On February 9, Michigan’s Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy denied a permit to build a marina along the Kalamazoo River near Lake Michigan in southwest Michigan. Days later, the Army Corps of Engineers denied a separate permit for the marina. These events mark an extraordinary victory for the diverse group of citizens who have fought to protect the Kalamazoo River mouth and the surrounding Saugatuck Dunes for decades.
This case stands as an example of how persistence and coalition-building can protect even privately owned sensitive natural areas. The state’s denial letter highlighted all the arguments activists had presented for opposing the development, including threats to recreation, fish and wildlife, aesthetics, Potawatomi tribal resources, and the public trust.
The Saugatuck Dunes are giant hills of fine quartz sand perched above the eastern shore of Lake Michigan, about 150 miles northeast of Chicago. They’re part of the largest freshwater coastal dune system in the world. More than two million people visit Michigan’s dunes each year. Visitors and locals alike swim, surf, hike, make art, and stargaze at Saugatuck’s lakefront, which has remained mostly natural and scenic despite over a century of threats. A high-rise hotel, a dune buggy park, a water-treatment plant, a golf course—and now, a marina—have all been proposed and blocked from overtaking the landscape.
This case stands as an example of how persistence and coalition-building can protect even privately owned sensitive natural areas.
Most of the thousands of acres are preserved for all to enjoy. From north to south along the coast are the Saugatuck Dunes State Park, the Saugatuck Harbor Natural area, Tallmadge Woods, Oval Beach, and Mount Baldhead Park.
But tucked between the state park and the natural area, on the north bank of the Kalamazoo River, are 300 privately owned acres whose use has been long-contested. The current landowner subdivided the parcel into lots, on some of which large homes were built. Near the lots, the landowner planned a marina for boats as long as 80 feet. This project would involve scooping out 6.5 acres—or about 250,000 tons of sand—from the dunes to create a lagoon nearly a third of a mile long off the Kalamazoo River. Michigan’s recent decision has undercut the plan.
Reasons to preserve the dunes go far beyond recreation and the economy. The area provides a unique habitat for threatened or endangered species, such as the prairie warbler, spotted turtle, and pitcher’s thistle. And, importantly, the Saugatuck Dunes and the Kalamazoo River mouth are the homeland of Michigan’s Potawatomi Indians.
Courtesy of Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance
The Saugatuck Dunes area in southwestern Michigan.
Saugatuck takes its name from Zagitêk, a Potawatomi word that means “place of the river outlet.” As Matthew Bussler, Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Pokagon Band of Potawatomi Indians explains, “This property has been utilized for so long for village sites and camping and for prayer and ceremony. It was utilized for intertribal group gatherings, . . . spiritual and mental health ceremonies, and things even as significant as burials.”
Potawatomi people still hold ceremonies in the area. They harvest wild rice in the fall. They manage a lake sturgeon rehabilitation program. Lake sturgeon, known as nmé in Potawatomi, used to thrive on the Kalamazoo River and were a sustaining food source for Potawatomi who remained in hiding while their relatives were forcibly removed from their land by European Americans after the Treaty of Chicago in 1833. “It’s hard to communicate to agencies how important the small negative effect on the sturgeon population or to this ecosystem has a bigger effect on the tribal community,” says Liz Binoniemi-Smith, Environmental Director for the Gun Lake Potawatomi, or Match-e-be-nash-she-wish band.
A diverse group of activists—including historians, scientists, birders, artists, clergy, sailors, and fishers—pursued multiple approaches over many years to stop the marina, in what amounts to a case study in cooperative stewardship. The Saugatuck Dunes Coastal Alliance (SDCA) was instrumental in organizing this effort. “I felt like our voices had finally been heard,” SDCA board chair Bobbie Gaunt says.
Gaunt attributes SDCA’s success to finding common interests among community members, but believes there is still work to be done. SDCA, for example, is also seeking grants to obtain stronger legal designations for the river mouth and to implement a stewardship management plan focused on eliminating invasive species and supporting species indigenous to the area. “We still have to ensure,” Gaunt says, “that the river mouth is protected in perpetuity.”
For more about this grassroots movement, listen to “Saving the Saugatuck Dunes,” a radio show produced by the author.