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- "I have had the privilege of living on Harsens Island
my whole life and I am against putting a bridge in from Algonac
to Harsens Island. I just see no good reason for putting a
bridge connecting the island to the mainland. The ferry service
is sufficient enough to meet all the needs of the island residents
in my opinion and if it doesn’t, that is their problem;
they don’t live on an island then. The island has functioned
just fine without a bridge this long and I think it will be
just fine if the bridge doesn’t go in. Yeah the ferry
jams in the winter but rarely, and it is a minor inconvenience,
but people know this before they choose to live on Harsens
Island. Plus people are always excited to be on TV or in the
newspaper when the ice jams happen. Yes the ferry is expensive
but I believe that the bridge will be just as expensive, they
both are businesses and they want to make money. I just believe
that this massive project is going to cause unnecessary destruction
of wetlands and cause irreversible damage to the river bottom
of the North Channel that contains many species of fish including
the state threatened lake sturgeon. I believe that a project
of this magnitude may have devastating effects on the lake
sturgeon spawning beds in the North Channel of the St. Clair
River. This bridge project is going to cause much more damage
to the river bottom than putting in a steel sea wall or a
small dock like many have on the North Channel on both the
Algonac and Harsens Island side of the river. These projects,
although they did disturb the river bottom, normally don’t
go out far enough into the river to where the sturgeon and
spawning beds are. The Bridge project will go across the complete
river destroying any spawning beds in its path. This causes
a big problem for lake sturgeon since they are known to only
spawn when they are 20 years of age so they need to be protected,
especially during their spawning season to keep their numbers
up. I am very concerned that this proposed project by the
Detroit International Bridge Company, due to its size, will
have a big effect on the population of the already state threatened
lake sturgeon. I just don’t believe that Harsens Island
needs this bridge, because, if the island did, then the state
would have had it built a long time ago."
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