Bayfield

Ontario couple files $2.2M lawsuit over beach house being swallowed by Lake Huron

Ontario couple files $2.2M lawsuit over beach house being swallowed by Lake Huron

The couple is telling their story publicly for the first time —  to warn others of the potential risk in buying shoreline property in Great Lakes communities, where the forces of erosion, fluctuating water levels and battering storms have been accelerated by climate change. Bousfield and Stumpf said once they discovered the house was at risk, they looked at options to remediate  the collapsing bluff in order to save the house from being swallowed by the sparkling blue waters of Lake Huron. But what they found was a dizzying array of choices that ranged from $370,000 to well over $1 million. The solutions included everything from building a retaining wall, to dumping enough dirt over the bluff to hold it up, even spraying the entire bluff with a substance called shotcrete (basically, sprayed concrete), which is typically used keep the sheer face of open pit mines from collapsing.