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Man who shoveled new channel into Lake Michigan convicted
- ungreased0675 3y agoAfter reading the article it’s still unclear why what he did was bad? I presume some kind of negative ecological effect?
- ww520 3y agoI guess they want nature to take its course and to avoid impact by human.
- shermantanktop 3y agoI wish, but it’s a little late for that. This decision is mostly about which humans get to enjoy which aspect of the river.
- rrrix1 3y agoDisagree. It's never too late to start doing the right thing in matters of mother nature. In this case, it's taking care of the riparian environment near the mouth of a river. It doesn't always have to be about human interests. I looked at the pictures of Platt Beach, and I think the NPS chose correctly. https://maps.app.goo.gl/a2tPE7JRPNCFL9Ys7?g_st=ic https://maps.app.goo.gl/a2tPE7JRPNCFL9Ys7?g_st=ic
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]
- nerpderp82 3y ago> but it’s a little late for that Myopically selfish comment. One can absolutely let nature rebound. This one-way fatalism is shield for continuing to make bad decisions.
- shermantanktop 3y agoI'm not stating what should be the case, merely talking what is the case as described in the article. The park authorities want to make life easier for non-boating park visitors, and that means making life harder for park visitors with boats. The fact that most people visiting the park prefer a more natural, wilder-seeming environment is great. But accommodating them is not the same as a proper "rewilding" approach - which would presumably mean removing access roads and trails, allowing seasonal flooding, avoiding intervention for dangerous-to-human wildlife, etc.
- solardev 3y agoTLDR the Parks Service wanted to stop dredging that river, despite having done it for years, because they wanted to shift the focus to summertime visitors on foot and keeping the dunes more natural. That disappointed some fishermen who used to be able to navigate into the bay with a boat. Tired of having to push their boats over the last bit, they dug a channel themselves instead. The NY Times article has more info: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/us/michigan-river-national-park-vandalism.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/09/us/michigan-river-nationa... "Park officials decided to restore the river to its natural state in 2016 after an environmental assessment found that the sand and gravel dredged from the river mouth interfered with dune vegetation and the enjoyment of beachgoers. According to the assessment, dredging benefited “a small, short-term user group compared to the deleterious effects for the larger recreational groups during the full summer.” It was a controversial decision, prosecutors said in court papers, because in the Platte River’s natural, non-dredged state, the river mouth became too shallow for boats to pass. “If you had a boat, it sucked,” said Brian Seiferlein, a chartered fishing boat guide. “You would need two, three guys to push your boat about three-fourths of a mile in ankle-deep water."" The environmental review is here: https://parkplanning.nps.gov/showFile.cfm?projectID=60589&MIMEType=application%252Fpdf&filename=SLBE%20Platte%20River%20Mouth%20Plan%20EA1%2Epdf&sfid=261691 https://parkplanning.nps.gov/showFile.cfm?projectID=60589&MI...
- nonethewiser 3y ago> Park officials decided to restore the river to its natural state in 2016 after an environmental assessment found that the sand and gravel dredged from the river mouth interfered with dune vegetation and the enjoyment of beachgoers. The dune vegetation point seems very hand wavey. The environment impact is rather long but it appears to essentially say less human activity and boats may cause less disturbance to wildelife. Although this seems to undermine the point of it making the beach more accessible to other humans. I didnt see any acute or specific harm cited like damaging some endangered species or something. Basically, it sounds like they just plain dont want boats to be able to access the lake from the river. It seems like they are repurposing the park and hiding behind the wildlife assessment.
- deleted 3y ago
- db48x 3y agoIt’s less about the ecology and more about who has the right to make modifications in a public park. Usually, whoever creates the park (whether it's a city, county, township, state, or the federal government) puts someone in charge of the maintenance of the park. Even if they’re doing a bad job it’s usually considered a bad idea for visitors, even locals as in this case, to take matters into their own hands. Certainly if every visitor started digging things up or cutting down trees then there wouldn’t be much left of the park.
- rkagerer 3y agoIf he owned the property where this was done (or at least as close as you can own to the water mark) would it have made a difference?
- TapWaterBandit 3y agoLegally, probably. I don't know the laws around environmental protection in that area so there may still have been a violation but it appears he was convicted here for violation of property rights as this is public land. But this whole situation is more about the property rights and how the lake here will be used for recreation rather than ecological concerns if I'm reading correctly.
- justinjlynn 3y agoBoils down to: if they want to make an example out of you, they will find some way to do so.
- topherclay 3y agoWhat do you mean by this? If they just wanted to make an example out of him then he gave them a very easy way to "find" to do so, considering we are observing it via satellite maps.
