A new report shows the final segment of the Sleeping Bear Heritage Trail would likely require 25-foot retaining walls to cut into dunes and boardwalk over wetlands through the woods.
The paved multi-use trail currently runs about 20 miles from Empire to Maple City. The last four and a half miles — partially routed through a section of forest in the boundaries of the National Lakeshore — will connect it to Good Harbor Bay.
The new report was funded by a group of people who have opposed the final segment of the route, or Segment 9, for several years.
Doug Verellen, who opposes the current route for Segment 9 and lives on nearby Traverse Lake Road, says the few miles of trail are not worth the potential environmental impact.
“Do we want to expose people to nature or bring them to nature?" he said. "Or do we need to drive them right through it, and destroy the very thing they're there to see?”
Verellen and others concerned about the trail point to a high price tag for a relatively short segment — an estimated $14.5 million for just over four miles of Segment 9, compared to the roughly $10 million spent to build the first 22 miles.
He says he believes that high cost is due to the numerous dunes, wetlands and trees the trail would need to go through in order to connect Traverse Lake Road to Good Harbor Trail.
Verellen calls the trail segment "a beautifully engineered bad idea."
“Is [this] really what we’re supposed to be doing with a national park?" he said. "I don’t know. I thought it was about conservation and preservation.”
Scott Tucker is superintendent of Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
“We're not talking about clearing land for gravel mining, we're not talking about clear cutting for the sale of timber. We're meticulously building a trail that provides access to the National Park,” he said.
Tucker said he hadn't had time to review the new report from the group opposed to the trail segment.
But he noted that the intended route was approved 15 years ago after a lengthy environmental review process open to public comment in 2008 and 2009.
“That planning document … was well-vetted by hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of locals as well as folks around the country,” Tucker said. “And so, [this] last section is us culminating that community ask – where the community expressed the need, and that need is still there. And we can tell that by the use of the trail.”
A preliminary design, with a trail spur through woods, wetlands and dunes, was approved in 2019.
That 2019 report considered alternatives, like expanding roadways to create bike lanes. It also noted the need for retaining walls and boardwalk should the trail go along Traverse Lake Road and through the woods.
But difficulties related to county and state-owned roads led to a final recommendation of the trail spur.
“It's a very emotional conversation. It's emotional for me, it's emotional for our staff," Tucker said. "But the big picture is, the decisions the National Park Service makes, we do not make them on an emotional line, we make them based on federal policy, federal regulation and federal law."
He says the design and construction of the trail will have to abide by state law protecting critical dunes and federal laws like the Wilderness Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
“All of those things guide the direction [of] how we do what we do,” Tucker said. “It's not with a fine tip pen that we create what we want. We went through public engagement, and in the end, the first 22 miles are spectacular. And this last five miles will bring us to the far northern reaches of the park.”
Traverse Area Recreation and Transportation Trails, or TART, is currently fundraising for the project. Construction and engineering will be led by the Michigan Department of Transportation.
Verellen says he’s a trail user and supporter but doesn’t think Segment 9 will serve enough people to merit the potential impact. He argues the most popular stretches of trail fall between Empire, Glen Arbor and Port Oneida.
For now, Tucker says the project is still moving along with the design phase. He says tree clearing (the first phase of construction) is not likely to begin until fall of 2025.
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