A settlement has been reached in a lawsuit between the office of the Berrien County Drain Commissioner and the Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy.

The suit goes back to emergency drain work done by the county in the Tanner Creek Drainage District in Bridgman in 2021 for which the drain commissioner didn’t secure a permit. EGLE says the work violated state law, and the former drain commissioner sued. Current Drain Commissioner George McManus told us Thursday the state and county have now reached a consent agreement.

What are the agreement’s terms?

“There were some boulders, bigger rocks put into that stream that the EGLE wants out of there,” McManus said. “So a lot of the work that was done will have to be reversed now to comply with EGLE’s requirements.”

McManus said this will add on to the costs the county has already incurred in the suit.

“Up till now, it’s about $1.4 million has been spent. And the renovation work that we have to do, the restoration work that we have to do, is going to be, we think, about $320,000. But we haven’t bid that out yet.”

The cost won’t really be known until bids have been obtained.

McManus said the work done by the drain commissioner in the creek running along Lake Street from Red Arrow Highway to Weko Beach was good work. It’s just that it violated state rules regarding critical dunes.

The Berrien County Drain Commissioner’s office will now have to seek bids to remove some of the rocks that were placed along and in Tanner Creek to satisfy the terms of the consent agreement.