’t have (enough money). But unless everybody else wants to put their taxes up to be able to pay for that private property protection . . . barring that it’s pretty tough (to fund these projects).”
To some, the solution is to construct erosion-prevention structures themselves. That was the case for Jones’s neighbour who contracted the Gordons, in the case going to court later this month. Other people in the area, those with enough money, have also contacted Gordon’s Shoreline Marine.
Gordon says the permit approval process is more difficult in the St. Clair Region’s jurisdiction than anywhere else he and his cousin have worked.
“We’re doing a job right now on Lake Erie (with the Lower Thames Valley Conservation Authority) and there’s no problem,” Gordon said. “It’s definitely a process to go through but nothing near as bad as what the St. Clair (conservation authority) is doing.”
The process followed by the St. Clair Region Conservation Authority is the same as the process across the municipality, Cundick argued.
“I think the process is pretty clear,” Cundick said. “There is different levels of review and engineering, and details that are required. That’s where some of the permits can be longer-delayed, on technical review or higher levels of review.”
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