No Transparent or Accountable Review
Our communications below have been sent to appropriate representatives to express our frustration with EGLE in attempt to find a solution.
Check out the audio clip below of their voicemail box which has been full for quite some time now…
Dear Honorable Michigan Senator,
When Lake Michigan’s water rose we devoted our resources to developing what we believed was a better progressive environmentally compatible erosion control solution that can be seen at www.shoresavers.com https://shoresavers.com. We spend a year trying to get in contact with EGLE to preapprove the concept without success and were familiar with several, what we considered, very substandard environmentally detrimental permitted erosion control systems and did not envision permitting being a problem. After our agent submitted applications and waiting 7 months without action we decided to contact EGLE management to see what the hold up was or just normal procedure. We did have an option for federal installation permits which EGLE quickly moved to block when we mentioned it. It required extortion just to have anyone in EGLE management call back when we quickly determined why we thought the permit applications were held up and realized that the permits were only going to get further delayed and never issued. This e mail and attachments are the end results of over a month of communication with a great guy, Jerrod Sanders, trying to defend the undependable until we received the expected denial letter confirming our perceptions. This is not a call to arms, just a very entertaining mini saga that I believe reflects the current state of EGLE management and the death of a small company. I believe my comments regarding EGLE’s budget are accurate and we will be posting further content on www.fixdammegle.com as time allows in the hope that exposing EGLE’s across the board management failures will drive change towards what the citizens of the Great State of Michigan are paying for and deserve. I believe a for profit hybrid would instantly improve expense, service, and accountability although prying out the unproductive drastically over paid lifers is probably politically impossible and will never happen.
I contacted the office of the attorneys general over a year ago and received no response regarding the extensive fraud being perpetuated upon lakeshore property owners with EGLE’s complicity, many of who are single asset retiree’s with no construction knowledge. EGLE is doing virtually no enforcement, their permits include no materiel specifications or installation monitoring requirements, hundreds of erosion control attempts are being done without permits including thousands of tons of concrete demolition waste with rerod dumped over the bluff. Jerrod Sanders advised me as soon as water levels receded a multi decade cleanup effort will start with EGLE going back to property owners that had no other options to protect their property ticketed and required to spend more then the installation cost again for removal or request state funding. Obviously I not a politician and none of this is or will become my issue, it is tragic that the State of Michigan had no agency with competent management with the ability to protect the interest of lakefront property owners and the shoreline environment of one of Michigan’s greatest assets.
Dave
——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: Erosion control/www,shoresavers.com permit applications
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 2021 13:58:33 -0500
From: mail@contractorsmarine.com
To: Sanders, Jerrod (EGLE) <SANDERSJ3@michigan.gov>, The Office of Senator Victory <SenRVictory@senate.michigan.gov>, MaryWhiteford@house.mi.gov, Kokema Law PLC <kolkemaj@gmail.com>
Hi Jerrod,
Usually you promptly acknowledge receipt of my e mails, is it safe to say we are now entering the sweep it under the rug phase of legal fee’s, unanswered foi’s, adjusted paperwork, and your home court advantage of free legal representation? Thus far I have not received any transparency as requested numerous times on why our applications have not been reviewed in a timely manner, what review criteria is actually being used, who is doing the reviewing, and their qualifications, is that perceived as an unreasonable request?
As we previously agreed communication is very important, I assume in the spirit of EGLE’s goals as you publicly stated of “not being a roadblock” you would be open to a electronic meeting with our political representatives to help us understand why EGLE is unable to provide any transparency as repeatedly requested related to the processing of these applications including application review comparisons for a “Trap Bag” product ( https://youtu.be/AZqUAl9Rcbk ) permitted to be installed at numerous locations along the lakeshore?
I realize you may not appreciate my observations, descriptions of, or perceptions of EGLE’s management capacities and style. I believe I have heard it expressed that EGLE is not getting the necessary funding to fully complete its responsibilities. I fully understand any politicians reluctance to believe that more funding is a solution, if $500M can’t even get the answering machine cleared that’s been full of messages for months at your Grand Rapids district office, the issue may not be financial. Although an associate just expressed the thought that may well be the actual valid reason, the less calls taken the less work staff has to do
Thank you for you continued assistance!
