 I'd like to welcome you to tonight's FACTS Forum as it relates to the National Marine Sanctuary proposed designation for the Mid-Lake Region. I'm Chad Pelishek, the chairman of Visit Sheboygan Inc. I'd like to thank our sponsors on this event, which is Visit Sheboygan, the tourism entity for Sheboygan, as well as SEAS, the Sailing Education Association of Sheboygan. Tonight, Leslie Kohler, who is the chair of the Sailing Education Association of Sheboygan or SEAS, which provides a community boating program here in Sheboygan on the lakefront here, will be the moderator for this event. She will introduce the panelists, and they will each have a few minutes to speak, and then it will be a question and answer time. So without further ado, I'd like to welcome Leslie Kohler. Do you wanna hear what SEAS means again, Sailing Education Association of Sheboygan? Anyway, I'm glad that you're all here. I would like to introduce my panel, first we have John Rohan, he's a state archeologist with the Wisconsin Historical Society. Next is Steve Kroll, a diver and member of the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary Advisory Council. Next is Mike Friss, program manager and public access coordinator for the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program. Russ Green, who is, got lots of title, regional coordinator and maritime archeologist of NOAA's Office of National Marine Sanctuaries and a former maritime archeologist for the state of Wisconsin. After him comes Chris Sarri, and she is the president and CEO of the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. And then there's our own, Mike Vanderstien, mayor of Sheboygan. I had the great privilege of growing up. I had the great privilege of growing up on the beach in Black River. And it was really an awesome thing to be able to be a kid there and spend all the days on the beach, swimming, body surfing, canoeing and sailing. As you might imagine, I did a lot of sailing. Did a lot of sailing off the beach down in Black River and a lot of sailing here at the yacht club. The Lake Michigan is an awesome resource and provides some very exciting sailing and other opportunities to enjoy the water and you know, and boating in general. I was part of actually this process of getting the marine sanctuary here. And in 2013, I think it was June 2013, there was a group of us that went over Telapena to see, well, what is a marine sanctuary? What does this look like? Is this interesting? Could we be part of this system? And we were really excited when we got over there to see what was going on and we're going, yeah, we need this in Sheboygan. So by December, 2014, the communities of Port Washington, Sheboygan, Manitowoc, and Two Rivers sent a request to be put on the nomination list to become a no-marine sanctuary. And there were 96 letters of support for this nomination. In October of 2015, NOAA published a notice of intent to prepare a draft environmental impact statement and carry out a public scoping process to consider designating the area as a national marine sanctuary. The public scoping period ended on January 15th, 2016. NOAA held three public meetings and received both written and verbal comments on the concept of designating a sanctuary. NOAA received approximately 135 comments during that scoping period, the majority of which were strongly supportive of the concept of a national marine sanctuary designation. In January 9th of this year, based on the public comments received during the scoping period and in consultation with the state of Wisconsin, NOAA published a draft environmental impact statement, draft management plan, and proposed rules. Together, these documents constitute a proposal by NOAA to designate a 1075 square mile, Wisconsin-Lake Michigan National Marine Sanctuary that would protect 37 shipwrecks related to underwater cultural resources that possess exceptional historic, archeological, and recreational value. The increased area reflected the public scoping comments updated the shipwreck location information from the state of Wisconsin. NOAA opened an 81-day period of public comments on the three detailed proposal documents. This comment period ended on March 31st, 2017, sorry. NOAA received approximately 650 written comments on the sanctuary proposal. NOAA held four public meetings during the week of March 13th in Algoma, Manitowoc, Sheboyan, and Port Washington. Approximately 400 people attended these meetings with 75 people providing verbal comments. Although the last four years, a number of us have presented at paternal and civic organizations. Russ Green and other NOAA folk have attended city council and county board meetings, as well as a number of other venues, including meetings with the charter and commercial fishermen. This past year, Russ Green driving some 4,500 miles has had 63 in-person contacts with local and state government and the public regarding sanctuary designation. These include 38 public presentations with service organizations, museums, non-profits, university classes, state partners, public comment sessions, four city council meetings, and two county council meetings. The remainder were one-on-one meetings with similar partners, businesses, and legislators, including get into your sanctuary public events. This targeted outreach directly reached about 3,100 people. We welcome another opportunity to relay information about the sanctuary and answer questions and concerns that the public may have. I will have each of our panelists give a short discourse on their association with NOAA and Marine Sanctuaries, and afterwards, we will have a public question and answer period. So I would first like to bring, John, about what I am from both sides of the room. Hi, come on up here. Good evening, everyone. I'd like to thank all your folks who worked hard to organize this tonight and for all of the rest of you who decided to attend on what turns out to be a wonderfully warm fall evening. I was hoping my allergies would have passed by now with some nice cold weather, but that's not the case. So I may have to stop occasionally tonight and catch my breath. I do work for the Wisconsin Historical Society. We are a state agency and a membership organization with 12,000 members statewide. For the last 170 years, we have worked with Wisconsin citizens to collect Wisconsin stories and in Wisconsin history, worked with them to help preserve that and make sure it's available for the next generation and then make it available for the public in as many different ways as we can figure out. As you might expect, the information that's come to us and comes to us today is much different than it was 170 years ago, we get a lot of electronic information and a lot of emails, but in the way we present that information to the public has changed radically too. We now currently have over a half a million pages of original historic materials online so that anybody in the state who has access to the internet can look at that. We still have the State Historical Society Museum that gets about 70,000 visitors each year. We still maintain an area research network where local folks can order materials from our library and archives and have them delivered locally. We still have 10 historic sites where we entertain tens of thousands of people each year. And we still work very actively with residents all across the state to preserve the story places, whether it's an old building downtown that's being rehabilitated or whether it's a 12,000 year old archeological site. So one thing we always remind ourselves of is that most of Wisconsin's history is in private hands, in private property, and so we look forward to working with those folks to preserve that information. In 1987, when the federal government passed the Abandoned Shipwreck Act, Wisconsin established the Maritime Archeology and Maritime History Program to make sure that Wisconsin shipwrecks and other underwater historic sites were documented, protected, and that that information was made publicly available. Over that 30 years, we think our program has been very successful. We think it's been very successful for the following reasons, that we have a very active program to go out and document wrecks on a regular basis and make that information publicly accessible. We have a long history of embracing new technology. Now I know this isn't gonna, this is gonna sound silly at this point, but we were the first program at the Wisconsin Historical Society to have a website. We just finished a project where we took some underwater photographs and turned those into scalable, measurable drawings, and we think that's gonna be applicable to a wide variety of folks who work underwater but also on land. We've had a very aggressive, in a very progressive public outreach program. This deals not only with public education, but in 2000 or 2001, I forget. We invented Wisconsin's maritime trails. This trail lines above and blow the waves. It connects shipwrecks, other docks, historic structures, down towns, charter boat operators who cater to taking people out on the lake, high actors. It links local museums, maritime theme parks. We joke in maritime trails that you can dive