Fiber optic crews are working on laying cable beneath the Lake Leelanau narrows that will provide the missing piece to the long awaited Leelanau County Broadband project.
“That is a big milestone, that is what’s needed to reach northern Michigan (Leelanau County),” said Chris Scherrer, Leelanau County broadband project manager. “Part of the plan for point broadband is to build a redundant network. Meaning that the nodes on the backbone have no less than two connections.... For no service interruption for the residents.”
Scherrer added this is a critical pathway to connect Leelanau Township, all the way to the Grand Traverse Lighthouse, and northern Suttons Bay Township including Omena.
“This is a big grid they are going to build ... It takes a long time to build a network of this size,” he said.
The fiber cable placement was originally permitted on the south side of M-204, but congestion of other fiber optic lines from phone providers prompted the project to be re-permitted through Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) on the north side of the narrows, where Boathouse Vineyards is located. The fresh fiber optic line lays several feet below the lake bed.
This cable will connect with the fiber optic construction in Leelanau Township and northern Suttons Bay Township. This is the missing piece of the track, according to Scherrer.
“The goal is to have the unserved completed by the end of the year,” he said.
The project is projected to cost $5 million – with $3.2 million coming from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) – and the other $1.8 million funding is undetermined, according to Scherrer. The project was originally scheduled to be completed by the end of 2023. The broadband network is has been placed online in Leland Township south of M-204 and west of Lake Leelanau, Centerville and Solon Townships, and portions of Kasson and Elmwood Townships. Scherrer says the project will be done by the end of 2024.
The board voted unanimously at its Jan. 24 meeting to approve a $96,000 contract with Scherrer of DCS Technology for managing the Point Broadband project.
Mike Young of DLS said this about the process of laying fiber optic under the Lake Leelanau narrows: “We gotta go find everything that’s in the ground already.… There’s gas in there, there’s a sewer on the other side. There’s all that. And then we just gotta find our path. Stay within the boundaries, get it down, get enough depth underneath the water,” Young said. “ We gotta be at least 10 feet under the bottom of the water. Get under there and get up the other side. And then hopefully everything comes back. It’s all water, sand ... that stuff is hard to pull in sometimes ... we set up here yesterday, we got out here yesterday morning and started finding everything, spotting the gases, making sure everything was, we set up about 2 o’clock and shot it and pulled it back last night.”
