The Leelanau Township board approved moving forward with pursuing an EGLE grant application for increasing resilience and handicapped access at Christmas Cove at its regular meeting on Oct. 14.
Due in mid-December, the EGLE grant opportunity would allow the township to make the park more resilient to rising lake levels and storms and is something they hope will increase accessibility to handicapped persons with seasonal access to the beach itself. As noted in the supervisor’s October report, high lake levels and severe storms caused significant beach erosion and destroyed about half of the parking lot in 2017.
Leelanau Township Supervisor Barbara Conley said she reached out to GEI Consultants, an engineering firm that provides geotechnical, environmental, water resources, civil design, and construction service, because they were successful in obtaining EGLE grants with other governmental units and are also consult for Leelanau County’s drain commission. The representative from GEI, Brian Ceci, would help to write the grant application to EGLE without compensation with the understanding that if it is successful, then GEI would do the work. The application would utilize engineering and design information gathered between 2014 and 2018 intended to repair the shoreline.