Dave
——– Forwarded Message ——–
Subject: Re: Permit applications
Date: Thu, 21 Jan 2021 19:02:33 -0500
From: mail@contractorsmarine.com
To: Sanders, Jerrod (EGLE) <SANDERSJ3@michigan.gov>
Hi Jerrod,
Thank you for your reply, obviously if I thought my questions were answered or I would not have ask them, I have edited the attached questions list for your comfort, can you answer my questions without a bunch of weasel speak or just say I refuse or decline to answer the questions attached? I am starting to feel like a broken record, how is anyone supposed to know the criteria if EGLE never answers any valid questions especially about reviewers qualifications?
For some thus far asked and unexplained reasons the Kazoo office slow walked my applications until I finally put up a website to reach anyone in management and you called me. I knew my chances for a permit were pretty much zero after Luis called and pretended he didn’t know I was associated with Shores Savers. My only chances were hoping you had enough personal integrity to arrange for a fair review based on the product and environmental benefits, especially compared to something like trap bags, and possibly be embarrassed enough about EGLE’s obvious across the board `failures to not want them on the news. I realize your team all needs to work together to cover each other and protect each others jobs, I assume most of EGLE’s staff are lifers and have no perceptions of or reason to offer customer service and are only held accountable to their immediate boss without, I assume, no meaningful productivity measure which is also why no service like survey monkey is used. Luis not answering e mails as promised appears to be standard procedure and I understand how asking a tv station try to get him to ask him to do his job would have him looking for payback and you have to back him up. Where else is he going to find a job and take weeks to answer e mails at that level of compensation without getting the boot? I know everyone in EGLE is probably patting themselves on the back for doing such an fantastic job under such horrible conditions, lol. I may have figured it out! Its actually the reverse of top down management and probably started by clients trying to get permits, the suck up theory of management! As you may have noticed I went to a different school. Don’t take my word for it, I dare you to get a professional opinion on EGLE bloated team and accountability practices. Although don’t you dare rock the boat!
It has been a revelation to some extent to realize that EGLE will never have the management to fully execute its many responsibility’s or mandate’s for various reasons and it appears my expecting that is unrealistic, they just lurch from failure to failure although I will give them credit for issuing lots of permits at the expense of most other functions. That had to hurt the budget, you would think someone would have anticipated and planned? You appear to work hard and if the others are at least calling in its probably being managed as good as its ever going to get. After the obvious expense and effort I devoted to developing a propitiatory product that I felt comfortable ethically representing for erosion control and forgoing all the obvious opportunities for fraud that others quickly exploited I never expected permitting to be a problem. Leaving many messages over the last several months and never receiving a reply and having to create a website just to get establish communications with management above the district office level to inquire why our permits aren’t being processed is totally insane!! . Although one positive result appears to be a actual working number posted next to the directors information with a pleasant attendant that was able to forward messages, a major advancement! But the mailbox is still full at the Grand Rapids office, lol, I know how difficult these things can be!
Our permit agent, Zach, has not advised us of any further request for information on either permit application in the past and It appears the applications were ignored for several months prior to your involvement without explanation thus far. I don’t believe our emphasis on urgency or requesting clarification are misplaced at this time. It appears your permit agent advised us that a future permit for Algers could take several months in an effort to get us to modify the Shore Savers applications as to avoid providing a valid reason of what EGLE criteria they did not meet. John Baya advised me last week he had already completed a denial letter and what it said, did something change?
The only option offered us by your permit agent for a installation of this product was a full layer of rock covering Shore Savers similar to a typical revetment construction as Shore Savers was designed to replace, obviously following instructions and giving you some tremendous “we are all about cooperation cover”. Obviously this option would drastically increase cost, negate any valid testing data of Shore Savers in a high energy discharge environment Lake Michigan is, as well as bringing along the negatives of rock revetments such as lack of beach access, beach habitat and bluff degradation while eliminating any future effective removal/cleanup options should the client choose to do so. I believe the goal of all parties should be protecting lakefront properties from coastal erosion with the least possible current and future environmental impact or degradation of the beach and bluff as Shore Savers is designed to do. I am unsure as to what valid reason would EGLE possibly have in denying a permit for a solution so closely aligned with what I perceive to be these common public goals and unable to understand the logic of an entity whose primary function is to represent and protect Michigan’s natural resources to not even consider allowing the installation or testing of any type of progressive technology offering a plethora of obvious environmental benefits without any cost, potential risk or liability to EGLE or the state? If the primary concern is system failure and continuing erosion I am quite comfortable with a permit condition allowing the addition of rocks in the future if erosion continues with Shore Savers installed as is commonly needed with rock revetments, many installed during the current high water period are already requiring such maintenance.
