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From The Holland Sentinel - April 8,1999
The impact of Saugatuck's federally built piers on Lake Michigan erosion will finally get a look after more than three decades of neglect.
Saugatuck officials recently reached an agreement with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to conduct a feasibility study of the piers' effect on erosion along the shoreline, which may have caused millions of dollars in damage to Lakeshore Road and Oval Beach in the late '80s..
The Saugatuck Township Board of Trustees voted Wednesday to sign an application letter drafted by Saugatuck Township resident Don Olendorf, president of the Lake Michigan Shore Association, and corps representatives that would have the agency perform the study. Saugatuck Township would pay any costs more than $100,000, but would be able to back out of the study if costs rise higher than that.
Studies on most federal piers began when Congress passed the River and Harbor Act in 1968. The act designated certain ports with federal piers eligible for sand replenishment using the spoils from the dredgings of harbors, if the agency found the pier caused displacement of the sand's natural course along the lakeshore.
Saugatuck was one of two harbors on Lake Michigan left out of the original studies, said Joe Milauckas, owner of the Lakeshore Resort in
Saugatuck and also a member of the Douglas Lakeshore Association.
Years after the 1968 act passed, the federal government changed its rules to allow undesignated ports to pay for half the study's cost. The corps did a preliminary study on the Saugatuck piers, but the cost, estimated at $600,000 to $900,000, to go further was too much for Saugatuck Township and the board declined, Milauckas said.
Now with $4.04 million recently designated in the federal budget to rebuild Saugatuck's piers over the next two years, it didn't make much sense to Olendorf that the corps planned to rebuild the breakwaters without studying its effect on the shoreline.
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