Muskegon area citizens won a huge conservation and public health victory this summer after a more than three-year fight when a judge upheld a decision by Michigan Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) Director Steve Chester to halt construction of a pipeline through a 4,000-year-old protected Lake Michigan dune by Nugent Sand Company.

Judge William Collette agreed that Michigan law requires the protection of critical dunes and that the proponents of the pipeline project did not have a right to a special exemption from the law.    

Nugent had sought to construct the pipeline to discharge water contaminated by its sand mining operations into Lake Michigan. In addition to seeking to protect the dune, activists were concerned about Nugent’s contamination of private wells in the area with high concentrations of manganese and iron. Nugent’s neighbors won two out-of-court settlements for groundwater contamination.

Darlene DeHudy—a principal citizen advocate in the fight to keep industrial pollution out of Lake Michigan and to keep a sewer pipe off the beach to save the dune—called the ruling an important milestone for citizen advocacy.

“People were incredulous about Nugent’s myopic quest for a wastewater discharge in the path of drinking water uptakes. Injustice inspired action. We were not going to drink their wastewater,” DeHudy said.

DeHudy’s group, which joined with others such as Muskegon Save Our Shoreline, Clean Water Action and the Alliance for the Great Lakes, said the combination of fact-based advocacy, organizing and persistence helped win the battle. Said DeHudy: “The way people came together far and wide to fight the pipeline gives us hope for the future. In order to live healthy lives, we must all stand up for the environment whenever it is threatened.”       

“Judge Collette’s ruling speaks volumes for the importance of protecting Michigan’s pristine natural resources and our critical dune areas in particular,” said Director Chester. “These critical dunes are a unique, fragile and irreplaceable resource that we must preserve for future generations to enjoy.”

Said DeHudy: “Without Gov. Granholm, Nugent would have gotten the pipeline. Since they began mining in 1910, they were granted every permit requested and were never fined…The victory is a testament to Gov. Granholm and Steven Chester for upholding and strengthening our current laws.”