None of the STEP sewer cheer leaders ever touch the urbanization third rails of this project. To be clear, the third rail in the transportation business is the high voltage rail that powers the train and will electrocute you upon contact. In STEP sewer politics one of those hot rails is the negative consequences of radically increasing the population of residents and visitors in the Higgins Lake area. In the absence of historical zoning, setbacks and rational township officers, a public sewer pushes the floodgates wide open for overdevelopment around Higgins Lake.
STEP people avoid discussing these inevitable downsides like the plague. Public venues, including swimming pools and theaters, post occupancy limits for public safety purposes, but what is the lake’s population occupancy breaking point, and how much development is too much to preserve the character of Higgins Lake? This isn’t simply a tub of water to be tinkered with by amateurs.
The flat earth administrators
What we have here in both Higgins Lake area townships is an utter failure of imagination about the consequences of rapid development upon the lake. The STEP folks define only things in terms of water quality, not lifestyle quality. Not a word of consideration or planning is being discussed about permanently altering the quality of life at the lake, just a misleading sales pitch about water pollution and their simplistic cure. Their principal Chicken Little argument about the lake is disingenuous, promoted by outright deceptions about water quality.
Somehow, the STEP supporters keep getting things wrong, contradicting themselves with careless anecdotal claims about lake pollution. They have butchered conclusions about lake water nutrients, making 10-fold errors by misplaced decimal points! This has been pointed out to them repeatedly, but they just shamelessly keep it up, assuming that most people won’t notice. These are the same people who want to spend millions of dollars of your hard-earned money.
Another simple example of misleading sewer problems is their remarks about a DNR fisheries official who they claim has determined that the fish in Higgins Lake are suffering from oxygen deprivation due to pollution. That same biologist, when commenting elsewhere about how Mayflies are an important indicator species of very good water quality, says the exact opposite — the lake is in good health! He is literally quoted as making the following statement: “The fact that Houghton and Higgins lakes have a good population of mayflies is a good sign. That’s what you want.” Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but facts should never be. https://www.houghtonlakeresorter.com/articles/mayfly-hatch-spurs-range-of-emotions-on-land-sign-of-good-health-in-lakes-and-rivers/
Water quality can be scientifically measured, and sometimes the results are inconvenient for sewer proponents. The Higgins Lake Property Owners Association, Higgins Lake Foundation and their township board boosters actually know better but also know that their pet project drops dead on the third rail if they admit the truth of their data misrepresentations. You don’t have to search hard to find the real facts if you check the reports of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council and the Higgins Lake Land Conservancy. The STEP project water pollution claims are readily disproved.
www.higginslakelandconservancy.com/hllc-position-on-sewers-june-2024.html
Who pays the bills?
Based on merit, the project funds obtained for the STEP sewer add up to zero. They started out bragging that most of this would be paid for by “free government money”. There isn’t such a thing as free cash, unless they’re thinking about robbing a bank. It’s the local residents who they are robbing. The little money they have been able to hustle up has been politically leveraged taxpayer charity from the clandestine interventions of several state and federal politicians. These sewer folks never see taxpayer dollars that they don’t try to latch onto, particularly yours.
Our elected township representatives are not expected to be fortune tellers who predict the future, but it’s pretty simple to see where we are heading if a STEP sewer gets installed here. They are taking us all for a night ride with the headlights off. They’re too invested and preoccupied to objectively look ahead and that won’t ever happen on their watch. They won’t rest until your monthly sewer billings start.
All the hype about free money for the sewer is bullpucky — a polite word for calling it what it is. The most recent Gerrish Lyon Utility Authority (GLUA) attempt at a competitive state grant of substantial money was a complete bomb, scoring second to last on the scale of worthy projects — 159 out of 160. It’s surprising that it didn’t come in at 161. This is embarrassing, to say the least, but shame doesn’t seem to bother them. The bottom line is that we are all expected to pony up money every month forever to pay for an unwise project that now probably exceeds $150 million dollars or more.
If inflation continues, costs will only grow faster. Mismanagement can raise your bill by 10% annually without ANY consent. That’s the law. These folks have no business being entrusted with millions of dollars of our money without our permission. Can you name any public works project that finished under budget?
The STEP sewer campaign notion of democracy is this: “They have their say, you shut up and pay, and it never goes away.”
A legal profession bonanza
If this flawed engineering solution is put in place, what happens next is entirely predictable. In fact, the process would begin before the first STEP toilet is flushed. Surveys, land acquisitions, architectural drawings, permits, construction variances, zoning variances and all kinds of other traffic-friendly, congestion-friendly variances will be green-lighted by today’s township officers.
