6 ms·

After reading the article it’s still unclear why what he did was bad? I presume some kind of negative ecological effect?

ww520 3y ago
I guess they want nature to take its course and to avoid impact by human.
- shermantanktop 3y ago
  I 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 ago
    Disagree. 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 ago
      I'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 ago
TLDR 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 ago
It’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 ago
  If 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 ago
    Legally, 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 ago
      Boils down to: if they want to make an example out of you, they will find some way to do so.
      - topherclay 3y ago
        What 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 ago
As 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 ago
  I love HN.
- dylan604 3y ago
  I 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 ago
    the 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 ago
If 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 ago
I'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 ago
    Yes, 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 ago
    Seemingly, a dam was built, the diverted water created the channel.
  - lazide 3y ago
    A 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 ago
I 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."

ww520 3y ago

I guess they want nature to take its course and to avoid impact by human.

shermantanktop 3y ago
I 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 ago
  Disagree. 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 ago
    I'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 ago

TLDR 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 ago

It’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 ago
If 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 ago
  Legally, 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 ago
    Boils down to: if they want to make an example out of you, they will find some way to do so.
    - topherclay 3y ago
      What 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 ago

As 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 ago
I love HN.
dylan604 3y ago
I 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 ago
  the 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 ago

If 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 ago

I'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 ago
  Yes, 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 ago
  Seemingly, a dam was built, the diverted water created the channel.
- lazide 3y ago
  A 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 ago

I 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."