But its not really about Shore Savers is it? I know you and Luis sat in on a Shore Savers review and probably helped plan to make sure we couldn’t get a federal permit and now the denial letter is being edited to add other items from the obvious water quality standard gambit. I was hoping you would base a decision on the merit of the project and maybe have some desire to protect EGLE’s reputation. I would rather go to work then expose a clown show, but lets get rolling, I have a lot of great recordings and e mails and found some awesome partners!
You may interpret this as disrespectful, I think its very disrespectful for EGLE to not have working phones, not empty voice mail, not reply to messages, not answer e mails, avoid a direct question and write weasel, takes months or years to process permits, not do enforcement, conspire on certain permits, tell a homeowner rich people shouldn’t live on the Lake Michigan, not require any construction verification’s, not have employee/public accountability measures, and piss away $500M of taxpayers hard earned money doing a for shit job. What’s to respect?
I do respect you for at least acknowledging receipt of messages and working late.
Thanks, Dave
Jerrod Sanders
Assistant Director
Water Resource Division
Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, & Energy
(269) 350-1801
Sandersj3@michigan.gov
Dear Mr. Sanders, 1-17-2021
On behalf of our clients we would like to confirm our understanding of where we currently are with the permit applications filed with EGLE’s Kalamazoo office regarding two Shore Savers applications, would you please review the items below and clarify any items you may feel are not correct? As you may be aware Peterson Environmental originally submitted the applications although were unable to answer many questions our clients are asking. We did submit several related questions to Field Operations Section Manager Mr. Saldivia some time ago without a response.
- Both of these permit applications fall into the major permit category requiring public notice, the Lammert application on M 63 near Benton Harbor submitted in early June of 2020 has not yet had a public notice or review and the Alger permit near South Haven submitted on Sept 3 2020 has had both a public notice and EGLE staff review.
- Our current verbal understanding from EGLE’s Kalamazoo office per an electronic meeting 1-15-2021 is that the permits will currently not be issued as submitted only due to EGLE is not willing to issue a federal 401 certification, per agent John Baya who indicated he composed the yet unviewed by us permit denial letter.
- The 401 certification is a federal water discharge quality control standard that is intended to solicit EGLE sign off on wastewater discharges which Shore Savers or other erosion controls system’s do not have. EGLE routinely provides this certification for all permitted erosion control structures, this certification issuance refusal effectively eliminates any EGLE or Federal permitted uses for Shore Savers in any capacity within the State of Michigan.
- The Kalamazoo office staff advised us in an electronic meeting 1-15-2021 that once they issued a denial letter for the Shore Savers applications any further permit applications for any erosion control systems filed on behalf of either of these properties owners would be considered a new application and at the start of a long line of overdue permit work which EGLE tries to process in 90 day although obviously permit applications often take much longer than that for both EGLE and the USAC federal approval.
- The Kalamazoo office staff advised us in an electronic meeting 1-15-2021 that they would consider approving the Shore Savers permits if the modules were covered over with over a thousand tons of rock which would eliminate the validity of any performance and monitoring data test of Shore Savers in a high energy discharge wave environment such as Lake Michigan where they are specifically designed to be installed while offering a much more environmental and habitat friendly alternative to traditional rock revetments.
- After many repeated request EGLE has yet to provide a list of which EGLE staff was involved in any permit review meetings for these applications, the reviewing staff’s expertise or qualifications in this field, provide any documentation as to the review criteria, advise if the criteria is an actual written rule or policy, or provide any notes or written consensus of how or why this decisions were made.
- Issuing permits for Shore Savers installations per the submitted applications represents no legal or other liability to EGLE beyond that of the permitting of any other erosion control structure while offering what many consider significant environmental and habitat benefits.
Please feel free to contact me via me cell phone should that be helpful to you in providing a more timely written response, 616-836-1911
Best Regards,
David Jonassen