Lutheran Camp Association --
Camp Arcadia
Beach Erosion Website
Committee Members:
Welcome to the Beach Erosion Committee Website
We are eager to share information about the LCA's effort to protect the shoreline around Camp Arcadia. As always, we appreciate your interest and comments.
Recent Changes to this Beach Erosion Committee Site:
Update April 1, 2008
The LCA membership passed the beach motion giving the LCA Board of Directors permission to proceed with the beach project. We are moving ahead.
As we’ve said in the past regarding this project, it is heartwarming how many RKD friends have come forward to assist on this project. They have helped on contract issues, dealing with the Army Corps of Engineers, and interacting with local, state, and federal government. Even with the weather working against us this winter, with their help we have made good progress.
Although this has been an unusually cold and snowy winter, we’ve been moving ahead. The major activities this year have included:
· Completing the contract with our Project Engineer
· Working with the Army Corps of Engineers to nourish camp’s beach with sand dredged from the Arcadia channel.
· Continuing the shoreline survey by Ledy & Assoc.
As always, please know that as we move forward we are committed to a system that works for all parties including our neighbors to the north and south. Our primary goal continues to be to protect the camp’s buildings, and maintain and hopefully restore camp’s beach.
Our timeline shown below continues as before.
· Engage Project Engineer
· Nourish our shoreline with dredged sand as available
· Design the system with input from our neighbors
· Complete the permit process
· Fundraising for the system
· Implement the system
At the LCA Annual Meeting the LCA membership passed the
beach motion giving the LCA Board of Directors permission to proceed with
the beach project.
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We are pursuing the underwater stabilizer system. We are working with two developers – Dick Holmberg and a company called TenCate (www.geotube.com). We hope to receive proposals from both companies.
We are pursuing the underwater stabilizer systems because it is less harmful than above water systems and will have the greatest positive impact to the Camp’s beaches. Also, it should be noted that by nourishing the system we will be adding sand, not taking sand from the system. With an underwater stabilizer system that is appropriately distanced from the shoreline cottagers and nourished, the new system will be better than Camp’s current system.
The Beach Committee advised the LCA Board to proceed with this approach because of our recent interactions with Dr. David Barnes (Western Michigan professor that performed a study of underwater stabilizer systems on Lake Michigan) and Dave Schultz (an engineer who has worked with installing underwater stabilizer systems). We visited an underwater stabilizer site south of Muskegon and discussed Dr. Barnes’ revised study and how an underwater stabilizer might work best at our site.
Through our discussions with them we came to understand that at low and moderate lake levels underwater stabilizers do very well maintaining a beach and have a neutral or positive effect on downdrift neighbors. This was a conclusion of the Barnes study.
But we also learned that they do not hold sand at dangerously high lake levels. This was also observed in the Barnes’ study. When they empty of sand at high water it is at this point that they can have a negative effect on downdrift neighbors. Therefore, in order to mitigate negative effects for downdrift neighbors an underwater stabilizer system should be reduced in size and moved as far away from our downdrift neighbors (the shoreline cottages) as possible and nourished with sand.
Please know that as we move forward we are committed to designing, permitting and implementing a system that works for all parties involved. We have and will continue to collaborate with the Arcadia Cottage Colony Association’s shoreline representatives and the township of Arcadia as we look to address the following issues:
1)
Reducing the size of the system.
2) Moving
the system away from the shoreline cottages.
3)
Nourishing the system.
A brief timeline of the next steps include:
1) Receive proposals
2) Proposal
evaluation with input from our neighbors
3) Begin
the permit process
4) Approval
of permit
5)
Fundraise for system
6)
Implementation of system