- ethanbond 3y ago
- defrost 3y agoAs a general rule human notions of "efficiency" that lead to straightening water channels, draining wetlands, clearing mangroves, replacing river basins with concrete, etc have downsides that can often be severe down the track a few decades. Every specific case is a bit different, of course. That said, removing a meander can improve boat navigation, but it reduces total water contact with shore line interface, filtering effect of weeds, opportunities for water way animal breeding locations, increases flow rates, etc. The downsides can be loss of habitat and species, more polluted water, faster water in flood times leading to stronger gouging effects, banks bursting etc. Wetland habitats clean and filter water, near the ocean and large lakes they reduce storm surges, etc. Where rivers drain into oceans or lakes with different water properties (oceans have higher salt levels) banking at the river mouth reduces backwash from the larger body up into the river and preserves the distinct water types which can benefit fish species, water based plants and animals, etc. It's a swings and roundabouts problem domain.
- bomewish 3y agoI love HN.
- dylan604 3y agoI love how LA just paved its river, and then questions why there's so much run off. Like, where did you expect the water to go when you've paved everything? My city got tired of the river flooding the downtown area, so decided to reroute the river. Of course, they made it much straighter than it would naturally form. So nearly a century later, they started to go back and add in bends and areas for the water to pool in areas. It has done a lot in a positive direction.
- nimbius 3y agothe US at the start of the 20th century was sort of a shit-wreck of works projects to impose manifest destiny on whatever part of nature that happened to irk us that day. the LA river is what it is today for the same reason anzo borrego has no more natural water, the salton sea is a boiling chemical pit, and the east coast was a toxic dump up until the nineties with things like the love canal projects. The river flooded in 1938, tearing out bridges and trestles. It killed more than 100 people, trapped movie stars on their San Fernando Valley ranches, and forced a three-day delay in the Oscars. The water tore away the Warner Brothers studio’s prop department. That flood wrote the real river’s death warrant. It was the Depression; L.A. needed jobs, not a killer river. The river was timbered and troughed and cemented over, mile after mile. Only in parts of its 51-mile bed would it assert itself and remain persistently unpaveable: for about three miles around Atwater Village, and along more than two miles at the broad reach of the Sepulveda dam wildlife area. It took 20 years and 3.5 million barrels of cement, and now we have a paved river as a testament to the hubris of man. fwiw, it did not solve the floods this year.
- NPC82 3y agoIf endangered piping plovers of the Great Lakes are similar to the enangered Snowy Plovers in California, the sand build up is pretty important for their nesting. Dredging sand in general is usually pretty bad unless it's part of a project to remove recent mining runoff (these days strictly controlled by the EPA...unless defunded) https://www.greatlakespipingplover.org/ https://www.greatlakespipingplover.org/ Disclaimer: I'm just an amateur birder.
- jws 3y agoI'm not sure "bad" is required. As a person responsible for maintaining a harbor in Lake Michigan, I am allowed to move 1 cubic yard of material a year, by hand, with a shovel (last time I checked, the rules change). Anything else requires a detailed permitting process with lots of limitations on what is even possible. You are looking at a body of rules built up to prevent draining large wetlands without permission, destroying your neighbors waterfront, dredging huge plumes of PCB contaminated sediment into the active water zones, wiping out a regional spawning bed, or casting an intermittent shadow on a patch of lake bed of the great state of redacted. This is administered by a staff who will be held accountable for unforeseen damage and has limited resources. So you do the paperwork, wait for your permits, only work during the weeks of the year when work is allowed, and try to generally make do with less than you wanted.
- roamerz 3y ago> As a person responsible for maintaining a harbor in Lake Michigan, I am allowed to move 1 cubic yard of material a year, by hand, with a shovel looking at the picture he could have made a smaller channel moving the legal limit letting the water enlarge it over time.
- themadturk 3y agoYes, but was the fellow considered a harbor maintainer? I don't know what this constitutes, but there's nothing in the story to indicate he had any such designation.
- seadan83 3y agoSeemingly, a dam was built, the diverted water created the channel.
- lazide 3y agoA cubic yard is 7-8 small wheelbarrows worth of material. It’s nearly impossible to accomplish anything significant by moving a cubic yard of anything. Except gold bullion or Plutonium. Even diverting a small stream for awhile would require very thoughtful application of something pretty durable (concrete?). Not impossible, but very improbable. Which is probably why they set such a small limit. That’s literally ‘dude with a shovel and an hour’ territory.
