Public interest vs. private homes on Lake Michigan shoreline

Good morning, Chicago.

Steve Coombs’ lakefront home used to quake when waves crashed along Ogden Dunes’ receding shoreline.

“At one point, my wife said, ‘Should we just move out? Should we just go to a hotel?’ I mean, it’s very unnerving,” he recalled.

But fleeing the “biggest asset that we own” wasn’t an option for Coombs, who said he enjoyed 60 yards of sand between his home and the lake when he bought it a decade ago.

“There are some people who say, ‘Well, you folks built houses where they shouldn’t have been built,’ but that’s not the case,” Coombs said. “Years ago, there was all kinds of shoreline and sand here. In Ogden Dunes, we have houses over 100 years old.”

Today, an international port impedes sand flow to Ogden Dunes’ shore. That, combined with recent near-record high water levels, intense storms and dwindling ice coverage, has caused severe erosion.

Without stretches of sand to separate their homes from the lake, residents in the Indiana town of 1,200 are seeking to build revetments, or stone retaining walls that break the waves. However, environmentalists oppose these structures, citing the long-term consequences they will have on Lake Michigan’s shoreline.

It’s a battle that involves multiple projects, state and federal officials, a national park, and the expanded application of a legal principle rooted in 16th-century British common law.

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