it, kayak it, boat it, drive it, bike it, walk it, or you can just sit home in the comfort of your living room and surf it on the web. What we think has made our program particularly successful over this period of time is that we have developed partnerships with literally dozens of organizations. We really recently sat down in our yearly review and put together a list of those partnerships over the last couple of years. It was four and a half pages of singles-based. So we think that's typical of our program, that's typical of the Wisconsin Historical Society. One thing that we've learned over the last 30 years with our maritime program, and when we talk about it, is that Wisconsin's maritime history and shipwrecks is extremely popular. Now, you would expect if we gave a program here on the lake that we would get a room full of people, but we'd get room overflow crowds wherever we go. Inland, on the lakes, we do programs in the Wisconsin Central Sands area and we'd get room crowds full of people. What we've also discovered is that shipwrecks are particularly fascinating to young people. We can go into a classroom of disgruntled eighth graders or high school students and by the end of it, they're fascinated by it. We don't expect all of them to become maritime archeologists or maritime historians, but what we do think it does is we think it introduces them to the lakes, the importance of the lakes in Wisconsin's history, but perhaps more importantly, it's a great way to talk about the role that the lakes play in the economy in Wisconsin today and in all of your communities. We think having the National Marine Sanctuary staff in Wisconsin is a great thing because they have technologies that we don't have access to and we will not have access to. This last summer, they had a vote in the area that was doing some bottom land mapping and looking for shipwrecks as part of that. We have never done that in our program. We simply don't have the technology to look for wrecks and we don't have the staff. But really, that type of information is really critically to managing these historic places and talking about them. We think having sanctuary staff here will give us access not to just that type of technology but other type of public outreach technology and to NOAA staff across the US so that we can bring programming from the West Coast or the East Coast or the Florida Keys in the classrooms in Wisconsin and into local communities. In addition to that, we think establishing this sanctuary will give all of you and all of the communities along the coast here the opportunity to talk about all of the great things you're doing and all the things that your communities can offer and do that on a national level. One other thing we've learned over the years is that if you want to be effective in public outreach and particularly in public education, you really need to have some people on site in those communities on a regular basis. So we think having the sanctuary staff in this area will really give us and give students here an opportunity to work with scientists across the US. I'll be honest with you, we're looking at this too where the opportunity is that we're going to be able to redirect and redirect some of our energies to other places in Wisconsin. We are, after all, a statewide program and so there are some things we'd like to do on the inland lakes and rivers. That does not mean we're going to abandon this section of the Great Lakes to the NOAA sanctuary staff. We are dedicated to co-managing this with them. Russ doesn't know this yet, but we've got lots of great projects that he's going to help us on and so we're looking forward to working with him on that. We think it's going to give us a great opportunity also to work with all the people that we've met through this process. We started doing programs with the Port Explorium in Port Washington. We're going to look forward to working with the spaceport here in Cheboyganon on a more regular basis. So we think this is going to be a great opportunity. When we learned about the possibility that the Marine Sanctuary Program might expand in 2006, we really felt we had an obligation to look into that and to investigate it and to see if there was some spot in Wisconsin that was nationally significant and if the program was something that fit for us. And so we did that background research. We think we have an area that's, we know we have an area that's nationally significant and based upon that we went out and started to talk to people about this program and what we thought it might do and how we thought it might benefit us and NOAA. And that really resulted in the nomination that was sent to the Sanctuary Program in December of 2014. So we've been involved in this from the beginning. I don't know how many people and how many organizations we've talked to since 2007 about this. I really, we really haven't kept track but we've been in this area and talking to people on a regular basis throughout that time period. So look forward to the comments of the other folks on the panel tonight and then to your questions. Thanks. My name is Steve Perl. I'm from Rogers City, Michigan. I work with the National Marine Sanctuary only as a volunteer. I've done so for quite a few years. Probably more than my wife wants to count because it does take me away but fortunately my wife's here with me on this trip. I was a, to say, to under say it, I was a NOAA person myself. And that was something that I looked back on had some benefits for the Sanctuary Program, I think. But for the most part, it took a lot of convincing on their part to get me here today to talk to you. And some of those things you may not think about but I think my saying no to NOAA was probably one of the best things that has ever happened to me because I went to those meetings and after a while, after the nomination, I put in an application to be on this Sanctuary Advisory Committee. And I thought and talked to my wife about it and I said, you know, this is never gonna happen because they know that I am a no NOAA person. And so why will they ever consider putting me on the advisory council? But lo and behold, they did. And I always tell people they put the box in the chicken coop, you know. And I was gonna protect divers rights and this sanctuary was not gonna take them away from me and the government is not really gonna be here to help me anyway. So I'll just make sure that I'm very vocal about it. But as I went to those councils, one thing that impressed me was that our sanctuary advisory council, even though it had no real etched in stone, they had to listen to what we have to say. The fact of the matter is, is that everything we said, they paid attention to and did. We created Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary, 30 of us, 15 members and 15 alternates. We represented a large diverse population, representative of what Alpina had to offer. We had the diving group, which I was on. And even the guy that was the member for the diving group ahead of me and I was his alternate, he was a naysayer to know also. And we were there just to protect diving rights. We wanted to be able to dive our shipwrecks. And we wanted to not have to pay any fees for it. And if that happened, we were gonna do, I don't know what else, probably be out with signs, you know, which I saw on my way in today. I think those people out there with those signs are gonna end up being some of your best assets, just like I am today, because they have good ideas too, they have questions. There's nothing wrong with questions. Questions that can't be answered, then that's a reasonable question to ask if you can't verify and answer that question, as long as they're willing to listen and believe the answer when it's there, it's a good thing. When that kind of thing stops, so will the value of your sanctuary, because you won't change with time. And this is a living kind of thing you're talking about doing. This will change with what you want it to become. This is a bottoms up system, when I was a no-sayer, it wasn't a bottoms up system. It was a top down thing. It was the government coming down and saying, we wanna do this. Well, we got upset. Government isn't here to help you, you know that. That's just the way it is. But you're wrong about this one. As simple as I can say it, you are wrong. If you are against it, you have to work with it. Your concerns will be satisfied when you participate with it. You will find that, as I did, that the biggest thing is not divers and shipwrecks. The biggest thing is that history that you have coming into your community and being part of and you reliving what your ancestors, your predecessors, had to offer. And it's still out there waiting for you to recapture it. And it's very important, it'll create an identity. It'll create a value that you will all have in your community. And you'll wake up feeling different every morning. I get a little tight about this. So I made some notes here. One of the major benefits I see is that we've been able over there to do a lot with a little bit. I'll just put it that way. There are entities that wanna do something. As an example, we put in a maritime