David Hoppe

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:: Other people's money

Privatizing Dunes State Park

By David Hoppe

Governor Mitch Daniels' "Major Moves" deal to lease public property - the Indiana Toll Road -- to a private company sparked plenty of debate. On the one hand, Daniels asserted that turning the toll road over to a Spanish-Australian combine would not only result in an immediate infusion of much-needed cash for the state's coffers, it would also take the onus of maintaining this significant piece of infrastructure off the shoulders of Indiana tax payers.

"Not so fast," said the deal's critics. If, they argued, a private firm could turn the Toll Road into a profit center, the state could do it, too. Why let all that money go in someone else's pocket? Not only that: what if that private company doesn't do a good job? The Toll Road lease will last 75 years - that's a long time to have to put up with poor service.

As we know, the bird-in-the-hand of almost $4 billion trumped long-range concerns about privatization. Cash is cash. The rest is speculation. In the case of the Toll Road it could be years before we're able to adequately assess whether or not this was a good deal for the people of Indiana .

But "Major Moves" isn't the only example of privatization we have before us. When it comes to wheeling and dealing with public properties, the Daniels administration is open for business. And in some cases, we'll be able to judge the quality of these deals sooner rather than later.

Take, for example, the " Inn " Daniels would like to see built in Indiana Dunes State Park . Located on the southern shore of Lake Michigan , Dunes State Park helps preserve one of the most extraordinary landscapes in the United States - and one of the most fragile and endangered. For the people who know them, the Indiana Dunes is a truly mystical place, a point of convergence where ancient hardwood forest and a great, freshwater sea meet along a ribbon of sand. Alice Gray, the self-made naturalist and early advocate for a park in the Dunes, called the place "the child of Lake Michigan and the Northwest Wind."

Thanks to that wind, the Dunes are home to a mind-boggling variety of plant life. Arctic bearberry can be found growing alongside prickly pear cactus. It's said that Native American healers made pilgrimages to this spot because all the medicinal herbs they needed grew here - the Dunes was their pharmacy. It's also the birthplace of the science of ecology. Henry Cowles of the University of Chicago , considered to be a founding father of the study of ecological succession, called the Indiana Dunes "much the grandest in the entire world."

Long ago, the Dunes ran from the Michigan side of the lake all the way to what's now the southside of Chicago . A lot has changed since those days. One hundred years ago, United States Steel created the city of Gary and one of the mightiest industrial plants ever known there. Another thing that makes Dunes State Park and its neighbor, the National Lakeshore, so remarkable is its proximity to such a huge metropolis. How these lands came to be preserved is an inspiring story in itself.

If you haven't experienced the Dunes, you should. For one thing, your idea of Indiana will never be the same. And Gov. Daniels and the Department of Natural Resources aren't wrong for wanting to make your visit there enjoyable. The idea of constructing an inn in the park - "similar," as Megan Tretter, in the Office of the Governor, puts it, "to other Inns that the DNR operates" - isn't bad on its face.

The problem is that developers who would lease the land from the state appear to have something less than rustic in mind. The " Inn " the state is encouraging developers to build in Dunes State Park could actually be an 86,000 square foot hotel and conference center. It would be located, Florida-style, adjacent to the beach. This is not an Inn - it's a Facility.

According to Save the Dunes, the long-standing defender of the environment on northwest Indiana's Lake Michigan coast, the state's Request for Proposal for this project not only gives short shrift to the design of the building, it does not address pollution run-off into the Dunes Creek watershed, which will certainly impact the quality of the beach for bathers and Lake Michigan itself. Nor is there a plan for dealing with the new 400-car parking lot the facility will require.

The temptation to lease a significant chunk of Indiana 's rare lakefront property to a private developer is obvious. In this case, the DNR is offering a 40-year lease with the possibility of two 30-year renewals. As with "Major Moves," there will be an immediate pay-off for the state that, presumably, will go to help shore up the DNR's cash-strapped budget - saving taxpayers the trouble of having to think about what we ourselves are willing to invest in our so-called quality of life in Indiana .

Privatization schemes like this one use other people's money to do things we aren't willing to pay for ourselves with taxes. But where the effects of "Major Moves" could take decades to see, the impact of a hotel and conference center in Dunes State Park will be visible in no time at all - and it will be forever.