Seawalls, Riprap, and Shoreline Armoring at Traverse City: What EGLE Actually Requires

Michigan Permits Shoreline Armoring -- It Doesn't Ban It

It's worth stating this difference plainly up front, because a buyer who has read this site's coverage of other coastal states might assume a similar outright prohibition applies here: Michigan does not have a blanket statewide ban on new seawalls, riprap, or revetments along its Great Lakes shoreline. Instead, EGLE's Great Lakes Submerged Lands Program regulates this kind of construction as a permitted, reviewable activity across roughly 3,288 miles of Great Lakes shoreline and more than 38,000 square miles of Great Lakes bottomlands statewide -- meaning a Grand Traverse Bay property owner facing real erosion risk generally has a legitimate, if regulated, path to hard shoreline protection that isn't available in the same form to an oceanfront owner in a state with an outright armoring ban.

That's a genuine, structural difference in how erosion risk can be managed here compared with some of this site's ocean markets -- but 'permitted' does not mean 'unregulated' or 'automatic.' The rest of this page covers what actually triggers a permit requirement and how the process is structured.

What Requires a Permit

Under EGLE's Great Lakes Submerged Lands Program, most shore-armoring structures require a permit before construction -- this includes installing a new seawall or replacing an existing one, installing new rock riprap, building a revetment, and any dredging, filling, or grading on the bottomlands in front of an existing seawall. This is a real, state-level permitting requirement that applies specifically to activity below the ordinary high-water mark and on Great Lakes bottomlands, layered on top of any separate local zoning or building-permit requirement a township or the City of Traverse City might also apply to the same project.

Because this permitting authority is state-level and applies uniformly across Michigan's Great Lakes shoreline, it governs Grand Traverse Bay property the same way it governs any other stretch of Michigan's Great Lakes coast -- there's nothing Traverse City-specific about the underlying rule, even though a specific parcel's permit application still gets evaluated on its own site conditions.

Minor Permits vs. Individual Permits: A Real, Practical Distinction

EGLE's process includes a genuinely useful distinction for a property owner planning a straightforward project: minor permit categories versus individual permits. Projects designed to meet specific minor-permit criteria -- built around best-management-practice standards for common, lower-impact projects -- generally cost less and process faster than an individual permit, in part because minor permits don't require public notice the way individual permits do. For seawall replacement specifically, minor-permit eligibility can involve reducing the length of the replaced seawall by 25% and using either riprap shoreline protection or a bioengineering approach for stabilization, rather than a full like-for-like hard-wall replacement.

This page does not state current permit fees or processing timelines for either category, since those change and weren't independently confirmed this research pass for a Grand Traverse Bay-specific project. A property owner planning shoreline work should design the project with EGLE's minor-permit criteria in mind from the outset where possible, since that can meaningfully affect both cost and approval timeline -- and should confirm current fees and timelines directly with EGLE before budgeting a project.

EGLE's Preference for Natural, Bioengineered Shorelines

A genuinely important policy detail: EGLE's own guidance recommends bioengineering -- natural shoreline treatments using vegetation, stone sills, and similar living-shoreline techniques rather than a hard concrete or steel seawall -- as a preferred approach for Great Lakes shoreline protection where it's a viable option for the site. This mirrors a broader trend in coastal management (also reflected in this site's coverage of estuarine bulkhead permitting on some ocean-coast markets), where a natural or hybrid approach is increasingly favored over a hard wall because it can provide erosion control while also supporting habitat and, in many cases, adapting more gracefully to the kind of multi-year water-level swings that define Great Lakes erosion risk, covered on this site's Beach Erosion page.

This doesn't mean a hard seawall or revetment is unavailable for a Grand Traverse Bay property facing serious erosion -- it remains a real, permittable option, especially where site conditions genuinely call for it. It does mean a property owner should expect EGLE to ask about, and potentially favor approving, a bioengineered or hybrid alternative during the permit review process, and should factor that into project planning and cost expectations rather than assuming a traditional hard seawall is the only or default path.

Why This Matters More After a High-Water Cycle

The practical relevance of EGLE's permitting framework is directly tied to the lake-level dynamics covered on this site's Flood Zones and Beach Erosion pages: the 2019-2020 Lake Michigan record-high-water period drove real, measured bluff and shoreline erosion along this coast, and any property owner facing similar conditions during a future high-water cycle will need to go through this same EGLE permitting process to respond with shoreline armoring. That means the time to understand this process -- and, for a buyer, to ask a seller or a coastal engineer whether any existing shoreline structure on a property was actually EGLE-permitted -- is before a crisis, not during one.

An unpermitted seawall or riprap installation is a real, genuine risk worth checking for during due diligence: EGLE can require removal or retroactive permitting of unauthorized shoreline structures, and a buyer inheriting an unpermitted structure could inherit that liability. Ask directly whether any existing shoreline armoring on a property under consideration has a documented EGLE permit, and don't assume a structure that's been in place for years was necessarily built with proper authorization.

Docks and Piers: A Related but Separate Permitting Question

Private docks and piers on Grand Traverse Bay are also generally subject to permitting -- both from EGLE, where the structure sits on state bottomlands, and potentially from local zoning ordinances specific to the township or city where the property sits. This is a related but genuinely separate question from seawall/shoreline-armoring permitting, covered in more depth on this site's Boating & Water Access page. This page does not state specific current dock-permitting rules, size limits, or setback requirements for Grand Traverse Bay -- confirm those directly with EGLE and the relevant local zoning authority for a specific parcel.

What This Page Won't Guess At

This page does not state a specific current permit fee, processing timeline, or approval likelihood for any individual Grand Traverse Bay shoreline project. It does not state the age, construction material, or permit history of any existing seawall, riprap installation, or revetment on any specific property. And it does not name a specific coastal engineering firm or contractor experienced with Grand Traverse Bay shoreline work, since that level of detail wasn't independently confirmed this research pass. Confirm current permitting requirements, fees, and timelines directly with Michigan EGLE, and engage a coastal engineer licensed to evaluate Great Lakes shoreline structures for anything specific to a particular property. Nothing on this page is engineering or legal advice.