heritage trail. And there was a little bit of money here and a little bit of money there. And then some groups that wanted to do something. And all those little dimes come together. I had a little collection of dimes. And then you get application for a grant. You get somebody like Russ who can do grant writing. He knows a lot of the angles. Next thing you know, you've doubled your dimes. And then somebody else comes in as an entrepreneur and says, you know, so-and-so I passed away and I'd like to do something to remember. Put in a memorial to them. So I'll put a park bench in or something like that. And you end up with a maritime trail that runs all the way through your city. And a few years goes by and the Department of Transportation and Mission says, maritime trail is really good. We got some money. Now it's gonna run three counties. So your imagination can become, you know, your goals. You can go anywhere with this. Put 30 people in a room. Give them time to think about where you'd want to be. And you'll be just as good or better than Thunder Bayers. The advisory council I serve on and have served on wants this to happen. We don't want everything for ourselves over there in El Pino just because we got a good thing going. We want more of this throughout the Great Lakes. The reason is that we can feed each other information. We can feed each other ideas. We can make our community something that are special. If this isn't a special place for you, then you don't need a sanctuary. But if it is a special place for you, you need to capture it. You need to hold it tight. That's all I have to say. If you have questions, I'd be glad to answer them. And with that, whoever's next. I want to thank those who decided to have me on this panel. It's great to be in a room with folks that care so much about the Great Lakes. My name's Mike Fries. I manage the state's Coastal Management Program. Coastal Management Program in Wisconsin existed for about 40 years, 40 years next year, actually. And we work with communities from Superior to Kenosha, virtually across the South Shore Lake Superior, Green Bay, down from Dora County to across the Wisconsin shoreline of Lake Michigan. It's 1,000 miles, and I probably see every inch of it twice a year. But it's great to get out. I really enjoy working with the communities. A big part of what we do is working with the networks of the partnerships that we have developed. People like Visit Sheboygan, which is part of the Wisconsin Harbor Towns Association, which was a group that we helped form that was brought together, the tourism conventions and visitors bureaus and city administrations of all Wisconsin's Great Lakes communities together to help promote themselves. They've been producing travel guides. We've been working with them to do things like discover Wisconsin videos. We're very proud of those sorts of investments that we've made in those. In addition to that, we're really focused on the quality of life within the communities, working within those communities and figuring out what people want to do. Working closely in Sheboygan, things like an ADA compliance canoe launch. We worked in the Blue Harbor Peninsula in the mediation of the contaminated sediments. We worked on the restoration of the beach, a lakeward of Blue Harbor down in Port Washington investments on the waterfront cold dock. Roger Street Fishing Museum work around the Twin Rivers and two rivers and managed walks. So it really is sort of focusing on what people's visions are, helping them see those through. And with that, we saw a chance of working together with folks, bringing together that network like the Harbor Towns people. Actually, I think the first time that we brought it up is Amy had me down here in the yacht club to talk about lake levels. And I think, well, there's this thing called the Marine Sanctuary and that really got people excited and Amy, Leslie were really sort of the catalyst for that. Our agency and the Department of Administration is really one of the focuses with the Historical Society of bringing together our partner agencies together on this to talk about what it meant. Bringing together DNR, our Department of Transportation, tourism, board adventures of public lands and a host of others. Talking about what that could mean to the state, how we could leverage our efforts, what it means in terms of our priorities and how we can work together on it. So it's been really a great experience for us using our shared networks, John, Tamara and Caitlin, my staff with people like Amy Wilson in the communities, branching out, working with the mayors and the city administrators on this and beyond that into the counties. So we feel really proud about what we've done and we're always happy to talk about it and always happy to answer any questions that you may have about it. The ultimately for us is I have to answer to the state administration and eventually it'll be up to them to decide what to do. So it's important for us to be here and hear what people say so that we can relay that information and those questions and concerns back up to the governor's office. So with that, I welcome the chance to be here and answer any questions I can. Hi, Mike, I guess I'll just introduce myself. I thought that we had a pattern going here. No, I'm just kidding. My name is Russ Green. I work for the National Marine Sanctuary Program and one of the great things about marine sanctuaries is they only work if you have great partners. So when you've got great partners and they're telling a new group about national marine sanctuaries, I think sometimes from a NOAA staff perspective you get out of the way. So I've got a couple of things that I'd like to mention and then moving to questions. Steve brought up a great point which is you got to get your questions answered. That's what this forum is about. We want to talk a little bit about some of the experiences our partners have had, the state's perspective on this proposal, Steve's perspective from Alpina, Mayor Van der Steen's perspective from an emerging local community that could be part of a marine sanctuary. So again, hearing from those voices is pretty important. The reason we're doing this, and again, Leslie really pointed out the public process, the number of public comments, the number of opportunities for comment. But being here tonight is about, I think, getting the proposal right. And I wanted to mention where we are in that process. So we are working through all of those comments that Leslie mentioned, the 650 or so, working with our state partners and others to craft what we call the final proposal. Now, sometimes it's hard to explain, to say, well, Jesus, the final proposal, it's done. And what that really means is it's really a final draft that brings all of the ideas that we've heard over these last couple of years together in a final document that has a management plan that outlines what the sanctuary would do. You hear a word, comprehensive management, you kind of wonder, well, what is that? The management plan talks about how education and resource protection and research fit into this idea of managing a national marine sanctuary. So that's part of it. The regulations are part of it as well. So we aim, in the month of October, to have that crafted in partnership with the state. It's very important that it's understood that this is a co-management arrangement with the state. This isn't about NOAA coming in and taking control from the state either to the bottom lands or the resources. Those remain with the state of Wisconsin. What it does make is a co-management arrangement that John sort of alluded to. There's a memorandum of understanding that details that out, we're working on that now. So that package, in October, we'll have that crafted in a good spot and then it really begins the clearance process. So it's not done. It goes into NOAA, it goes into the National Marine Sanctuary Program and you can imagine there's some give and take we figure this out and policy people with NOAA come back and say, well, what do you mean by this? And so there's give and take. It goes up through NOAA, ultimately to the NOAA administrator and the Department of Commerce. And so that review process, it's hard to say how long it will take, but that's yet to go. And when that's finished, it comes back to the governor of Wisconsin for final approval. And so that's also pretty important to know. So this proposal is ongoing, the process is ongoing. I want to mention too, just briefly, that we've done this before. Last time we did it was in Thunder Bay. It was a little bit before my time. I got there in 2004. Thunder Bay was designated in 2000. And I think from the concerns that I hear emerging from the community's important concerns, many of those were voiced, as Steve mentioned, in Thunder Bay. And in fact, that whole process was a public process and that's chronicled online. So when we hear public comments, those are addressed in the documents that are the final documents for the Marine Sanctuary Program. And the short story is that that process, those sentiments are all still available for reading. And they make, I think, a good guide to help address