OGDEN DUNES — A video filmed Friday during windy weather along Lake Michigan appears to show a seawall failure at a section along the town's shoreline.
While the waters have been calm the past couple of days, weather conditions like those on Friday pose a continued risk to the lakeshore, said Chair of the Beach Nourishment and Protection Committee Rodger Howell.
"We are trying to save our homes," Howell said Sunday. "We notified the appropriate emergency management agencies, and we believe the law is on our side in terms of being able to protect our homes."
Howell said the town responded to the issue within hours on Friday, and while residents' homes weren't compromised, they remain at "substantial risk."
"This is something that didn't need to happen had the government been doing the right thing all along," he said.
In late January, the town filed a federal lawsuit against the National Park Service, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Interior Department over denial of permits for shoreline protection work.
“The town’s shoreline protection system is at imminent risk of failure, and at least one section of the steel wall has already experienced a failure,” the lawsuit said. “If any portion of the sheet piling and stone protection fails, the town’s infrastructure, including town-owned dunes, beach access ways, roads and utilities — and 60-plus private homes — are in danger of total destruction.”
Ogden Dunes suing National Park Service over denial of permits for shoreline protection work
The lawsuit comes after the town declared a state of emergency on Dec. 28, with town police restricting access to the shoreline.
"The Army Corps predicted the Port of Indiana would starve the beach and the Portage lakefront. We've lost about five football stadiums full of sand since the port opened," Howell said.
Howell said Ogden Dunes "needs boots on the ground to help." In late February, Gov. Eric Holcomb signed an executive order, directing state agencies to help lessen the significant erosion of the Lake Michigan shoreline in Northwest Indiana.
He didn't, however, declare it a state disaster area.
Governor directs state agencies to focus on lakeshore erosion, does not declare disaster
The video from Friday, filmed by Brandon Clair, of Portage, owner and operator of Timeless Aerial Photography, LLC, captured dramatic images of waves crashing into the eroding shoreline. Water appeared to be getting behind the wall and in properties dotting the lakefront.
The compromised seawall appears in the video to be bending outward into the lake with water caught behind it.
"That's probably some of the worst storm surge I've ever seen," Clair said. "It was doing unthinkable damage. There were nonstop trucks dumping sand and rocks, but they couldn't keep up."
Ogden Dunes Fire Chief Eric Kurtz shared the video onto the department's Facebook page, noting the severity of the damage and tagging Porter County Emergency Management Agency, Indiana Department of Homeland Security, Holcomb and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
"From the video, there's a significant failure of the seawall," Kurtz said. "When you see a seawall failure, it (water) starts getting behind the wall, and that failure can go both directions."
Ogden Dunes seeks short-term, long-term fixes for shoreline erosion
Kurtz noted flooding from Lake Michigan would not only wash away public and private property structures and items along the shore, but could also impact water, electric and natural gas lines and the adjacent roads.
"Once it gets past that wall, there's no hardened structure that's designed to protect from the lake," Kurtz said.
