Benton Harbors Jean Klock Park -- Part 3: Racial/Environmental Justice Play Now | Play in Popup | DownloadINTRO: In the last census, Benton Harbor ranked as the poorest of 600 Michigan towns. It had a per capita income of $9,000. But the twin city of St. Joseph, across the bridge, had a per capita income of $25,000. Benton Harbor is 95% black. And St. Joe 95% white. In December, developers started building homes for a $550 million resort and golf complex on Benton Harbor land. This month, critics went to Lansing. They want state officials to stop the project. Michigan Now’s Chris McCarus reports.
After the riots of 2003, Governor Granholm created a Benton Harbor Task Force. St. Joseph Congressman Fred Upton, was part of it. His grandfather Fred, was a co-founder of the Whirlpool Corporation. Whirlpool has financed the Harbor Shores Resort. Public hearings were held but detailed plans were never shown. Around 2005, city council member Juanita Henry got worried.
“The information I was getting was just Harbor Shores information. And then I got another perspective of it. And I was like Wo. Wait a minute. Big red flags flew up. So I got on the band wagon for the people.”
The people, however many, are angry that Jean Klock Park has been developed. Benton Harbor owns it. It was named after a girl who died in 1916. Her parents donated the land to the children of the city forever. Last year, a parking lot was made near the beach. Hundreds of trees were chopped down. And 3 holes of the 18 hole golf course were built on the tops of the dunes overlooking the beach.
“I believe there was a lot of shafting there that happened.”
38 acres of polluted land have passed through several hands. Whirlpool had owned and polluted it for decades. Then their real estate arm, Harbor Shores, got tax breaks to clean it up. Meanwhile Harbor Shores gave it to the city. In exchange they got the dune tops they needed.. They feared investors and golfers would not come if the jewel wasn’t in the crown.
Nicole Moon is a plaintiff in a federal lawsuit. Recently, she climbed to the top of the park’s dunes above Lake Michigan.
“This is not natural sand anymore. This is truck loads and truck loads of a clay fill that was brought in to elevate it so they could have their tee at the same height as the dune. So they never disclosed any of that information: none of the clearing, none of the fill that was to be brought in. And we’ve now discovered that some of the fill that they did bring in is contaminated.”
On February 3, both Nicole Moon and Juanita Henry addressed The Michigan Natural Resources Trust Fund Board in Lansing. That’s the land acquisition arm of the DNR. Over a couple decades, The City of Benton Harbor got $1.7 million in state and federal money for the park. $375,000 of that came from the Trust Fund. That might have given the Trust Fund authority to stop the golf course. In December, Trust Fund Board member Keith Charters said the matter should go to the attorney general. This time he said:
“There’s gonna be development all along the Great Lakes shoreline. The key is to make it be developed sensibly without damaging the natural resources that made it desirable to build next to. That onus doesn’t fall on this Trust Fund board. It falls on local government. The planning commissions.”
In 2006, Whirlpool Vice President Jeff Noel addressed the Trust Fund Board. Noel said the donated land was worth $25 million. Former state senator Lana Pollack was skeptical of Harbor Shores then and still is.
“In rescultping the dune area that became the golf course fill was brought in that was contaminated.”
She chairs the Trust Fund Board. She said she didn’t know what authority the board has to stop the golf course on Jean Klock Park. But she doesn’t like what’s happening.
“So an area that was not contaminated currently has visible remnants of castings and metal and things that were never there before.”
And so Pollack asked since the Department of Environmental Quality now knows about contamination on the dunes do they have to take action against it? Frank Ballo from The DEQ’s Kalamazoo office stood up. Ballo said if they knew…..
“and we were able to verify it probably through sampling, we would ask whoever was responsible to go ahead and take care of that. At this point in time I just have no information about it.”
The DNR’s chief investigator has been James Wood. Nicole Moon told the Trust Fund Board they shouldn’t have trusted him.
“Why are you allowing Mr. James Wood to be the watch dog of this project when he failed to accurately complete the environmental forms required for the conversion application to begin with?”
So who are the watch dogs of public land? In this case, it’s just ordinary members of the public. And they’re losing.
Nicole Moon and Juanita Henry want environmental and racial justice. The website city-data.com shows 27% of people in Benton Harbor are far below the poverty line. Compare that to 4% for the twin city of St. Joseph. A bridge separates the two cities. Abraham Mathiau recognizes the difference between them. Here he’s building new houses for Harbor Shores.
“I don’t know. I’m not racist myself. So I mean. But you know a lot of folks feel that way. That it’s this town’s bad. That town’s good kind of thing. I don’t really feel that way.”
Mathiau is nesting in a grey area of race relations. Maybe more of that feeling is needed, to get beyond black and white and rich and poor in this corner of the state.