some questions that are emerging right now. In 2014, that sanctuary expanded nine times. It's a big expansion. And the process for doing that was very similar to the one we're going through right now. Public comment period, working with the state. It's important to know that that was driven by the outlying communities of Alpina. Who said, geez, we see some real benefits going on in Alpina. We'd like to be part of that Marine Sanctuary. There was a resource protection reason to do it. There were great shipwrecks outside of that boundary that defined the original proposal. But it's important to know that that also was a public process and governed by this administrative process. They were in right now. So as sanctuaries evolve, those things are regulated and dictated into how sanctuaries change or expand over time. And that's really important to know. So I think what I'll do is stop there. And so we have time for questions. I've got a long list and I hope we do get questions because I know there's important concerns out there. So I'll turn it over to Chris Saria from the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation. Good evening, everyone. I want to thank Visit Sheboygan and Cees for hosting this forum tonight and Mr. Mayor for inviting us to your great city. Really appreciate being here. I really did want to be here tonight. I care deeply about the National Marine Sanctuary system and the conservation and stewardship of these areas. I have to tell you, we almost didn't make it here. We started out this morning about 6.30 a.m. and got here about six o'clock p.m. And I know it's very dangerous to mention your college football affiliation in a Big 10 state this time. I'm a Wolverine. I'm not Spartan, at least. I'm a Wolverine. But I decided I was going to mention it because I thought there was one thing Wolverines and Badgers could all agree with that if it took us 12 hours to get here, it could only be Buckeyes running the airlines today. So it has a little football humor and I'll move on past that one. But anyways, similar to Steve, I'm actually a Michigander and grew up on the Great Lakes and really loved the water skiing and kayaking there. And I'm hopeful, similarly, that we won't have Alpina and Thunder Bay be the only Great Lakes sanctuary for very long. I really do hope that there will be a designation of a sanctuary here in Wisconsin and Lake Michigan. What I wanted to do is I wanted to talk a little bit about the national perspective on the National Marine Sanctuary System. So I was gonna tell you a little bit about our organization and then just wanted to cover a couple of kind of key points that I'd like to leave folks with. So the National Marine Sanctuary Foundation, we were set up about 17 years ago. And just to be clear, we are not affiliated with NOAA. We're actually a nonprofit organization and we are set up to help conserve America's national marine sanctuaries and work with the community in partnerships for these areas. And we talk about them as really being our treasured areas. These are areas of national significance because of the natural resources they have, the cultural resources they have, and similar here, the maritime resources that they have. So what we do for our work is our work is all about partners. We try to form a partnership between public entities and the communities and other organizations that are interested in these areas to support research. And that research can include maritime heritage and preservation research. And it can also include natural resources as research. Sometimes we do work around whale disentanglement, for example. We support a lot of citizen science, really volunteering engagement in the sanctuaries. We aid in conservation and preservation projects and we also help try to provide funds to support projects that local communities want to do in conjunction with the sanctuaries. So a lot of what our work is, is building those partnerships and helping work with communities to try to tell their story and the uniqueness about the sanctuary that they're establishing or that they've established and want to get out more broadly to the public. So there's probably three points that I want to leave you with tonight. And a lot of people have actually hit on them. They've hit on them very eloquently. First, national marine sanctuaries are very community driven. And I think Steve mentioned it really well. There was an older process where there was much more top down. But when NOAA reopened this new process for designation, they really made it a bottom up process with communities participating by saying, we actually have an interest in this nomination and then having public meetings where folks could actually talk about the boundaries and the resources that they wanted to protect. And then it goes all the way through to once a site is designated the management processes. As Steve mentioned, being part of the sanctuary advisory committee, there's 440 members of sanctuary advisory committees across the country representing very different stakeholder perspectives that all participate in the management of these areas. And I think maybe what I think is even more telling about how important these are and how important community-based processes are in this, across these 14 sites, 137 volunteer hours occur each year. So this is people in the community donating their time, their resources, their services to protect these areas for their children and their grandchildren. Another point I wanna leave you with is that when Congress passed the National Marine Sanctuary Act, they did it because they wanted to conserve and protect nationally significant areas. And again, it's for future generations. And the point that I wanna drive here because I think sometimes this gets lost. These waters are public waters. They're America's waters. NOAA holds them in trust for our children, for our grandchildren, and for this current generation. These are really your waters. This is not a federal takeover, but this is about a partnership. And Congress really saw the benefit of designating these nationally significant areas. And what designation brings with it, they were recognizing that there are special places and what designation brings with it is this opportunity for research, for education, for conservation, and for exploration. A lot of what John talked about in his remarks about how now you have partners that can actually help leverage your resources and go further. And lastly, the point I wanna leave you with is that this is about enhancing preservation. So when we look at a National Marine Sanctuary, it's in partnership with local communities, with states, with universities. And it helps build a comprehensive plan. It almost becomes a focal point for organizing your resources and organizing your vision around. And in this case, this is gonna be a very important co-management relationship with the state. And what I've heard and what I've seen is, again, that this is a federal takeover. And I wanna say that's the furthest possible from the truth on this issue. It doesn't affect private property rights. It's not taking away riparian rights. And in fact, it actually brings you into the process. And I just wanna end my remarks because I was out in California at the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary this weekend. And they were actually celebrating their 25th anniversary. And that was actually designated a site by Congress. And Secretary Leon Panetta was a member of Congress when that site happened, so we were honoring him. And one of the things that I thought was extraordinarily given his head of being DOD and also being the head of the CIA and many other ones was that he saw establishment of the sanctuary as one of his greatest accomplishments. And he saw that because he felt so strongly about democracy and he thought democracy really formed the heart of the sanctuary core. And that's because of this process. When Monterey was established, not everybody agreed. It was bringing together a community around what their interests were to have a discussion. And in those 25 years, it's been a very active discussion through Sanctuary Advisory Committee. So tonight is still about, it's a continuation of that democracy that really forms a base. It's allowing us to have this discussion. And sometimes we're not gonna all be in agreement, but hopefully one of the things I hope, I wanna say that we can share an interest in. I think everybody in this room at least shares an interest that Wisconsin has these incredible maritime resources located off the shores that really tell in a very important part of the history of the Great Lakes and the history of this country. And we wanna tell that story to our children and we wanna engage them in that education and in that knowledge that we have. And if we can come together around those interests, I think we can have a really good discussion on similar to what Thunder Bay did and Monterey did and other sites, about how we all work together to actually accomplish what's in our interest and how we can get to that goal working together in support of this area. So thank you. Good evening, I'm Mike Van der