This photo, taken Sunday, in front of 325 Lake Front Drive in Beverly Shores, shows a broken seawall. - Original Credit: Post-Tribune (Provided by Geof Benson / HANDOUT)
After the town of Beverly Shores closed portions of Lake Front Drive late last week from damage caused by high winds and waves, a town council meeting to open bids for erosion control work came to include authorizing legal and financial counsel to forge ahead in getting a $5 million bond issue for short- and long-term erosion solutions.
The road closures took place Friday morning, said Geof Benson, president of the town council. The eastern portion of the road is now open only to the residents who live there, and the western end is now only accessible from Kemil Road.
The closure includes a portion of the road by the Lake View parking area in the Indiana Dunes National Park. The park service closed the parking lot and beach access late last year because of erosion.
“(Friday is) when we had our big windstorm so the waves were crashing it and took away more land,” Benson said.
On Dec. 17, the Porter County Board of Commissioners issued an emergency declaration for the northern shoreline of the county along Lake Michigan, sparked by the erosion that is threatening Lake Front Drive.
Beverly Shores also has issued an emergency declaration but Benson and other officials have said they are frustrated that Gov. Eric Holcomb has yet to issue a declaration of emergency status, which would allow for aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“We keep wanting the governor to declare an emergency because we’re using our own money,” Benson said, adding the town is putting together a financial tally for the governor’s office.
Gas and other utility lines are located under Lake Front Drive, officials have said, and the loss of the road would mean that homeowners would not be able to access their residences and emergency vehicles would not be able to get there either.
The town undertook measures in late December to slow the erosion along the road and, with the assistance of the National Park Service, at the Lake View parking lot. The work at the parking lot already has washed away twice, Benson said.
“It’s a virtual cliff off that parking lot,” he said.
Initially, the town council meeting was to open bids for three “hot spots” for erosion, Benson said, adding the work was an estimated $300,000 for each place but didn’t include the east end of Lake Front Drive or Lake View parking lot, both of which will cost substantially more than that.
The town council already approved spending upwards of $360,000 for erosion work in late December.
The bond issue, Benson said, would allow the town to leverage matching funds for grants from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers or other agencies for long-term solutions while also providing the funds for immediate erosion mitigation.
Still, Benson said it could take 60 to 90 days to get the funds, time the town may not have.
“We’ll either try to get some advanced to us to spend or see if we can move forward with our promissory note, but we’re trying to move forward,” he said.
While the portion of Lake Front Drive where Nancy Schwab lives remains open, she isn’t sure how long that will last. The once wide swath of beach and dune between the lake and the road is now gone.
“We have lost 50 feet, probably, since January. It’s awful and it’s getting closer to the road,” she said of encroaching Lake Michigan. “If they close the road, we won’t be able to get to our house.”
There’s no shelf ice to protect the beach from the waves, she said, adding she knows the lake has its low and high cycles but when she and her family bought their house many years ago, the thought that the lake could threaten the road in front of their home “was a non-issue.”
She is concerned the road could give way under a car, or the utility lines under the road could be breached.
“It’s maddening, it’s heartbreaking and it’s frightening,” she said.
Other lakefront communities in Porter County and the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk within the national park have seen a growing amount of erosion-related damage from high lake levels and violent storms.
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