What Enforcement?
What Enforcement?
GLE permit related enforcement vehicles or staff in all our years of working in Michigan and don’t know anyone who has ever been ticketed.
Decks, stairs, parts of houses, and other erosion related floatable beach debris are not monitored or clean up enforced presenting significant floating navigational hazards to recreational boaters, was this even mentioned to property owners or boaters warned?
Obviously legal contractors want to protect their interest as well as their clients and get permits, observing the law is a competitive handicap.
Driving along the lakeshore there are often scores of miscellaneous contractor’s equipment parked including bulldozers, compact track loaders, hydraulic excavators, and multicable semi trucks with trailers loaded with materials without a required (no) permit placard displayed.
Contractors dumped thousands of tons of broken up concrete footings with embedded rerod and concrete slabs over the bank and got paid for it, clean up is the home owners problem.
Thousands of loads of tracked dump trucks were driven parallel to the beach through the fisheries in 3’ of water setting up waves that further eroded properties they passed.
Seawalls are often installed out in the water and backfilled, illegal per EGLE.
One contractor maintains rock cost $1,200 per running foot with him only getting $20K to $30K for installation, the rock price was his price, he was making $60K on the rock alone.
As there are no installation or materiel inspections required a drawing showing 8 tons per running foot looks close enough to property owners at 4 tons per foot and property owners have no way of measuring, rock cost $60 to $140 a ton delivered, 100’ lot, $100 rock, $40K profit and less installation time.
The after the fact permit option as EGLE created as political cover for their failure to anticipate permit demand is the perfect excuse for working without a permit and why get one after the fact? The liability or possible cleanup are the property owners responsibility.
One contractor gets a $30K to $60K down payment, buys a nice used piece of equipment, works for a day or two without any permits, and quits answering his phone. The equipment just sits there sometimes for years, one of his customers actually called 911 trying to get it off their property. The contractor has lots of nice equipment, no attachable assets, no debt, a good line of BS, and is quite proud of his achievement’s.
EGLE greatly facilitates fraud and their lack of competent management is responsible for hundreds of miles of habit destruction that will be visible for decades.