The Village of Onekama is taking steps to protect the water quality in Portage Lake. It’s a series of projects that include new rain gardens near the school and parks. The gardens help filter pollutants out of storm water — things like road salt, sand and lawn fertilizer.
The village is also interested in a potential project along M-22 to address eight storm drains put there in the 1950s.
Onekama’s planning commission said the drains should have pretreatment systems before that water returns to the lake.
“It's a beautiful area and it’s a very nice lake," said village President Roger Burger. "People are concerned they want to maintain the water quality and I think we’ve had a lot of support for the projects."
It could cost up to $4 million, which will include other infrastructure improvements, like fixing up to 3,000 feet of sidewalk on the south side of M-22, to the west of the Village Park. Other improvements include three wildlife culverts and more accessibility ramps.
Village officials will meet with the Michigan Department of Transportation to discuss RAISE grant applications. The deadline to apply is Feb. 28.
RETHINKING THE FUTURE
All of this comes at a time when Onekama is reshaping how it does future development.
The Land Information Access Association or LIAA, is a nonprofit in Traverse City that helps communities create tools to better inform planning and address coastal resiliency. The group has also worked with officials in Ludington, Beaver Island, East Jordan and Mackinaw City.
They created an assessment that Onekama can use to update its Master Plan, a foundation for changing the village for years to come.
“The assessment gives them a one stop shop versus all those different documents and usually they are buried in one sentence in hundreds of pages. But I think there's an opportunity for continued work based on this assessment,” said Lee Maynard, community planner for LIAA.
The association also created coastal maps that visualize where populations are most vulnerable to things like extreme heat events or flooding in Onekama.
The village said the final product is something they can use right away to inform upcoming projects.