Steen, the mayor of Sheboygan. You know, Sheboygan has worked on this National Marine Sanctuary designation for the last four years. And we not only did it by ourselves, we worked with the cities of Two Rivers Manor to walk in Port Washington to put the nomination together in conjunction with the state of Wisconsin. It was a really eye-opening process to go through. Sometimes when we think about our community, we overlook a lot of things that other people see when they come to visit us. We have a great open lakefront here in Sheboygan and things like the wrecks, it's something that we know they're out there. Steve Radd advanced been diving on them for over 30 years, but we kind of forget about it. We ran into a wreck when we were building our marina and the State Historical Society gave us a choice. We either had to cover it up with tons of gravel so we could preserve it for future generations or pull it out and put it on display. So we were building a marina so we really didn't have much of a choice. We put it on display. And while it's a really unique way for people to see a wreck up close, even if you don't want to get in the water, we kind of take it for granted. The YMCA didn't like it because it blocked their view of the lake, but when you look at this National Marine Sanctuary and maritime history, it's gonna be I think a cornerstone of this program because we have one of the few schooner wrecks that's actually on display on shore. So I think we ourselves are rediscovering some of the things that are important about our community. We also want to do some new things just like all the other communities want to do. And some of the things that we want to do is remember our heritage. Sheboygan started out as one of the major ports on Lake Michigan on this side of Wisconsin. And until the railroad came along, we had a really good chance to become the Milwaukee of Wisconsin. But when the iron horse came through, the fact that we had a really good port here wasn't as important and a lot of that economic activity shifted down to Milwaukee. But it's why we were so important to us in the past. The other thing that we want to do is emphasize education. Not only the maritime history to our students going through the middle school and high schools, but we took that trip to Alpina and we had our eyes opened up to some of the things that they're doing with ROV competitions. Now that's a remotely operated vehicle and they work with both middle school and high school students to design on a robot that will go underwater and perform a mission. Well, you might say that's kind of a fun thing to do and everything, but this is starting to open up our kids' eyes to maybe future careers because we are right now, we have 33% of our population employed in manufacturing. We're third highest in the nation for the percentage of our population in manufacturing. And our manufacturers are shifting from piece work to having robots do many things in their factories. In fact, Mr. Gill runs a polyfab and he put another 50,000 square foot addition onto his factory. And he said, mayor, I want to see this be a dark manufacturing area. I'm challenging my employees to learn about these robots and how to make them do the things that we need them to do. And we're not maybe gonna hire more people, but I hope I can get those people trained to do this in my factory. So it's gonna help us in that effort and to be an economic benefit to our companies. Some of the other economic benefits that we look forward to is increased tourism. We're gonna be on a very important list of 14 communities in the United States that have a Marine sanctuary and the people that are interested, the people that come out to the programs that John talked about. They're gonna take a look at coming to Sheboygan, Fort Washington, Manitowoc, two rivers, and Mekwine. Mekwine joined us a little bit after the application process, but they're also gonna be participating. We're looking to more room nights in our hotels, more visitor spending, new businesses starting. You know, we used to have two dye shops in town. We don't have any right now and we hope that that's gonna come back. I hope we'll see not only fishing charters but diving charters that'd be great to take care of that. One other thing that our community invested in, some people sponsored an effort that Leslie led to bring the Science on a Sphere to Sheboygan. And they invested $150,000. The Science on a Sphere is a NOAA program and it goes in a room and there's a big globe that's all white, that's your screen. And then there's four projectors in the corners and they can make that globe look like any planet. They can show all kinds of different data sets of information on Earth. So you can show an earthquake and you can show the seismic activity and where it affected it. And then you can show the resulting tsunami so that you can illustrate that to the kids and give them something really interesting and fun to do. But like I said, there's over 500 data sets of information that are available with that. Now we had that housed at Spaceport and you know that Spaceport's looking for a new home and so that's temporarily in storage until those things are worked out. So I hope we bring a little clarity to some of the discussions. I hope we can answer the questions that you have and give you some assurances. And I hope that in the end, you can support this Marine sanctuary. I think it's gonna be very important for our community. And I know that it all comes down to what does it mean to me? What's, how is it gonna affect me? And I hope you'll find out that it's really not gonna be a problem for you and that we can all get together and support this and make it great for our community. Thank you. So I thank the panel for those words. And so some of you might be going, well, so why does C's care? When C's C's and visit Shpoi in our posting this evening and C's, yes, we teach people how to boat and that's one of the primary things we do. But we're also very interested in our maritime heritage. This community has a very strong maritime heritage. We used to build boats. We used to be a major shipping center. And of course, as a, you know, I'm interested in sailboats. We need to, you know, it's interesting to see what the old sailboats look like and how they applied our inland seas and transported our goods. And it's a very exciting story. But I also think that I think as Mike said, you know, this can be very important for the community as an economic driver. I will tell you that a decade ago, any of you could have come to me and said, you know, in the next decade, Shpoiigan is going to be internationally known as a world-class holder of regattas and a bunch of you don't know what regattas are, maybe. But anyway, we hold world-class racing here and we are known internationally. And, you know, I mean, it's a crazy thing. If you're not involved in the sailing world, you don't know how significant that is, but it's huge. It's really huge. And so many things can change significantly over the period of a decade. And things that people never really, ever would guess, you know, that they could be in addition to the community. We have this awesome waterfront. We have one of the most beautiful waterfronts anywhere. I mean, just really bottom line. It's gorgeous. And we're so lucky to have this resource. So, visit Shpoiigan is very much for this project and sees this. So I'm gonna take this microphone and I will go around and take questions. And I'm gonna start over there because that was the first hand up. I thank you very much for the opportunity to ask a question and a lot of great comments. I've got a lot of questions, as other people might, but obviously there's not enough time to answer all the questions. So my first question is, if some of us have some questions that don't get answered here this evening because of time, how can we get the contact information of the people on the panel if we want to ask for more data? That's a great question. I have a big stack of business cards here and I'd be happy to talk to you anytime or present at a group, for sure. Everybody else there? Oh, I imagine they do. I'm in Shpoiigan actually, so I'm here, I can be available anytime. You know, I wanted to mention too that the director of the Northeast and Great Lakes region, Reed Boney, is with us tonight. Thanks for being here, Reed. Yeah. So he can answer all the questions that I cannot. Okay, thank you. I wanna thank the committee, Leslie, for letting us have this meeting here this evening. I wanna make two very brief statements and then a couple questions. There are two common sense statements that I would like to just state. One, there are two sides to every story. Very important. Any community, any major decision. The two sides. Second, haste makes waste. Now, tonight, 2006, there were those who were involved with this issue. 