Coastal Resilience Resources

Framing the Coastal Resilience Message 

Developing Scenario-Based Plans 

Engaging the Community Through Charrettes 

Integrating Resilience Plans and Implementation Efforts

Learning from Community Engagement Case Studies  

September 21, 2023

November 14, 2023

December 9, 2023

January 18, 2024

February 20, 2024

Great Lakes Water Levels – Dr. Andrew Gronewold, P.E., University of Michigan

Nearshore Sediment Transport - Dr. Ethan Theuerkauf, Michigan State University

Short and Long Term Erosion - Dr. Guy Meadows, Michigan Technological University

      Compendium Sections:

I. The Coastal Conundrum

II. Giving the Shoreline Space

III. A Natural Border

IV. Getting it Done

Framing the problem, framing the solution, and how to use the compendium.

Why giving space supports coastal resilience, data, tools, why this isn't already done, and examples.

Why natural borders support coastal resilience and zoning approaches.

Community engagement approaches, resources, planning's role, and where we go from here.

A.    Framing the Problem

Just about everyone loves a shoreline. Walking the beach, listening to the surf, wading and splashing—people are so strongly attracted to the water’s edge that we can’t stay away and can’t get enough.

We, as communities, have placed every kind of development as close to it as we can get: commercial downtowns to take advantage of tourism and recreation; industrial facilities to use its transportation and energy resources; and most of all, residential development to just experience it. Nearly every lake, river, and coast in Michigan, including our 3288 miles of majestic Great Lakes freshwater shoreline, finds itself lined with buildings and the infrastructure to support them.

One way to name the problem is to call it “flooding and erosion”

But every reward comes with risk. Water is dynamic, both its movement and in its inherent chemical nature. Plenty of disaster lies at the intersection of water and development: rot, corrosion, erosion, instability. Achieving both closeness and safety has always been a conundrum. 

Flooding happens when the  surface of the waterbody expands into an area where development exists. It’s useful to remember that the development is a critical part of the definition: where the surface expands but doesn’t adversely affect a human investment, it’s just called a natural hydrologic process. The Great Lakes water levels rise and fall of their own accord, with a span of variation that is increasing as climate change progresses. These changes, and the science behind them,  are described in detail in Chapter 2 and 3 of MCMP’s Resilient Coastal Communities Planning Guide. In times of low levels, there is a tempting mirage of opportunity to extend our own habitat out to meet it, only to be met with the lake’s punctual return and reclamation. This is unpredictable only on a short timeframe. When we expand our time horizon to consider all we know about the lakes, we can see that this is a mistake we need not keep repeating. 

Erosion refers to the force of the water wearing away the surface of the earth. This wearing away destabilizes any structure that the earth was supporting, and eventually the force of the water washes that away too. Unlike flooding, we call erosion by the same name regardless of whether the process affects our development, but we generally only address it when that’s the case. “Managing” erosion often starts by trying to manage the water’s action, since that is the driving force. 

But our efforts to get closer to the water’s edge are not just subject to erosion—they can also create and facilitate it. When we remove coastal plants that are blocking our view of the water or forming obstacles to reaching it, we also remove allies that hold the ground in place with their roots and absorb the kinetic energy of the water. A shoreline is not a static line on a map; it is a complex ecosystem that developed its own checks and balances long before humans arrived on the scene. Here, too, we may be suffering from a bit of myopia by focusing so intently on ourselves. When we expand our considerations to include the coastal habitat more generally, we can see opportunities to  align ourselves with existing processes.   

• MCMP Building Coastal Resilience Video series (box)

Another way to name the problem is to call it “existing development”

For at least the whole history of the United States, communities large and small have valiantly built their way out of this conundrum. We’ve prioritized proximity to water, willing to trade uncertainty and perpetual investment to preserve and enjoy our access to it. Levees, seawalls, dams, breakwaters, jetties, groins, riprap, sandbags—we accept that all of  this “armoring”  just comes with the territory. 

It’s taken some time to see just how expensive it all is. There’s the cost of installation, which can be eye-popping all by itself. Eventually, the cost of maintenance emerges as the cumulative effort needed to supply an opposing force that can keep pace with tireless and capricious hydrodynamics adds up. Then there is the inevitable cost of the failures and losses, because we certainly don’t win all the battles we pick with nature. More recently, a new cost is coming into focus: the system-wide harms and casualties of these battles. Seawalls distribute the water’s force onto neighboring properties. Groins disrupt regenerative sand transport. Water quality suffers without protective wetlands. Ever-longer stretches of coastline are taken out of the public trust. The evidence suggests that our tradeoff needs rebalancing. 

Rather than being perpetually at arms with our state’s most awesome natural feature, it is time to consider an approach that carefully considers and deeply respects the reality of how that feature behaves. Prioritizing safety and health—of both the human-made development and the aquatic system—means some measure of deprioritizing our proximity to the water’s edge. 

The concept of a tradeoff is key to any change in approach. All existing development that is at risk of flooding and erosion represents an investment, and each type of development has its own delicate, intricate challenges when considering how best to protect it. There is the sheer number of residences, each in its own unique circumstance. There is the public economic impact of commercial development and infrastructure. And there are the environmental and pollution concerns with industrial development. In all of these instances, both change and the status quo pose possible perils. 

Leading this shift rests at the feet of local decision-makers

Taking a general approach of moving development away from the water’s edge is difficult for practical reasons, and it’s also difficult to want to do: that shoreline is magnetic and alluring, and the status quo is almost always the easiest path. After all, in many cases the buildings are already there. And where they are proposed, the economic potential seems much more immediate and concrete than the risk. 

For the most part, because land use decisions are made at the local level in Michigan, this responsibility is in the hands of the more than 300 individual local units of government that line the Great Lakes coast. It’s a hard ask for 300 separate entities to manage a single feature harmoniously. 

B.    Framing the Solution. 

The way to support both water quality and resilience to hazards is to give the lakes what they need: space to move, and a natural shoreline. Planning and zoning are two powerful tools that can do that. 

Space to move

This Compendium describes the regulatory approaches that can move and keep private development investments out of the range of harm from the Great Lakes’ natural processes. We discuss how the districts, setbacks, and development standards that apply to all development can be supported by data and planning to navigate the balance between permitting wise use of the shoreline and falling prey to the temptation to get too close to the water. Approaches to public investments use the same data and planning processes to support tools like ownership, easements, and projects. We also consider the unique role of land division.

Naturalized shoreline

As the long-term difficulty posed by armored shoreline becomes clearer, we need to understand what should be done instead. The natural conditions that arise where the water meets the land answer that question. This section of the Compendium discusses how to prescribe those conditions through the zoning and development tools, and how to support and recreate them through policy, ownership, and projects. This approach is already mandated at the state level in specific and defined areas, and we discuss how local actions can support and emulate them.