| August 23, 2006 |
Reprinted from Michigan's Streamside Journal, Summer 2006
By Kurt Kuban
Editor
Gary Hubbard has an interesting way of trying to combat the erosion problem that plagues his property overlooking the Ocqueoc River in Presque Isle County. He has built a little platform on which he tees up stones and chips them with a golf club over the giant bluff down to the river below, where they plant themselves into the sandy bank that is forever shifting with the seasons.
Of course Hubbard, a Lansing area dentist, realizes his fun little exercise in futility is just that. He isn’t making any difference against the force of the Ocqueoc and its ability to tear away the sandy bank that is just a couple dozen yards away from the new log home he recently had built.
When he decided to get a little more serious about the problem, Hubbard hired Huron Pines, a conservation group based in northeast Michigan, to design and install a woody debris stabilization project along the toe of the 50-foot tall bank.
Once the project is completed, Hubbard, an avid fly fisherman, not only hopes it halts the erosion, but also provides some habitat for fish, especially the steelhead, trout and salmon (chinook, coho and even pink) that migrate through the river. He has had some limited success fishing in the past, but admits the water temperature in the lower stretches of the river can be a tad bit too high for trout survival.
“Back in the late 90s, we would catch a lot of small steelhead. But there’s not as many trout in the summer,” said Hubbard, who lives less than a half mile from Lake Huron. “I really want to improve my fish habitat. I want to bring back the trout to this area of the river.”
So do the members of Huron Pines, which is based in Grayling and dates back to 1973. The group has been a conservation leader in an 11-county region in the northeast Lower Peninsula that covers some 4 million acres of land and 10 watersheds, including the Au Sable, Pigeon, and Black rivers. The group has been a big proponent of developing environmentally-friendly land use policies in an area that places great importance on its abundance of natural resources.
Huron Pines has been a leader in a movement to protect the Ocqueoc, which, because there are so many other fabled streams nearby, is often overlooked, particularly by fishermen. But those who live and vacation in the area know what a rugged jewel the river is. In many ways, it is quite reminiscent of an Upper Peninsula stream, and it contains the only named waterfall (Ocqueoc Falls) in the Lower Peninsula.
However, the Ocqueoc is similar to other rivers in the northern Lower Peninsula in the sense that it is susceptible to land use changes, largely due to an increase in development, as more and more people build vacation homes “Up North.”
Huron Pines wants to make sure these changes don’t negatively impact the Ocqueoc. In 2004, the group was awarded a $100,000 grant from the state to develop the Ocqueoc River Watershed Management Plan, which it completed in December of 2005. The huge document outlines pollution sources and other threats to the river, and offers a number of recommendations to solve the problems.
The main goals of the plan are to develop land use policies to protect the river and its wildlife habitat, educate the public – particularly landowners along the river – and to locate and document road crossings that have become detrimental to water quality in the Ocqueoc.
A river in three parts
Located in the Lower Peninsula’s extreme northeast tip, the Ocqueoc watershed drains roughly 94,000 acres of land, most of which is very rural. The state owns a good deal of land along the Ocqueoc, so there is a wilderness feel along much of it.
The Ocqueoc is kind of a tale of three rivers, in that it has three distinct parts. Its origins begin in the valley around the town of Millersburg, which, with a population of less than 300, is the watershed’s largest population center. A series of dams have created a chain of lakes in the area, and as such the upper reaches of the watershed are best classified as a warmwater fishery.
The last stretch of the river as it approaches US-23, where Hubbard’s property is located, the Ocqueoc looks considerably different. It is dominated by tall sandy banks, which are dune-like in character, and sharp bends that further exacerbate the erosion problems that plague the area.
About half way between the upper and lower stretches on the river’s 30-mile journey to Lake Huron, the Qcqueoc is perhaps at its most interesting. Its pace pick ups considerably, as the water begins to race over rock outcroppings and a limestone bedrock bottom. It is in this section that Ocqueoc Falls is located.
