Fix Damn EGLE

Permits

Permits division A Team!!

EGLE permit policy and contractor common knowledge you may not know;

1. EGLE offers a contractor selection page, most of the contractors are pulled from a list of licensed residential builders and know nothing about marine construction although many of them have entered the market at some level due to the high volume of calls from desperate Lake Michigan property owners unfamiliar with any type of construction.
2. EGLE does not require marine contractors doing any EGLE permitted work to in any way be licensed and there are no requirements for liability or workmens compensation insurance, bonding, or proof of financial stability. If a tree gets knocked into a neighbor’s house or an employee of the contractor is injured or killed on the job and as a property owner you didn’t specifically request such documentation, you are personally liable.
3. After submitting a very detailed permit application (JPA) on EGLE’s my miwaters database (https://www.michigan.gov/egle/0,9429,7-135-3313_72753—,00.html) drawn exactly as required (https://www.michigan.gov/documents/egle/wrd-wlsu-jpa-sample- drawings_703995_7.pdfon) it takes a minimum of 30 days for EGLE staff to even look at it and if it’s not perfect, request more information putting it off even further.
4. Construction permits in critical dunes require approval and a stamp by a professional engineer, the only way an engineer will stamp such a drawing due to insurance requirements is with a disclaimer relieving the engineer of all responsibility, a support the engineers plan?
5. A EGLE permit is called a Joint Permit Application (JPA) as it automatically includes the required United States Army Core of Engineers submittal and permit.
6. Another 60 days has elapsed, where is your permit? EGLE has set a goal to have someone spend an hour? to review your application for a second time within the next 60 days and issue a permit. Although if they really too busy and not prodded the permit may not be reviewed for several months! (see Lammert on problem tab on this web site) EGLE staff is very sensitive to any questions regarding performance which does not appear to be monitored in any form.
7. No one in EGLE management was competent enough to figure out the rising water levels might raise the number of permit applications and hire additional staff. This also contributed to considerable permit delays for any inland marine projects.
8. So you have waited 90 plus days for a permit to install erosion control while your very valuable Lake Michigan property is disappearing by tens of feet and contributing to the very important natural littoral drift (https://sandshed.org/sandshed-science/what-is-littoral-drift/), which is effectively stopped getting fed by most forms of erosion control. And the millions of tons of lost property according to EGLE is a natural process and good for the ecosystems. In the Netherlands the eroded sand is dredged back on the beach and the dunes maintained (ihttps://www.climatechangepost.com/netherlands/coastal-erosion/n) in Michigan they own your washed away lakefront property and you are not allowed to recover it.
9. In a meeting with hundreds of very upset property owners losing millions of dollar’s worth of property while waiting for EGLE permits at Holland city hall they advised property owners that property losses suffered waiting for permits was definitely not EGLE’s responsibility. In an effort to gain some political cover they came up with a 2 day and after the fact permit options, the only problem being they didn’t have staff to process even standard permits. If your house falls in the lake EGLE’s policy is to declare it “obsolete” and ticket the property owner to enforce a very expensive demolition clean up. The after the fact permit was for erosion control measures installed without EGLE permits that they would review after the fact, if it didn’t meet the unprovided criteria the property owner would be ticketed and required to remove them, that risk was unacceptable to most property owners. The 2 day option did save a couple of houses.
10. Your issued permit includes very detailed drawings although EGLE requires no materiel specifications, no common industry requirements for sheet piling thickness, sheet length in ground, tons of rock per foot or rock curing as required for any construction USAC contracts.
11. An EGLE permit is commonly considered by most permit agents and contractors to be the maximum of what may be installed at the permitted location and as long as the maximum is not exceeded you are within the permit terms. So one truckload of rocks is a perfectly legal permitted revetment, an EGLE permit does not request or require any type of materials certification or installation monitoring/inspections by contractors or third parties. No progress pictures required, no weigh slips for the amount of rock installed, no idea by the homeowner if a scour curtain was properly installed leading to rapid failure, worst case, the homeowners pay again for more rock to be installed as is very common. A comparable situation would be a municipality issuing building permits for a building based on his recommended drawings while not requiring any materiel standards or specifications and allowing the house to be built without foundations on the ground as long as it’s not bigger then the permit drawings entirely at the homeowners risk while blindly trusting his contractor. Nothing is guaranteed in erosion control, this is a perfect recipe for large scale fraud perpetuated against unsuspecting property owners with limited construction knowledge facilitated by EGLE.
12. Is anyone responsible for the current desecration of Michigan’s beautiful shore line and the massive fraud exceeding billions of dollars committed against Lakeshore property owners? It would have been very inexpensive for EGLE to require contractors to meet some insurance standards as a permit condition, minimum standard for materials to meet and/or request any form of construction monitoring even if timed stamped contractor’s pictures.
13. Most importantly provide some comprehensive education in the form of a brochure or easily comprehended website providing information such as the above to allow property owners to make informed decisions and take measure to protect themselves.

Is whomever actually responsible for EGLE day to day operations even aware of any of these issues or is it just beyond their capacity to manage so it’s not managed? After operational and environmental failures like the Flint water crisis, the Great Lakes permit fiasco, and the Edenville dam failure costing Michigan tax payers billions of dollars it appears obvious that some serious reform and accountability measures are called for, whose responsibility is that??