The folks who pushed the plunger to detonate this sewage bomb aren’t likely to be holding office in five years. Their legacy will live on after their local political careers are over and they have washed their hands of this administrative crime against voters. Some brutal legal moves are happening in other Michigan townships. We can look forward to expensive lawsuits from builders, developers, commercial enterprises and other carpetbaggers who view Higgins Lake as ripe fruit ready for picking. Who pays for that? You do, if you just sit back and watch.
In Michigan, Dollar General recently sued Nottawa Township because it refused to rezone an area of their village to allow a new store there. Dollar demanded the zoning change, pressured the township to modify their community zoning master plan and then sued. We are talking about big business legal games. Your township doesn’t have an unlimited budget to pay for litigation, so they’ll be coming for your wallet again.
Nottawa Township caved to the litigation threats and Dollar General got its way, wiping out several existing businesses in the process. If you ask Lyon and Gerrish townships for the total of legal costs to date for pushing the STEP sewer, they won’t tell you and will ask for $500+ and a FOIA request to give you a clue. Is there anyone in charge there who listens to voting constituents?
We haven’t heard one peep from GLUA or other sewer supporters about any Mitigation Plan for this coming tsunami of development. Is there a game plan or budget estimate to assure the safety of lake users whose numbers will grow exponentially? We don’t have enough dough to take care of the present situation, let alone more needs for emergency services and policing.
The more people the merrier?
How many people are too many here? What will be the environmental impacts of more paved driveways, roof runoff, road-end waste and noise. If you think people drive too fast around here in the summer, wait until traffic increases and we experience more Detroit-style driving etiquette. Our sheriff resources aren’t staffed to deal with our roads or waters today. With all the new people showing up, the competition for lake access and conflict with people who reside here will only magnify. Last year’s tipsy brawl at the South State Park is a foretaste of the mischief to come.
VRBOs will boom around here and that has already begun. One property advertised that it could accommodate 20 people, with a party deck, game room, a spacious outdoor hot tub and a big fire pit. You can expect more strangers to show up on your streets as these rentals churn over. A Lyon Township police department may have to be added to the budget on your dime. On the upside, think of all the new friends you can make from people who park on your lawn and block your driveway.
The party animals are coming. Given the daily cost of these quickie house rentals, they will all need to cram a lot of people and fun into their short and pricey stays. We had one neighbor who already found someone’s discarded bong paraphernalia on their steps. Some of the township officers are excited about the potential revenue that these gigs will bring in — facilitating more self-approved pay raises and benefits? Others, including new septic inspectors, are reported by a Lyon trustee as “salivating” over the revenue from inspection fees coming from the new private septic system ordinance. That same trustee was careless enough to drop this callous “salivating” blooper in a recent public township business meeting.
This didn’t happen by accident
Do you think these problems are merely random, hypothetical and unforeseeable? The people whose salaries we pay to administer the fiscal and policy interests of the citizens were AWOL. It’s actually worse — they all voted to do an end run around the voting public, using township resources we all paid for. The Lyon Township board had the audacity to illegally toss in the township cemetery and township hall into the land petition tally to put this out of the reach of the living residents here. They all signed a formal motion to approve adding the 14+ acre final resting place of past township citizens!
This is about as bad as it gets, but probably much worse if we put them back in their jobs. They are proud of what they have done, boasting about themselves and their ‘stellar performance’ on their new campaign website. One of them states in their bio that they went to “collage’, but apparently not one that taught them how to spell it correctly.
Not addressing these future problems is inexcusable, but the incumbents refuse to see beyond their desks and get a reality grip on where this community sewer boondoggle is heading.
A STEP sewer will permanently screw this place up, and, for some, that’s OK as long as it’s profitable. We prefer a family-oriented atmosphere at Higgins Lake, not a theme park Armageddon.
We hired these incumbents, and we can retire them on August 6 in the primary election. Get registered to vote and get to the polls. If you vote at another residence elsewhere you are allowed to re-register to vote at the local address of your alternative township domicile. Just change your driver’s license home address. You have a legal right to choose your address and vote accordingly, but you need to act now and can even ask for an absentee ballot.
Here is a link to meet the candidates running to return Lyon Township to some sense of reason and normalcy: https://youtu.be/zGsrW0x7UZs
Your future quality of life at the lake depends on it. Be there – and don’t lose the lake by a hair!
Phil Robinson
Higgins Lake
