Lake Michigan shoreline needs restoration, and local input on how to do it

Chicago has an opportunity to envision a holistic view of what Lake Michigan’s shoreline should look like far in the future, a sort of update to Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, which was created when no one foresaw climate challenges.

It’s a moment, to use a lakefront metaphor, for Chicago to catch the wave.

The shoreline gets constant pounding from the lake and needs constant restoration. But much of the lakefront has fallen into disrepair or has infrastructure not designed to handle higher water levels and stronger storms. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Chicago District is seeking input through Jan. 17 on the best way to get the shoreline up to snuff and protect it from future erosion and coastal storm damage.

“This is an opportunity to tell the Corps what the Chicago shoreline needs,” Joel Brammeier, president & CEO of the Alliance for the Great Lakes, told us.

Plans the Corps says are being floated include breakwaters, seawalls, revetments, groins, beach nourishment, submerged reefs, vegetation and ecologically enhanced structures. Also under consideration are non-structural measures, such as flood-proofing, flood warning plans and emergency evacuation plans. Shoreline plans should also take into account the impact on natural habitats; on threatened or endangered species; or on cultural, historic or social resources. Other factors to consider include water quality and equitable shoreline access.

Beyond addressing each segment of the lakefront with specific solutions, planners also should build on the Army Corps’ effort by pursuing an overarching vision for nature-based solutions that can tie the entire lakefront together as essentially both a long linear park and a natural area that absorbs carbon and protects habitat and biodiversity with native plants.

What has worked in the past to protect the shoreline won’t necessarily work in the future. In an age of climate change, lake levels may keep swinging from record lows to record highs, though scientists expect more of the latter. It took just six years, for example, to go from the record low in 2014 to the record high in 2020.

When the lake was high, it claimed beachfront homes, flooded basements, submerged piers, closed parts of DuSable Lake Shore Drive and bike paths, swamped cars and closed or washed away beaches. In June, the Environmental Law & Policy Center released a study that found, among other things, some homes and other facilities on the lakefront are vulnerable in an era of climate change.

The economic and ecological problems we now are seeing were partly created by hardening stretches of the shoreline over the years when few people foresaw the impacts of climate change. Clearly, it’s time to get busy protecting the resiliency of the shoreline. But the plan should take into account what is best for the lake and Chicago.

”Chicago will always have assets that need protection, such as the [DuSable Lake Shore] Drive, Navy Pier and Museum Campus,” said Metropolitan Water Reclamation District Commissioner Cameron “Cam” Davis, who was a liaison to Congress on Great Lakes matters during the Obama administration. “But we have a huge chance to get rid of old, ugly, unsafe structures that contribute to drowning, and innovate along the way with underwater options, such as reefs and natural shoreline solutions. Other places around the Great Lakes are already pushing for these changes. We can show that big cities such as Chicago can move in this direction, too.”

The sweeping benefits of the Burnham plan, 114 years later, are evident to Chicagoans every day. The city now has a chance to create another plan that will carry it far into the future.

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