State’s DNR leader tours erosion sites
Kankakee River, Portage key stops
On his first regional tour since being appointed director of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources, Dan Bortner spent Thursday checking out various points of interest in Lake and Porter counties.
Among them was the Moraine Nature Preserve a bit north of Valparaiso in Liberty Township, where officials from the DNR’s Division of Nature Preserves gave him an overview of the property.
“This is one of the jewels of our nature preserve system,” said Ronald Hellmich, director of the division. “This is the first one that we actively managed.”
Bortner served 15 years as the DNR’s director of state parks before taking over leadership of the department in early August. Gov. Eric Holcomb selected Bortner to replace former director Cameron Clark, who retired in July.
The visit to Moraine Nature Preserve was sandwiched between a stop at the LaSalle Fish and Wildlife Area along the Kankakee River at the Illinois border, and a trip to the Portage Lakefront and Riverwalk to meet with National Park Service officials and view erosion from Lake Michigan.
Trips to visit natural resources in the southeast and southwest parts of the state are scheduled for later this month. Bortner, of Bedford, earned a degree in public affairs from Indiana University and serves as the president of the National Association of State Park Directors.
Parks across the state had a
busy summer, he said, and that has continued into the fall with many of them booked at 90% or more of capacity through the end of this month.
The parks are a salve now, during the COVID-19 pandemic, as they were in the days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he said.
“When people are looking for normalcy, they turn to the outside,” Bortner said.
The state has sold more than 21,000 more annual passes this year than last year which Bortner said was good news because people weren’t stopping by for just one visit to a state park.
“We’re seeing it everywhere,” he said of the increase in visitors, from nature preserves to the Brown County and Indiana Dunes state parks. “No matter what happens,” whether it’s politics or the pandemic, he said, referring to the nature preserve, “this never changes.”
Since its inception more than five years ago, the grassroots organization Dunes Action has fired inquiries at the DNR about the renovation of the pavilion at Indiana Dunes State Park and plans for a banquet center there.
The projects, a public/private partnership between the DNR and Pavilion Partners, led by Valparaiso businessman Chuck Williams, have raised the ire of Dunes Action representatives, who want to see the pavilion restored but without the planned bars and other revisions, and are against the use of beachfront property in a state park for a banquet center.
Jim Sweeney, co-founder of Dunes Action, had some contact with Bortner when he was director of state parks and reservoirs for the DNR.
“I’m glad that the DNR hired from within and I’m glad someone with a natural resources background got hired,” he said, adding the department’s former director, Clark, had a legal background. “Dan is very personable.”
Sweeney encouraged Bortner and division supervisors from the DNR to talk to their constituents.
While work on the pavilion has continued, the status of plans for the adjacent banquet center remain unclear.
“We’ve been asking,” Sweeney said. “Nobody has communicated to us recently that the banquet center is still on.”