Lake Charlevoix groups plan resilience workshop tied to watershed plan review
Loading...
Summary
The Lake Charlevoix Association and partners will offer a Community Resilience Training workshop on Nov. 13, 2025, to update and reprioritize actions within the Lake Charlevoix Watershed Management Plan, which Darnton said contains outdated data and many unprioritized best practices.
Tom Darnton, president of the Lake Charlevoix Association, told the Charlevoix County Planning Commission on Sept. 11 that the association and partners will hold a Community Resilience Training workshop on Nov. 13, 2025, at Torch Lake Township Hall to support a 10‑year review of the Lake Charlevoix Watershed Management Plan.
“We need to find ways to manage and influence it,” Darnton said, summarizing why the association is shifting its emphasis from “protection” toward “preservation and nurturing” of the lake and its watershed. He said the plan currently contains about two pages of goals and objectives and 60 pages of best management practices but lacks a practical way to prioritize which actions will have the greatest impact.
Darnton described the workshop as a scenario‑based planning exercise intended to give local officials and stakeholders tools to evaluate tradeoffs — for example, how to handle shoreline development requests such as proposed breaks in a shoreline or extensions of municipal services. The workshop, sponsored by the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE), will run 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is open to watershed stakeholders; registration is expected to open at the end of September on the Watershed Council’s website.
Darnton said much of the watershed data in the plan are roughly 15 years old and that the workshop is intended to reenergize the Lake Charlevoix Watershed Plan Advisory Committee and provide decision‑support tools for zoning boards and local officials. He noted that the Lake Charlevoix Association has shifted over the past decade from a focus on property rights to a focus on watershed stewardship and representing lake users who do not own shoreline property.
Commissioners asked logistical questions about time and recording; Darnton confirmed the workshop will be videotaped and that county planners and local officials will be on the mailing list for details.
Next steps: organizers will release registration details via the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council and EGLE; the workshop is intended to feed prioritized recommendations back into the watershed plan and local planning processes.