It is also in this area where the trout begin to appear. That’s because the water begins to cool, thanks to a number of major cold-water tributaries, particularly the Little Ocqueoc River and Silver Creek, both of which support good numbers of trout.
“The Ocqueoc is one of the only rivers, at least in this area, that gets colder as it goes,” said Brad Jensen, executive director of Huron Pines.
It is for this reason that Huron Pines has dedicated its efforts – and its limited resources – to trying to fix some of the problems in this section of the river. Perhaps their greatest success was working with the Presque Isle Road Commission and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to replace an old road crossing on the Little Ocqueoc River that had been contributing sediment and other pollutants to the coldwater stream. The main culprit, according to Jensen is sand.
“I don’t think people realize how big a pollutant sand really is, especially in a trout stream,” he said. “It destroys fish spawning beds. I would say sand is probably the number one pollutant we have up here in the river systems of northern Michigan.”
Getting the road commission involved was a major victory, according to Jensen, because there are about 65 road crossings in the watershed, and because road commissions are not typically known as good environmental stewards.
“The road commission is an easy target because they own the roads, but the Presque Isle Road Commission has been great to work with,” Jensen said.
For Eric Rose, manager of the Presque Isle County Road Commission, getting involved in the restoration of the Ocqueoc River was a bit of a no-brainer, particularly with the project on the Little Ocqueoc River.
That project consisted of taking out two old culverts, which were elevated above water level making it difficult for smaller fish to pass through, and replacing them with a single bottomless structure that was fabricated from an old railroad car. The road approaches to the bridge were also reconfigured to direct stormwater into ditches rather than towards the river.
“This has been a win-win situation. Not only have these projects been good for the river, they have also been good for the road commission because it saves us money in repairs down the road,” said Rose, who grew up on a farm in Millersburg and is now an avid trout fisherman.
Rose admitted that the project has also provided some valuable public relations for the road commission, which is never a bad thing.
In total, Rose said there are seven stream crossings in the county where he has employed the bottomless structures similar to the Little Ocqueoc crossing. And he is always looking for others where it would be cost effective to install.
“I even have other counties looking at using them,” Rose said.
Ocqueoc River Commission
One of the main goals of the Ocqueoc River Watershed Management Plan is to promote public stewardship of the river. Among the main recommendations of the plan was to create the Ocqueoc River Commission, a nine-member body made up of folks from all walks of life. Currently there are local politicians, a Trout Unlimited member, a regional planner, and local residents. The commission has been meeting every other month for about two years.
According to member Jerry Smith, a retired state park manager who lives north of the town of Ocqueoc, one of the main things the Ocqueoc has going for it is the fact that few people live in the watershed, so it doesn’t have some of the “same impacts we see with rivers on the northwest side of the state.”
“I see this river as a real gem. It is an undiscovered river. There are no canoe liveries, and that’s a good thing,” said Smith, who was at Hoeft State Park north of Rogers City for 18 years.
Smith said one of the biggest challenges facing the commission, which has no real authority, is to educate people about just what a gem the Ocqueoc is, and what role they play in keeping it that way. One of the encouraging developments in this public education program has been getting a group of 5th graders from nearby Onaway involved in a class project about the Ocqueoc River. He said the key to the future health of the river is to reach the youth and teach them to be good stewards.
“Most of us adults are set in our ways and habits,” he said. “The kids are so much more moldable. They’re just sponges ready to learn. It was obvious the kids have really enjoyed the project. It’s something they will hold onto and remember. And that can only be good for the river.”
Jensen says one of the biggest challenges in putting together a workable plan for protecting and restoring the Ocqueoc has been to get everyone on the same page, because in many cases different groups have different interests and agendas. However, he said the one thing that most people in the area can agree upon is how important the river is to the people, history and natural environment of Presque Isle County.
“You have two groups up here. One that wants growth because of economic development. The other group doesn’t want any growth at all. It’s very difficult for these two groups to work together,” Jensen said. “But the point is, whether you want it or not, the growth is already happening. So we need to make sure we have all these different tools in place to make sure we are protecting the resource.”
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