 Shoreline and River erosion update presentation. Director Bevel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And again, this is just a continued process of keeping the older persons, the mayor, for instance, and everyone informed of Lake Michigan, the historic high water levels that we are facing and monitoring the erosion that is occurring on Lake Michigan. So we wanted to give you an update with that this evening. So one of the things that we've done is we have a drone that we use in our engineering department. We have some video footage this evening that I want to just share with you of the shoreline. And so we're starting on the south end of Sheboygan. This is that you're looking at the wastewater treatment plant. And I want you to take a look at those jetties. Because about three years ago, you could see sand and you could walk between those on the beach. And so the water is that high now. It's right at the, pause it real quick. Right now, the water is right at this rock ledge. Basically, this revetment, the shoreline, that was put in roughly some of the main rock was reestablished in the late 80s. The last time the lake was so high because of severe erosion. The jetties actually were put in the 1930s. So they've been there a long time. But nevertheless, the water is above what's called its ordinary high water mark. So when we have heavy winds and wave action, it's going up and beyond and onto that sandy area. And a lot of that is rock that is beyond the main rip wrap, the main shoreline. And that was mainly for an access road. This is the area where we have our south side interceptor sewer. So it's running all along this lake shore here. In fact, I'll be able to find a couple of advanced slides again. And right there, there's a manhole. That's for sanitary sewer that runs along the lake shore. And you can imagine in high waves, they're going right over the top of that. And that's one of the things that we're concerned. We were entered under contract. We're doing engineering. And at this point, the good news is that that line's in good condition and it can be lined. Doesn't have to be replaced. It's still a very expensive project. As I mentioned, it was $13.9 million project just to do the rehab. But if we had to replace that line, we're talking $20, $30, maybe $40 million. It would have been very expensive. So one of the things that went through this footage here is you can see we're holding our own. Even though the water, during heavy and high winds, the wave action, again, here's another manhole. And it's on its little peninsula right there. So during high wave action, you can imagine waves. And it's splashing on the bottom of the slope. Now in this area, you can see we get some pretty good vegetation. That's a good thing. Vegetation helps stabilize the slope, helps control that erosion. So I'm going to advance because this is a long video. I'm going to skip ahead. Director Bebel, while we're watching this video, who owns, just to help the committee understand, because I have constituents, obviously, in my district that live along the lake here. And I've had constituents begging for the city to do something. I've had a couple of constituents offer to assist to pay for the rip rock in front of their property. But a lot of the homeowners don't realize what the city owns, what the city doesn't own, what they own. Could you explain a little bit? Sure. And that's a good question. And all of this area along here is city owned. Where the property ends is typically right at the top of the slope, where the pointer is going along up here. So the city owns the bank, the toll of the slope, and basically to the ordinary high watermark is the term that we refer to. So if the constituent has what I'll call a landslide from erosion, they lose their yard to the city. Correct. OK. Now, as you can see, again, what we're showing here, this is where a substantial amount of work was done in the late 80s. They built basically an access road along for this area. So again, in this area, we're in good condition. Advance it. This is that King Park. You can see there's not much beach left. In fact, you can see some structures there with the rock around it. Here we have some substantial beach that is still remaining between Blue Harbor and King Park. This is the former Pentair property we're approaching. Director Bevel, none of that has any of that rip rock. Is that because it's been able to maintain the sand? There it is. Because it's flat. There's no bluffs. So it's nice and gradual. And that's where you're seeing the wave action build up the sand because it's nice and flat. It will erodes sand from the beach in high wave action. But in gentle wave action, it actually builds the beach. So we get to the Blue Harbor area. I'm going to pause it right here because this area actually had beach about three or four years ago. And it was very popular with the Blue Harbor patrons. And as of today, you can see it's all under water. And we're experiencing some advanced erosion, especially in this location you can see. And we have other photos I'll get moving on. I want to get to the north side of Sheboygan. Thank you. This is the north side beach. Still no rip rap here because it's flat in this area. As you continue in advance, we start to get a little bluff. We have the protection of the jetties. Again, there was much more beach here about four or five years ago than it is today. And you get into this area by north point, much more rock. And again, we're experiencing erosion, especially right along this area here. We've