2014, three years ago, yet a number of legislators, including the governor, come behind this effort. But I suspect there are many in this room. Probably upwards of 98%, I'm gonna throw you a percentage in the seat of Wisconsin, who, like me, knew nothing about this. Until about, for me, six months ago, haste makes waste. Now, when we come to the questions, for me, and I know for some people I talk with, some of us have been to Alpina, Michigan. Some of us have talked with the people there. Alpina did a referendum. I believe the number was 1,700. Opposed the sanctuary coming in? 700 roughly supported it. Before the referendum, Noah said it would abide by the referendum. They never did that. Second point, there's some more of sanctuary. There is now a legal lawsuit because Noah made a commitment. They would not harm in any way the fishing rights of that community. The lawsuit is coming because they are charging Noah with significant violations of those fishing rights. So when I say there are two sides in every story, are you gonna tell you there are? It's very important for any community, the mayor included, who leads this community, to make sure that you've seen and heard and really looked into the two sides. I don't think, in my opinion, that has happened here. I'm not opposed to a sanctuary. I am opposed to any procedures that are taken that do not honor the will of the people. Number two, that are not carrying out the promises of any organization that is driving the issue. So I don't know what you wanna say with the comments I'm making, but those are my concerns. So thank you for that. And I wanted to say also that many of the concerns that we've heard, you mentioned the timeline and being made aware of this in the past couple of months. So many of the comments that we've heard, I think that I've heard, also are in the public record during the comment period, so many did get in there. And not all, so one way to see that is the online, the comments are there, they're still available online. So there's a way to get through there and see what the comments were, what the concerns were as well. I think for the referendum questioning, and that was before my time. So Reed may be able to speak to that. I think that referendum, I think I'll let Steve speak to it. I know that ultimately the state of Michigan and NOAA came to an arrangement that I think reflected many of the concerns that were in that referendum and that the MOU that evolved from that was actually, was very detailed in addressing, I think many of the concerns that probably were in the community at that time. That doesn't solve the question about how to deal with a community's referendum, which is a good one. But I think that's what I know about the referendum. Steve, you wanna talk a little bit about that? Yeah, my memory is pretty sketchy on it, but we do have the MOBs, which as I was concerned was that divers could always dive the wrecks. So there has been no problem with that, that we'd never be charged to fee. And I don't know where this fishing thing is, but that you're talking about. I've not heard anything. You said something's coming down, but one of the MOBs in there was that NOAA really has no regulation on the fishing. That's all state. There is, there's a federal fishing science group there right next door to NOAA, but I don't think they have anything to do but research there. So I haven't heard anything about what you're talking about. I certainly have, we have a fishing delegate on our advisory council. Nothing that that person has ever brought up. So I don't know of any kind of thing like that. You can shed some light on that. You say it's coming, but I don't know of any kind of violations because we just don't do anything with fishing. It's only about wrecks. So I don't know how you would get that. So we do, the person sort of working on this also full-time is Ellen Brody. And Ellen was there for that period in time in Alpina. So I'd like to, if you'd like, get you connected with Ellen to help answer some of those questions. And she was there through the whole period. Steve knows her well to talk a little bit about that. The bigger question clearly that you're asking is, do we carry out the promises we make? Can we carry out those promises? How do we do that? A really important point, I think, is the Sanctuary Advisory Council. So as that we're moving through managing a national marine sanctuary that the community is there throughout, I can speak mostly about and really only about Thunder Bay. And I think beyond the referendum period, I don't believe there's been a really contentious issue in the city over 17 years. So if there had been it, it was worked out, but I think it's evolved pretty nicely that the referendum issue notwithstanding. Thank you. I just wanted to make a distinction between what you might see in a marine system and in the Great Lakes. In the Great Lakes, the state has jurisdiction to the state line or the international line, depending on which body of water. Lake Michigan happens to be entirely within the United States. So the state of Wisconsin has jurisdiction to the state line all the way around. Whereas in a marine system, the state or territory only has a defined, a narrowly defined jurisdiction. And that may be where some of the conflict could arise in American Samoa, but the state has direct jurisdiction all the way to the state line or the international line. No, I'm just gonna mention two things. First, I won't go into fishery law issues, but I know a lot about the American Samoa issue that you're raising. So I'm happy to talk with you afterwards. It actually doesn't have anything to do with the sanctuary whatsoever. It has to do with the Fishery Management Council and the state water lines. But it is nothing to do actually with the sanctuary and I'm happy to walk you through that. The other issue I just think it's important to point out is when we look at history, let's look at the complete record. And one of the things that's very important to recognize about what happened in Thunder Bay is after that site was designated and it was initially about 400 and so square miles, it's now over 4,000 square miles. And that's because after this happened, the folks recognize the benefits. They saw the trust that they could have in NOAA in terms of management. And it was a very community-based process that led to its expansion. And there was a lot of support throughout the whole area. So let's think about the complete record when we think about that history because that history of what happened in Alpina and that expansion and the number of people that wanted to participate and be part of the sanctuary is an important part of how that trust was built and how it shows you things evolved and changed. Okay, thanks for coming. I have actually three questions. One of them is how? I know you said that NOAA can provide more research or whatever you were talking about with the historical society. What is it that this is gonna do for divers that they can't do already? That's my first question. What's preventing them from discovering any of this stuff? It's an open body of water that belongs to the public. What point is it to help divers? That's the first question. The second question is, I believe President Trump has proposed cuts to NOAA. I'm not sure what cuts that involves with there's a lot of things that NOAA does, I realize. So does that have anything to do with this program at all, the cuts that are involved with NOAA or proposed cuts? And then thirdly, as a landowner on Lake Michigan, I would like to know what my rights are as far as when divers are out there, say there looks to be a projected or a possible shipwreck that's just about right outside my door and can divers just come up onto my property or what are they prevented from doing and if somebody goes over that line, what is my right as a landowner? Who's controlling that and who do I call if somebody's just coming up on my land because I'm right on the water? So that's just a big concern of mine. I live on a place of property where there's nobody behind me, somebody shows up in my backyard, I'm gonna be freaked out. So I need to know what their rights are and what my rights are. If I could just, the access question in terms, the proposed designation would change any rights of riparian owners. They still have exclusive access to the water from their property line to the ordinary high water. So it won't change the way the state's access laws are now. Right, right, will not change rights. Yeah, right, yeah, so it was still well. Yeah, so you have to keep your feet wet. Yeah, people can't access between, because it's within state statute and it's providing a clear overlay of authorities and that concept of shared responsibility. It won't change the nature of ownership. The same way it's the authorities in force now. If somebody is on your property, you're within your rights to inform them, to call the Sheriff's Department, call the Police Department. Basically divers act are gonna have access to these wrecks and are gonna continue to access these wrecks from the water. It's just easier, it's simpler. As all of you know, there are specific access points along Lake Michigan, public access points, they're clearly marked. The coastal management program a few years ago did a publication for that. So folks are gonna access these wrecks, they're gonna go to a harbor, they're gonna get on a charter boat or their own boat and they're