Sand keeps winning at Bender Park. The Oak Creek boat launch on Lake Michigan needed its fourth dredging since it opened in 1999 after sediment buildup left the harbor water ranging from just 12 to 6 inches deep, effectively closing the launch to many boaters until crews finished work this spring. Now a volunteer group called Bender Park Friends is pushing Milwaukee County to stop treating the problem with temporary fixes and instead fund a permanent breakwall.
The group, a nonprofit formed in March 2025, has circulated a petition seeking federal support and collected 422 signatures, as reported by TMJ4 News. Bender Park Friends volunteers regularly sweep and clean the park, pull weeds, and work on other visible improvements, welcoming new volunteers at meetings held the first Wednesday of each month at 6 p.m. Chad Griswold, a member of the group, said dredging is not a lasting solution to the harbor’s chronic sand problem.
The spring 2026 dredging effort cost more than $1 million, according to the same TMJ4 report, and followed a familiar pattern for Bender Park. Milwaukee County Parks had already spent $820,500 on the capital dredging project before officially reopening the boat launch on May 19, restoring navigable depth in time for summer boating, per Milwaukee County Parks.
A Problem Dating Back Decades
This is not a new fight. County records show mechanical dredging at the Bender Park harbor entrance in 2007, 2011, and 2013, with the 2013 job alone removing 3,000 cubic yards of sediment at a cost of roughly $150,000, according to documents presented to the Milwaukee County Board. The same records note that a 2007 engineering study by consulting firm JJR evaluated long-term structural fixes, including extending coastal breakwaters and reconstructing the south jetty to push the harbor entrance into deeper water — but capital budget requests based on that study in 2019 and 2020 were never funded…