Dock projects planned for Manitou islands

May 5—LELAND — Manitou Island Transit Company is gearing up for another season of plying the Manitou Passage.

But if the ferry operator wants to bring campers or day-trippers to North Manitou Island, the National Park Services must install a temporary dock.

Ferry captain and company co-owner Jimmy Munoz doesn't think highly of NPS plans to extend one off the end of an existing dock that's nearly surrounded by sand.

"They will be providing a dock, but they will not be providing access, and there's a big difference," he said.

While Munoz said the dock would be even more exposed to Lake Michigan's waves, making it impossible to use in harsher weather, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore's superintendent said there will still be access to the island.

The park will tap up to $1 million in emergency funding, and the state Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy recently issued a permit. With a contractor on board as well, the dock should be in place by mid-May.

Tucker acknowledged the existing dock, with its T shape, allows boaters to dock in a wider range of conditions. But sand filled in much of that dock space, making the temporary installation necessary prior to a more permanent fix coming soon.

"So really it's a choice for visitors and folks accessing the island based on conditions, which happens with Lake Michigan," he said. "The choice is to extend out to deeper water with the resources and funding we have, or no access at all."

Manitou Island Transit and the NPS have disagreed over the 1992-built dock for years, largely because the current design and location is prone to stopping drifting sand.

That is made worse by 10 years of little to no ice on Lake Michigan, Tucker said — the winter previous marked the smallest ice coverage on record across the Great Lakes, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Dock doubts

All that sand buildup has left about 3 feet of water at the end of the current dock, Munoz said. The ferry operator's boat, the Mishe-Mokwa, has a 6-foot draft.

Add in the boat's length — 65 feet — as another factor behind Munoz's doubts that the temporary dock will prove a workable solution.

"So do I see us using it? Not really," he said. "I mean, I hope so. That's been our only ask: Give us access to the island."

The ferry captain doesn't accept that the dock design is to blame, instead pointing to the NPS for not maintaining it more regularly.

Island woes

But that's not a simple or inexpensive fix either, Tucker said.

While the NPS was able to dredge by the dock as recently as August 2023, scheduling conflicts scuttled a previous attempt in 2020 when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers was pulled away for other projects.

Then there's the wildlife. Piping plovers like to hang out by the shoreline near North Manitou Island's current dock, Tucker said. They start arriving as soon as April 1, and the instant this critically endangered species should nest there, work nearby must stop until late July — by law.

Throw in a spawning closure for whitefish from May 15 through July 15 that stops dredging work, and add the lake's wildly variable weather, and it makes for a challenging puzzle to line up any dock work on the island.

"So there's no simple answer for how to dredge or how to move sand around a dock in the middle of Lake Michigan in the springtime," he said.

Lawsuit

The same ask prompted the company to sue in 2021, a year after Manitou Island Transit canceled in light of poor access to North Manitou, and a destroyed dock on South Manitou.

Both company and U.S. government settled in April, with the park service to pay $364,480.78, according to attorney Doug Fierberg, Manitou Island Transit's attorney. The judge approved it about six months after agreeing the NPS had a contractual duty to the company to keep access to both islands open, one it breached in 2020.

While NPS bought supplies to raise South Manitou Island's dock in 2019 in response to surging lake levels, those plans were shelved in 2020 after the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

But U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Thompson M. Dietz didn't buy the government's argument that high water levels in 2020 amounted to an "act of God" that kept it from raising the dock, noting the park service's own plans suggested otherwise.

Fierberg said the court also resolved the question of whether the government has an obligation through the life of its contract with Manitou Island Transit to reasonably maintain access.

Tucker, in a written statement, said he and park administrators are looking forward to working with the ferry company to provide the service for Sleeping Bear Dunes visitors in 2024.

Long-term fix

Meanwhile, the National Park Service is looking for input through May 18 on the environmental impacts for a proposed permanent solution: rebuilding the docks on both north and south islands.

Anthony Paladino, SBDNL's environmental protection specialist, said plans are to build a 480-foot-long, T-shaped dock on North Manitou Island, this one where an old dock was located before — aerial photos show the pilings. It would align with an old road on the island that runs east-west by the visitor contact station.

For South Manitou Island, plans are to remove the dock from its current spot near Sandy Point and the village around a former U.S. Lifesaving Service station, then build a new one north near Chicago Road, Paladino said. It would extend 320 feet into a natural deepwater bay and also be T-shaped. From there, island-goers would have about a 15-minute wagon ride to the village.

Both docks, set to be built in 2025-26, would be designed to let longshore drift flow right through. That, in theory, should eliminate the dredging problems created by the existing docks, especially for North Manitou.

"The amount of dredging we can do there is never going to be enough to maintain access," he said.

Budget drain

Consider the national lakeshore's $5 million-per-year park budget for a park with 1.3 million visitors annually — and a $70 million deferred maintenance backlog, Tucker said. About 5,000 visit North Manitou Island each year.

"Our goal is to provide access that is reasonable — within our fiscal responsibility of tax money and safety of boating on Lake Michigan," he said. "But it comes down to money and access, and the federal money to provide that access, but we are dependent on what dollars are obligated to the park service for that."

Enter $32 million through the Great American Outdoors Act Legacy Restoration Fund to build both docks and the on-shore infrastructure. Paladino said that'll include trail work on North Manitou Island along the existing road grade.

Chicago Road on South Manitou Island would also be improved, with contractors to build amenities near the dock, plans show. These include bathrooms, a pavilion, water fountains and a well inside a well house.

Both existing docks also would be demolished, Paladino said.

That demolition work is sure to soak up a considerable amount of the $32 million, Munoz said. He believed the existing dock could have been maintained better, and at a better value to the taxpayer — had the NPS gotten to it.

"What they already have, they have the flow-through, they have a big concrete T on the end," he said. "It's bulletproof and you can go there in anything as long as the waves aren't crashing over the dock."

But the NPS doesn't have the funds to battle Lake Michigan on a constant basis, Tucker said.

Maintaining those docks over the last 15 to 20 years cost about $500,000 per year on average. It's why SBDNL asked for the $32 million to end that "losing battle."

Sailing ahead

Ultimately, all Munoz wants is two usable docks so Manitou Island Transit can keep taking people to both islands, he said.

It's baffling to Fierberg why the significance to the region of visiting these islands seems lost on the NPS, he said. It took a court action to convince the park service that it has an obligation to maintain access for a contractor paying a concession fee to boat people to them. And failing to meet that obligation pushed the ferry company to the brink of bankruptcy.

Paladino, for his part, said he's excited about the permanent dock replacements as someone who grew up in Michigan coming to the national lakeshore for most of his life. Not only should it fix a natural process causing problems, but it'll restore both docks to their historic locations.

"So that's where the historic aspect of visiting these islands is going to intersect with the natural in a cool way," he said. "You're going to be docking in locations that people have been accessing the islands from for 100 years — and that's exciting to me as well."