gonna go out and dive on them from the water. And traditionally that's what they've done and we haven't seen any changes in that to this point in time. And we don't anticipate doing that. What we are going to do on the website and stuff is emphasize that fact that they need to access these wrecks from the water and we're gonna make clear that there are public access points along the beach and we're gonna emphasize that if they want to, for some reason swim out to these from the shore that they use those access points. So Repairing Rights will not change. John, would you at least address the why, what is the extra advantage of having NOAA resources in this search for wrecks? I think that's a question. Why, yeah, that was the other question. Well again, we have over the years worked very closely with divers. We have maritime enthusiasts who hang on every word of our technical reports and that's great. But our audience is much, much broader than that. And so, and we have a responsibility to effectively manage these wrecks and we're concerned that we don't know enough about all of these wrecks. We don't know where they are and we don't know how they're changing and being affected over the years. So we would like that additional information so that we can better manage these wrecks. And also as technology improves and we can pinpoint these wrecks more closely with GPS, global positioning materials, we think we can make that information available both to commercial fishermen and sport fishermen and facilitate them in the fact that they won't get their nets tangled in those. We think there's a lot of practical aspects about getting this, getting better information on those wrecks and where they're located. Thank you for having this panel this evening. There are obviously a lot of questions from people. Thank you, Leslie. I have just a couple of statements. One is I realized that divers are a very important part of our world, but they are less than 1% of the population of the United States. I'm one of the 99% that does not dive. How does this make this accessible to me and why would the government put this kind of energy and money into something that less than 1% of our entire population can enjoy? And I don't want to talk about museums and looking at videos and that sort of thing. I'm talking about actually enjoy. My next question is someone mentioned that Russ had visited with 1,300 people. Is that what I heard? Yeah. 1,300 people throughout the process of anything. 1,300 people, I'm the numbers gal, I'm sorry. You're not gonna like this at all. I'm trying to keep track too. 1,300 people, Wisconsin has 5.8 million people in it. You visited 2,100th of a percent of the population of the state that has jurisdiction to the middle of the lake on the bottom land. I don't think this is a fair representation of how the state really feels, regardless of what the governor feels. I voted for the governor, but I don't care for his decision or his feelings about this. The other thing I wanted to say was that you said NOAA keeps their promises and I'm sure they keep many of them. But if you do go back into those letters from the portal, there are a couple of divers who mentioned Alpina, Michigan and said they would not support and do not support this sanctuary because they said NOAA is no longer maintaining the buoys for divers. That apparently, maintaining the buoys is a big part of what NOAA says they will do when they preserve the shipwrecks or protect them. We're not even sure what NOAA is protecting them from because NOAA did no studies to tell us what they're being protected from. I appreciate your time tonight. The last thing I wanna say, I'm sorry, I'm kind of windy here. I do appreciate a lot of the things that NOAA does in this country. I think they provide a lot of education for young people and I think they do a splendid job. I hope they come to Wisconsin and I hope they do the same thing. But I do not want NOAA putting a legally restrictive area around 1200 square miles of Lake Michigan in controlling it. They're welcome to do all they want with our kids and educating our adults and working with the Wisconsin Historical Society to stay out of the lake. Thank you. Okay. That's cute. Yeah. So I gotta, there's a long list here. Thank you for that. So I wanted to just get back to the ordinary high watermark because I think that discussion kind of went all over the place. So we, that is a, we've heard that before. So we need to make clear in our final rule what we mean by that boundary. So we chose the ordinary high watermark because it's the same, it's a DNR regulatory boundary and it's the same one the state of Wisconsin uses to manage their shipwreck. So that's why we chose it. In that we need to be clear that it doesn't change repair and rights, that people need to keep their feet wet, that a diver can't pull up on your beach, all of the things that occur right now. We need to be clear about that. So I appreciate that. And that's something we definitely do because we don't have an interest in changing that, that status quo. I'm gonna keep going and then I see a lot of hands in the back. The idea of demonstrating a threat to these places, a threat is part of it. And the report that we go back to is the 2008 report that was done by the Wisconsin Historical Society that identified areas of Wisconsin that could be good for a national marine sanctuary, could benefit for a national marine sanctuary's form of protection, which is more than just a single regulation. It really is this comprehensive idea of getting at what you said about the education and the other things that know it does well. And I think that is the package for a national marine sanctuary. It is not about only for divers and that is certainly not it. But that is the proposal and the way that we view resource protection. I think this is the value added that the state sees is exactly what you described. To make sure that there's a great line by the state of Wisconsin within their statue, which is the resources on the lake bed here are held in trust by the state of Wisconsin for the public, for the residents of Wisconsin. And again, that's only a small percentage that go diving. Everybody else isn't going diving. So John's described some of the ways they reached and try and get a public benefit to a broader audience. That's the same idea that NOAA has on a national scale. So can we figure out a way to have public benefit from these beyond the divers? I would encourage people to investigate and look into Alpena. And I would be happy to facilitate a visit or dialogues with educators, city managers, economic development folks, whatever you choose to find out if that idea of resource protection is working there. The outreach question, you're right. Only one person drive, you know, the idea with this is to, there is an administrative process for this designation, which is the process that we're in. It's defined, it's the one that is spelled out in the National Marine Sanctuary's Act. Beyond that, you know, I'm here on a detail to be part of this process, to do as much outreach as we can to help with something like this and get where we can. But point well taken that that's a small percentage but that's part of the outreach in the communities that are sort of impacted the most by this. The really important part there is the state partnership. I mean, there isn't a mechanism to reach everybody but I absolutely take your point. So from Noah's perspective, that state partnership is really critical because that's in the community partnerships. And we have a community working group where all of the local folks that are on that group are aware of the, say for instance, the management plan or how the proposal's coming together so that they are aware of what's going on. And so for us, that's our connection to the community. Through the state, it's kind of the same idea because we can't get out and talk to everybody in the state of Wisconsin. So partnering with the state is that piece. And I think, oh, somebody earlier had mentioned budget cuts and so currently they don't. There is an executive order that affects new designations that ask for sort of an energy evaluation in new designations and we don't have complete guidance on how that would affect this process. So Steve, do you have something else? I don't know. The question about the bullies that she had. Noah is maintaining these bullies very well. I'd charter boat. Is there something? I don't know. Anyway, I just retired from the charter boat, dive anything as of sort of this year I still dabble with it a little bit. Absolutely no problem with them maintaining the bullies. It's been a fantastic deal. I do even volunteer a little bit and do a couple of them myself, put them on and help maintain them. So I don't know where those divers are or who they are but if they have a problem, they just call the office and somebody will be out there to repair it. I mean, we have had some go into disrepair, things break or whatever. I'll make a couple of quick comments. Most of the bullies in this area that are currently put out on a regular basis are put out by volunteers who work with us and do