had quite a bit of damage. We're looking at plans to try to replace and strengthen these areas as well as in this area. You can see it's not much for waves to lap up, especially in a severe wind and storm condition. And we've had a close, broken drive a couple of times already because of that, because of flooding and dangerous conditions. So now on the north side, we're coming up. And we do have some erosion up here. Can't even see the north point anymore. That used to be a lot of concrete. So in this area, this is the north point overlook. And it's right next to the water treatment plant. But you can see we've lost some of the bank here. Not much rock. It's pretty steep there. It was the area that prior to this, it really doesn't have any infrastructure for us to protect. And it was pretty much unprotected for decades. This is the water plant. And you can see we're working and talking with Joe Trublet up here. It's pounding. And this area is really exposed. And we've had some pretty good storms. And we know we have a major project coming up with the water intake. But there may be some interim or immediate needs that we're going to have to strengthen this in and get this repaired sooner than later. Valref Park here at the bottom. Again, you can see branches and trees and stumps that get just thrown up on the shore. This area, OK, we're going north of the water filtration plant. This area, again, if you see, we have good rock. On nice, normal conditions, we're protected. When we have those storms and we get those easterly strong winds, waves five, six, seven, eight feet, they're going to crash over the top. And again, we're at historic Lake Michigan high water mark in its 100 plus years of history of tracking Lake Michigan. So as we're coming on, this is North Third Street. Director Bevel, this video was taken May 6. Sorry. Yeah. So you can see in this area, we have some sanitary sewer as well. And you can see the rock is a little bit more substantial in this area. David, if I could just kind of interrupt. This is Alderman Sorensen. So what's the plan moving forward with a lot of this erosion that we're seeing? I know I represent part of the South Shore. And I'm getting some communication from folks. They see their water levels rising. And a lot of the land by their house falling into the lake. So in terms of what are we looking at, are we looking at putting more riprap on certain areas? Are we looking at, I don't know, I've had suggestions about putting new jetties or repairing the jetties or something along those lines. Are you guys thinking about anything like that? Or what's on our radar? So the purpose of the video, first of all, was just to kind of show you, give you a broad overview. And right now, we're in good condition compared to a lot of other lakeshore communities. If you see, yes, we've had some soil loss along the lakeshore. But there is really no homes that are immediately impacted in terms of danger with it coming up or their homes teetering on any edges. This area is probably one of the worst areas that's on the very north. And it's not even, I don't believe, in the city of Sheboygan. But it's on the lakeshore. And you can see this is an area where there's no rock. And it's just exposed. So we've had some erosion in there. But as you'll see as we get into this presentation, it's not all necessarily from wave action. And then this last section of the video shows this is at the Weiss subdivision in the very tip of the peninsula by the Pigeon River where it discharges into Lake Michigan. This is an area where we have, there's no rock shore or anything, but you can see there's quite a bit of loss, but it's, again, wooded. We've lost a tree. There's no structures, no buildings that are being impacted as of today. It does show this, there's a house here. But again, look at the protection. Look at the vegetation. There are no loss of embankment whatsoever. Is it nerve wracking? I can totally understand and I get that. And again, we're at historic levels. So if we can get to the presentation, this is what we're planning on doing. Just like the ADA plan. If you imagine that we have millions of dollars of projects, we're gonna need to prioritize. We have literally miles of shoreline to protect. And the city owns much of that. So what is the city's obligation? Well, what we're doing and what we've talked about is what we've done is the approach we're taking is, our first and foremost is those critical infrastructure facilities that need protection first. So we talk about the sanitary sewer. We talk about the water utility. We talk about those public areas along Broton Drive. Private property along the embankment is going to be secondary. We don't have all the resources and money to protect this entire shoreline. We are looking at individuals and we can work with them. And if a property owner so desires to do added protection, we would work with them. We would have easements. We could coordinate with them. We could help them with permitting. But as a department, it's not gonna be our primary focus. And again, it's the loss that we've seen along the shoreline is more, again, nothing structural. It's soil loss. And again, it's not all contributed from wave action. And we'll get into this real quick. I got the slide. That's right, I'm controlling it. So again, I showed the treatment plant. And again, for the most part, even though this is historic high water, it's not to the very bottom of the bank. It's to the rocks. I'm gonna show you this example here. And I want you to really focus. Look at