Our Progress
Within just a couple of years, one of Michigan’s largest brownfield sites was transformed into a world-class resort community, two public parks and a major contributor to the Northwest Michigan economy.
More recently, CMS Land Company has taken additional steps to clean the shore and protect the bay. Over the past five years it has invested more than $105 million to improve water quality at selected areas where it was found that water coming out of the dust piles contained higher than normal alkalinity levels.
CMS Land has extensively investigated and evaluated the site by:
- Taking more than 1,300 soil, groundwater and surface water samples
- Completing more than 300 soil borings
- Installing more than 340 groundwater monitoring wells
- Completing extensive geophysical investigations
- Creating a groundwater model to determine flow rate
CMS Land installed more than 2,800 feet of collection lines in the Bay Harbor development and East Park to stop the affected water from reaching Lake Michigan.
Additional work at East Park included moving about 35,000 cubic yards of dust from the east side of the park to the west side, where it was shaped to maximize water run-off, and then isolated with an impermeable liner to prevent water infiltration.
This work has nearly doubled the useful space on the west side of the park. Additionally, at the suggestion of the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council, CMS Land installed a "downstream defender" to filter storm water runoff from parking lot surfaces before it goes into the lake.