that. We're very thankful for their help. We look forward to working with them. We don't see any change in that. We hope to add some additional bullies and do it in a way that we can refine their location. And just to your point, we really honestly, we really have been talking to people in this area since maybe 2008. We really have talked to any group that would have us come and talk to them and we've been actively putting information online and in the papers. So I think we all recognize that no matter how attentive you are and how closely you watch things, there's some things that might escape your notice so you might be not cognizant of. But in all honesty, we really have worked on this and NOAA has had staff in the state actively since 2008 talking to people and working with these folks as Mike can tell you. So we know we didn't reach everybody, but this is part of the process and talking to people is also part of this process as we go forward. There was also a comment she made about there only one percent of the people are divers. Thank you. My name is Ron Detro. I'm a property owner south of the city of Sheboygan. And I was gonna come this evening to ask one simple question that is how you define the west boundary of the sanctuary. Because as a property owner, I'm concerned about that being a definite answer. And I've heard some earlier comments that makes that kind of arbitrary and you're asking me to trust you. And I think that whatever you're doing here when you put together irrevocable sanctuary, I would think that definition should be very clear and it also should be irrevocable because for the taxes we pay along the lake there and the privilege we have to help keep it clean and take care of it. I'd like to make sure that's not misunderstood. And along that line, I'm just asking myself if this is really about shipwrecks and the shipwrecks are out in the lake, why couldn't we arbitrarily make that west boundary 500 feet east of the wet west boundary? And just to say, I think that might resolve the questions and a whole part of a lot of people here this evening. I think, you know, I've seen you go to the cities to the municipalities to coddle those for the last eight years or so and to get their support as well as my governor, who I appreciate very much. But for them to sell out my property rights along the lake to an arbitrary boundary that you asked me just to trust you in concerns me. And I think if you want to do yourself some help and make this thing work, the easiest thing to do would be to move that boundary out in the lake where the shipwrecks are. And I think you've got it. All right, we chose the lakeside boundary as the ordinary high water mark. Well, Jess, Jess, we chose the lakeside boundary. Well, yeah, you said there was some confusion. We chose the lakeside boundary as the ordinary high water mark because it's a current regulatory boundary and marks the boundary between your property and publicly owned bottom land. It is in most cases pretty clearly defined. Now we know that there have been instances where the ordinary high water mark has been discussed in some length, but we think it's pretty clearly defined in most cases. We think it's something that people can clearly understand. And we also think that there are a number of shipwrecks that occur at the edge of the ordinary high water mark and on the beaches. And so that's why we're concerned. Oh! We can take you up to Point Beach and we can show you wrecks there. We also should keep in mind that as we went forward, we talked about shipwrecks in this because we know a lot about them and we could clearly demonstrate they're nationally significant. But we also know that there are a lot of wrecks out there where we don't know their location. And so we don't want to exclude that. Excuse me, sir, you were not up, okay? There are many people here that want to have questions and we have a limited amount of time. I'm going to take this gentleman's question because he's been waiting for a while. I had a similar question is what he had and why does that have to come, why does that sanctuary have to come up to the shoreline to that high water mark? There's no sense of that. You can keep it offshore 20, 30 feet or 500. 500 would be a stretch because I know there's a lot of them are closer than that. But there's no reason to come up to that shoreline. None whatsoever. Is there a good answer for that? The complete definition of a sanctuary resource which parallels the state definition is items of archeological and historical interest including but not limited to shipwrecks. And this is the idea that there are historic resources that are not shipwrecks but are archeologically important. So that's why that definition is the way it is. So completely understand and take your point. Well, for the reasons John described, we chose the ordinary high water mark because it's the existing one that sort of makes sense as a landward boundary because there could be things in that area. The water line itself has been suggested and of course that moves in and out so that's a tough one. I own property in Lake Huron in the sanctuary. No conflict there. Steve, you're also a landowner in the sanctuary. So again, I'm just offering an example of 17 years of no conflict. The ordinary high water mark, we don't want to change anything in there. So we don't want to change the way you use it, the way you have exclusive repairing rights. It is a boundary that tracks with the straight definition of the landward boundary. So that's why we chose it. And we want to make it clear that it won't impact those rights. And I think we can do that in the definition because there is potential. John has done work on Native American sites which there's high potential for those to occur in that area. Those are the reasons why the ordinary high water mark makes sense if you're managing more than just shipwrecks which this proposal proposes to do, sure. One more question here. Good evening. My name is John Plesitz. I'm a lifelong resident of Sheboygan. I'd like to find out through a show of hands how many people in this room tonight do not support the NOAA project? Can I see a show of hands? Those that do not support the NOAA project. I think that pretty much tells you how we feel here. Lake Michigan is a very important body of water to all of its residents. The fact that I've chose not to relocate after I graduated from college was mainly because I wanted to live near Lake Michigan. I spent a lot of my time on Lake Michigan. Fishing and hunting has been my pastime. And I'm quite concerned about any governmental agency taking control of our waterway. And I'm not in favor of it. This is the second meeting that I've attended. I also attended one at the UW Center. And through much of the things that I heard in both of these meetings, we're only hearing from one side. I offered a suggestion at the last meeting to have a debate. Somebody from NOAA represents your point of view. We can find somebody who has an opposing point of view and I can think of one person offhand that would probably be more than happy to spearhead his side of the argument. That has never been in the interest of NOAA to do that. Nor do I think you want to do that. But that's what I'd like to see. I'd like to see somebody discussing the pros and the cons of having this project go through. It is too important a project for us to relinquish our water rights and only hear one side. Thank you. Thank you for that comment. This proposal doesn't include relinquishing water rights or it doesn't. I mean, it does not. And it's okay when the show of hands with folks that oppose it. That's okay. We don't expect everybody is going to be in agreement on it. But we do want to make sure it's clear with what we're doing. And that's part of this. You're right. We had a debate, baked into this administrative process that we're on to do this. That started in 2008. But we're here tonight to listen to that. And again, I guess it's not a debate, but it is an attempt to hear what the concerns are. So I want to be really clear, and Chris mentioned this, that giving up rights isn't part of the proposal. Sure can. So that is a, it is a good, there is currently not language in the National Marine Sanctuaries Act that allows for a sanctuary to be de-designated. And that's the straight truth because that's a question I asked as well very recently. We've never been asked that question before. And again, I'm here to be honest. So we haven't been asked that question before through the Sanctuary Advisory Councils. We haven't got to the point where a sanctuary would need or want to be revoked. So there's ways, particularly in state waters, there's an MOA that describes conflict resolution and those other pieces. It is important, and I'm being honest that the way it's managed now is to not get to that point through pieces like the Sanctuary Advisory Council and an MOA. Anyway, I thank you all for coming. Actually, can I may add to that last one? They can, through a process that I described earlier at the Thunder Bay National Marine Sanctuary. I, there, you may stay afterwards and speak to any members of the panel. I'm gonna call.