The character of Higgins Lake that many find so appealing is its water quality. Relatively few lakes in Michigan have the clarity that sets Higgins apart from others. Despite all the misguided anecdotal musings about the so-called degradation of its water quality, the lake is remarkably resilient.
Any public works project, like the STEP sewer proposal, needs to be rigorously scrutinized and scientific. It is relatively easy to spend a lot of time and money disparaging lake water quality, and plain foolish to boil any problem down to a single villain – private septic systems. If you encourage amateur claims about pollution and ignore the lack of adequate information based on real science, you support spending money on a plan to make Higgins Lake a real estate bonanza. That seems to be a big thing that is motivating much of the STEP hype coming from the moneyed interests around the lake.
The primary source of Higgins Lake water is underground springs. A relatively smaller amount arrives from natural surface run off and two small streams. Over the years we have increased the unnatural runoff of land near the lake by creating hard surfaces that do no absorb water. These include roads, houses, and driveways. This unnatural run off goes directly into the lake and carries with it the residues of civilization, such as fertilizers, landscape chemicals, dog poo and spilled beer.
This is what’s coming in, but what’s going out? As time passes and the climate warms, and it will, we can expect more evaporation. As winter starts later and ice-over starts later, we can expect increased evaporation that causes water loss. Likewise when the lake melts earlier. Aside from global efforts to mitigate climate change, there are local things that we can pay attention to and be aware of.
The public bickering about lake levels and how this involves the Higgins Lake dam, has given us some clues about how to manage this, but, in the long term, if more water is being lost we need a plan for managing that which goes beyond moving a few boards in the dam. The more water we hoard or waste above the dam, the less viable the Cut River becomes as an ecosystem.
Now comes one of the biggest rubs of all on water volume — the human siphoning of water out of the lake. This is not being done by back lot properties, but by people living on the lake front. It amounts to millions upon millions of gallons of water every year. The self-professed lake lovers are silent on this issue. I wonder why? Do they not love the lake enough to back off on their irrigation drain on the lake?
We need to rehab the shorelines of Higgins Lake and make them more ecologically viable. Lakefront properties should be evaluated for drainage issues. Just because a STEP system will make it easier to create more hard surfaces doesn’t make that a great idea.
We need to understand the impact of pumping millions of gallons of water out of Higgins Lake to water lawns and trees at lakefront properties. Alone, water siphoning drops the lake level by several inches annually. The math is pretty easy to do if you talk to people who have installed hundreds of siphon pumps all around the lake margin. That drawdown is only increasing and shouldn’t be treated as invisible.
This subject is just one more item to add to the list of what a STEP sewer will have zero impact on. Yet, the STEP panacea continues to be promoted by Team STEP. Mechanics learned a long time ago that you don’t fix automobiles by throwing parts at them based on guesses. When will GLUA fans learn that?
Phillip Robinson
Higgins Lake