where the pointer is by the sidewalk for the King Park Pavilion. This was just in four years ago. Little less, actually, in September. Look where the water is today. That says, I mean, we're dealing with historic. And I mean historic levels. This is Blue Harbor in 17. This is that area where I said, oh, they had a beach. They had a beach here. A lot of their people were using that. Again, kind of focus on that condo. I'm a little bit too far north. Sorry about that. If I go back, if you look at where the pool is, but you can see this is the erosion that's starting to occur. I mean, it's out there and it's happening. This is another shot of that erosion that we're looking at. So looking at the Northside shoreline. Northside Beach, D-Land Beach. If you look at the volleyball courts back in 16. Today, it's right there. So again, we've lost a tremendous amount of beach. North Point, we talked about the erosion next to the water utility. This is our lift station. This is a major lift station that collects a tremendous amount of sewage from the north side of the city that then we'll pump it to the south side in Sheboygan. Again, this is a critical facility. Our first and foremost concern is protecting these public infrastructure facilities. This is an example of a private residence that has some soil loss. But their properties, as you can see, are far set back and protected. We're monitoring these situations and if there's a major slough or a major concern, we will clearly work with those property owners and work with them for protective measures. But as of today, we're in good condition. This is a shoreline at Northeast Park. Again, moving forward, this is 506 Grand Avenue, moving north, this is, again, the property that I showed that has pretty good soil erosion. You know, there's not much vegetation on that slope, is there? There's not many trees, not much roots to control erosion. That's another factor. It's not all wave action. There's groundwater that is contributing. 2019 was one of the wettest years, again, on record. Not only in Lake Michigan being high, but also just rainwater in Wisconsin, as well as the city of Sheboygan. So what do you see? You see some of these areas here. This is seepage, groundwater, that's coming through the bank. And why is that important? Because it creates an unstable condition that can cause these slopes to erode. And down on the bottom of the slope is from wave action. Again, here's a public infrastructure concern. This is Eisner Avenue outfall. Basically, the pipe is eroded away and we need to protect that and control it. Because right now we have our storms who are outfall that's just eroding more and more bank. The pipe's gone. We need to extend that bank and provide large riprap and control. And this is the last, you know, we had this picture before of no shoreline protection. So this is right out of the United States Army Corps of Engineers living on the coast, basically, guidelines. And it talks about these scenarios that can happen with the lakefront properties. We have surface water comes over the top, that is a concern. Here's that groundwater seepage outflow. We have the sluffs and sliding and then the tow erosion. We saw some of those examples in the pictures. This is a cross section of basically, if you took a knife and sliced it like a piece of cake, this is where we have groundwater flow that can, that causes those seepage. And that seepage ends up sloughing the bank as well as the wave action from the lake. This is just another example. Again, this shows where if you keep vegetation, you keep roots, it helps stabilize that bank. And I understand living on the lake, you want to have a view but you also need to balance that with vegetation and maintaining that structural integrity. Lastly, this is just another basic example of how we can manage some of this. Vertical wells intercept that groundwater flow. Putting in trenches, diverting that water, that seepage, as well as the rip-rap at the bottom of the slope to stabilize. But these are expensive solutions. This isn't stuff that we can just implement overnight. We're talking millions of dollars of infrastructure. The main thing is I wanted to show with this presentation tonight that we are experiencing historic high water levels, but yet we're in pretty good condition. We're in pretty good shape. I'm not saying it's great, we're gonna have some damage and we've experienced some damage. But I wanted to at least give you as a comedian as well as the older persons is that we need to prioritize how we address the public's concern. And I understand private property interests and their concern of protecting their property, their shoreline, their embankment. But at the same time, we need to prioritize and be good stewards of the money that we have as taxpayers and how we manage that for the city in terms of protecting that infrastructure as I demonstrated in the slides. Using that as our first and foremost priority, but working with those property owners on an individual basis and working with them of their concerns and trying to come up with solutions ultimately to reassure them and in some points, in some cases try to help mitigate or protect their embankment if they're experiencing more loss. So I know it's a lot to throw at you. I probably was a little fast, but it's a tremendous problem that I don't see. It's gonna be here for several years. As fast as the water went up, I don't see it going down as fast as it came up. It's gonna be around and we're gonna be facing this dilemma for some many years to come.