Seasonal, Island Coast Guard Station Not Opening Due to Personnel Shortage

Coast Guard Station Green Bay and Coast Guard Station Washington Island will not be open this season as the U.S. Coast Guard Service deals with a shortage of personnel. Source: U.S. Coast Guard.

More reliance upon volunteer USCG Auxiliary

The U.S. Coast Guard will not open its seasonal Washington Island Station this year due to a shortage of personnel that’s hit the entire military branch.

Petty Officer First Class Taylor Barnes, who is going through his third winter at the Sturgeon Bay U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) station, said they’ve shed one-third of their Sturgeon Bay crew, dropping from 36 to 24 members.

“It’s happening everywhere,” Barnes said. “Cutters are getting laid up [boats of 65 feet or larger], smaller ones are getting put on blocks.”

The USCG typically employs more than 55,000 nationally, but is nearly 10% short of that, according to an October 2023 release about adjusted USCG operations plans for 2024. Not enough people are enlisting, with not enough bodies to fill positions. It’s the largest workforce shortage in the Coast Guard’s 233-year-history, one that’s significantly impacting daily operations, according to correspondence from U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher’s office.

“The Coast Guard cannot maintain the same level of operations with our current shortfall – we cannot do the same with less,” wrote Admiral Linda Fagan, USCG Commandant, and USCG Master Chief Petty Officer, Heath Jones, on the USCG’s official website. 

The USCG’s adjusted operational plan is to close the small Green Bay station and not open the seasonal Washington Island station, Barnes said, servicing the expansive area out of Sturgeon Bay – “one of the largest areas of any Coast Guard Station,” encompassing all of Green Bay, the shores of eastern Door County to Western Lake Michigan, and the waters north to Michigan’s Garden Peninsula.

Response times from Sturgeon Bay to the upper reaches of that territory will take an hour and forty-five minutes – “if we’re really booking it,” Barnes said – versus 45 minutes from the Washington Island station. 

That’s cause for concern for Hans Lux, Washington Town Board chair. USCG personnel provide search and rescue assistance, law enforcement, ice rescue operations and protection of infrastructure critical to the maritime environment of the United States. Lux wants to know what local emergency responders can expect with the island station closed.

“What responsibilities are they looking for us to take over,” Lux said. “None of that has been laid out as to their expectations of what the locals will now cover for them, and how that will affect my town budget. I need to know those things in order to properly plan.”

Lux has sent a notification email to all Door County municipal leaders and has secured a meeting with the USCG for April 4 on the island to talk about repercussions and expectations.

Auxiliary and Good Samaritan Assistance

Out of the Sturgeon Bay station between Oct. 1, 2022 and Sept. 30, 2023 – the USCG calendar year – Barnes said the USCG conducted 56 search and rescue operations in Door County waters, including nine ice rescues between Dec. 20, 2022 and April 2, 2023.

Barnes said the primary reason they launch is for vessels that get disabled or adrift.

“The engine died, or they ran out of gas,” he said.

They also boarded 381 boats during that time to check safety compliance – life jackets, fire extinguishers and DUI checks.

Doing the same with less may mean heavier reliance on the Good Samaritan Law, Barnes said, which empowers any boater to assist with a rescue while the USCG is in transit.

“We put out a broadcast, channel 16,” for example, Barnes said, “‘Vessel at Sherwood Lighthouse taking water, four people on board, any vessels assist in the area.’”

There’s also the Coast Guard Auxiliary – uniformed members who volunteer their time to support the USCG operations, promote and improve recreational boating safety, and provide trained crews and facilities to enhance safety and security. 

“The auxiliary is a force when it comes to boater safety and if they are under orders, they can also operate in search and rescue,” Barnes said.

Nationally, there are 26,000 auxiliary members. In the Green Bay flotilla, there are some 88 auxiliarists, all reporting to Division Commander Kevin Osgood.

“We do the work to cut down on the number of emergency responses that the active Coast Guard has to go on,” said Osgood, who spends his days as the Executive Director of the Door County Maritime Museum. 

There are eight members of the auxiliary in Door County, one of those is Jeff Feuerstein. He said performing voluntary vessel safety checks and providing boating safety classes and education is gratifying volunteer work.

“I’m finding a dozen people a year that didn’t have the functional safety equipment they need,” he said. 

Even before the USCG shortage, the need for auxiliary members has always been greater in Door County given its 300 miles of coastline and 4,000-plus boat slips. Osgood said they’d like to have more than eight members on the peninsula. 

“There is so much boating here in Door County, so many boaters, many of them new,” Osgood said.

Becoming a volunteer means passing a background check by the Department of Homeland Security.

“If you pass that, you’re pretty much in,” Osgood said. 

To learn more about becoming an auxiliary volunteer, contact Osgood at [email protected].