- khaki54 3y agoI go to that spot every summer. No, the guy didn't hurt anything, and essentially "restored" it to how it's been the last 40+ years. If anything, what he did improves the dunes in that area. Would I have done it, no, though it would be kind of fun to divert 500 ft of river with 30 minutes of digging. Edit to add a quote from the article: "Within days, the natural power of the river opened the channel 200 feet wide, drawing an influx of fishermen. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources said the diversion helped the river’s flow of sediment and relieved oversaturated marshlands, MLive.com reported. The Park Service viewed it differently and issued a plea for help with its investigation."
- andrewflnr 3y agoI believe I've found the spot shown in the article: https://maps.app.goo.gl/sSscNRFzYBg9Wmbb7 https://maps.app.goo.gl/sSscNRFzYBg9Wmbb7 The satellite view matches the photos.
- p1mrx 3y agoHere's a timelapse album: https://ibb.co/album/RTzjwW?sort=name_asc https://ibb.co/album/RTzjwW?sort=name_asc For some reason historical satellite photos are available in Google Earth Pro (which is free) but not on maps.google.com or earth.google.com
- db48x 3y agoGood find. I believe that the “new channel” restored it to something like what it looked like in 2015, if I understand the descriptions correctly.
- zer0x4d 3y ago>For some reason When you're talking about Google products, fragmentation comes built-in as expected. There is no reason for 3 versions of maps to exist within Google ecosystem but I don't think they really care
- infotropy 3y ago4, don’t forget Waze
- iggldiggl 3y agoAnd conversely Google Earth Pro can view street view imagery, too, but only the current version – historic street view is only available via Google Maps through the browser.
- troydavis 3y agoSome of this may be Google shipping its executive incentives (as in “Don’t ship the org chart”). Another example: Google Street View is available on the web - unless you use an iPhone and enter the address directly on maps.google.com instead of google.com. On the maps hostname with an iPhone, clicking the Street View preview just shows a nag screen that it’s only available in the Google Maps app. That’s not true, so I assume that app installs is some group’s KPI.
- karmicthreat 3y agoThere were other boat launches in Frankfort and Empire they could have used, maybe 20 minutes away. That river is not very traversable as it has a weir on it.
- lainga 3y ago"The Park Service no longer dredges the Platte River. As a result, sediment and sand build up, reducing the ability to get boats to Lake Michigan." I didn't get whether this was before or after the channel was dug, and whether there was any causation
- khaki54 3y agoThe dude dug the canal because they stopped dredging the mouth of the river. Used to be much easier for people on the river to get in and out, and also there is a boat launch near the mouth of the river that is super useful, but lately you may not be able to make it out into lake Michigan.
- glitchc 3y agoThey should have just added wheels to the boat [1]. [1] https://www.instructables.com/Portage-cart-for-canoes-and-kayaks/ https://www.instructables.com/Portage-cart-for-canoes-and-ka...
- devaiops9001 3y ago[flagged]
- D13Fd 3y agohttps://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_citizen_movement
- devaiops9001 3y agoYousef El once said that calling someone a "sovereign citizen" is like calling them the N word. Nothing is a greater display of lack of education in law (let alone functional skills pertaining to grammar and reading comprehension of law) and bigotry than uttering "sovereign citizen" at someone who did not utter the term themselves. A state citizen is not a sovereign citizen and "sovereign citizen" isn't even a thing in law. The passport received by a state citizen from the state department has different metadata than that of a federal citizen, this is a hard fact. There is a mountain of case law regarding the state citizen status. Should you find the relevant case law incomprehensible then you lack integrity and you yourself are indeed, on a spiritual level, the N word here. https://www.educatedinlaw.org/2022/06/state-citizen-case-law/ https://www.educatedinlaw.org/2022/06/state-citizen-case-law...
- dusted 3y agocome on, any change in the environment that can happen by one guy with a shovel over a few days, could happen by any random weather event anyway, that could have happened by the wind blowing just the right way..
- db48x 3y agoAgreed, but remember that we’re talking about a public park. It’s not that one guy’s personal property.
- alphabettsy 3y agoDoes that mean I should be allowed to cut all the trees I don’t like down in my local park?
- BXLE_1-1-BitIs1 3y agoI did a lot of canoeing on the Lk Superior north east coast. Where rivers discharge, and there's sand the lake pushes up the sand against the river discharge and it's common for the outlet to be considerably displaced along the shore. Michipicoten beach is a high long sand bar with a strong flow where the river enters the lake. It's a neat surfing spot in a canoe or kayak.
- binary132 3y agoThis seems like something my 8y/o son would do.
- nailer 3y agoHow can I read this article? It won’t let me read past the introduction without installing something from the iPhone app store.
- nivertech 3y agonano-terraforming
- pc2slow4webpack 3y agoHis main mistake was skiing this in front of a park ranger.
- PM_me_your_math 3y ago[dead]