12/03/2006

Editorial

Grooming violations demand enforcement

Beach-grooming. Manicuring the beach.

Such polite, genteel phrases.

But they're utterly false descriptions for what went on last weekend in a wetlands-bottomlands-beach area of East Grand Traverse Bay.

Heavy machinery scoured a chunk of East Grand Traverse Bay shoreline and bottomland Nov. 25-26, courtesy of an Ohio-based excavation crew and the new owners of the Cherry Tree Inn, a resort hotel on U.S. 31 just north of Traverse City.

It doesn't take a cynic to surmise that the holiday weekend bay blitz was designed to avoid the prying eyes and potential cease work orders of government regulators.

And it's just as easy to see through the Cherry Tree Inn owners' "Sorry, we didn't know the rules” excuse as a common tactic among those of the do-it-first, get-permission-later ilk.

This was yet another assault on natural resources owned by all state taxpayers — not just waterfront resorts — and was eerily reminiscent of a dozer-in-the-bay stunt perpetrated in summer 2005 by operators of neighboring North Shore Inn Condominiums.

In both cases, the resort owners went beyond the scope of permits that allow nominal and non-destructive beach tidying.

In effect, both ignored the rules and sent machinery into the bay to do as they pleased.

It's time state and federal regulators cracked down on environmental scofflaws, and the Cherry Tree Inn seems an appropriate place to start.

The inn's former owner for years blustered against wetlands and bottomlands protections and lobbied state and federal officials, memorably U.S. Rep. Dave Camp, to allow him to carve a sugar-sand beach out of a bay nook more traditionally associated with wetlands, marsh grasses and aquatic plants.

From the start, it was a poor location for a resort, but in too-typical fashion, the Cherry Tree Inn's investors built their project, then brayed for shoreline changes when their guests balked at the natural, but less-than-idyllic setting.

Waterfront real estate interests found willing accomplices in the state Legislature, politicians who hurriedly pushed through "beach-grooming” allowances for property owners on Grand Traverse and Saginaw bays who complained of rampant weed growth in once-submerged areas exposed by low Great Lakes water levels.

The new rules let waterfront property owners rake and groom shoreline — above the waterline — and allowed some weed removal. But the law never gave property owners the right to steer heavy equipment into lakes or bays.

And that's exactly what happened behind North Shore Inn and Cherry Tree Inn.

Joe Moffa, president of Ohio-based Omni Hospitality, the new owners of the Cherry Tree, said he had all the permits he needed to manicure the beach behind his business.

He also said heavy equipment never reached the bay.

Regulators and witnesses said Moffa is wrong on both counts.

Witnesses said they saw machinery in the bay, and state and federal authorities said the Cherry Tree Inn either didn't have permits or operated under expired permits.

John Nelson, bay keeper for the Watershed Center Grand Traverse Bay, called the dredging and scraping behind the Cherry Tree Inn a tragedy that went far beyond beach-grooming.

"We've now allowed a Great Lakes coastal wetland to be destroyed piece-by-piece,” Nelson said.

Michigan Department of Environmental Quality and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers officials were to investigate the work last week, and it's up to them to enforce the rules, not to bend them to accommodate scofflaws.

They need to draw a line in the sand, as it were, and levy an appropriate punishment for those who ignore the rules and defile precious natural resources.