A Sand-Starved Shore

• In Event: Sedimentary Speculation: Valuing Dust, Mud, Sand, and Stone

Abstract

The movement of sand along coasts and lakeshores is frequently described as the “sand-sharing system” of natural coastal land-building processes. When the sand sharing is intentionally or inadvertently disrupted – often by the protection of adjacent property from erosion -- the downshore impacts can be catastrophic. This continual reorganization of shore land and landscape confounds typical notions of property and control that underpin many modern legal norms and environmental engineering practices. In 1950, the US Army Corps of Engineers initiated nearly three decades of construction and reinforcement of the mouth of the St. Joseph river, which flows into Lake Michigan at the small city of Benton Harbor --approximately 100 miles up the Michigan shore from Chicago. The most impactful of these improvements were the two large jetties that were reinforced and enlarged to maintain navigability of the river at its mouth. Just a few years later, in October of 1954, intensified erosion at the base of a downshore bluff caused a series of earth slides. Homeowners on the bluff frantically evacuated as twenty-five foot chunks of earth cleaved off and tumbled into the waters below, and a decades-long controversy over who was responsible for the accelerated erosion was born. In the following decades, attempts to slow the bluff erosion continued: The Army Corps launched a major beach renourishment program in the 1970s using trucked-in sand; and homeowners banded together to reinforce the base of the bluffs with everything from large rock revetments to old home appliances and, in the 1960s, more than 150 junked cars. Drawing on legal history, scientific reports, archival maps and photos, and first-hand accounts, this paper will situate a careful look at the Benton Harbor case study within the broader history of sand sharing and sediment valuation and management within the Great Lakes.

Author

• Erin Putalik, University of Virginia