
People have been visiting the area surrounding the Village of L’Anse, which means “the cove” in French, to recreate, fish, camp and enjoy the water since long before the village’s founding in the 1870s.
Located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, L’Anse offers a unique blend of historic, small-town charm and wild, scenic beauty. It’s only five minutes away from what longtime resident and Village Manager Robert La Fave describes as “real wilderness,” but it has the services and infrastructure needed to support nearly 2,000 residents. The village sits at the edge of Lake Superior, adjacent to and partly within the L’Anse Indian Reservation, owned by the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. Two creeks, one with a series of small waterfalls, run through town toward Lake Superior’s sparkling Keweenaw Bay. It’s a beautiful location, La Fave said.

“I wake up every morning—I can see Keweenaw Bay from my house—and I just get excited,” he said. “We’re in such a special place. I think that’s why people choose to live here and raise their families here.”
Originally from downstate, from the Grand Rapids area, La Fave is now in his 17th year serving as L’Anse’s manager and running its day-to-day operations. He moved to L’Anse after earning his master’s degree in public administration, and he recently earned a second master’s degree, in environmental and energy policy, as well as a graduate certificate in public policy. He, like other local residents, cares deeply about preserving the area’s natural beauty and keeping its environment and waters healthy.
Residents of L’Anse get drinking water and fish from Lake Superior, as do their friends and neighbors in the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community in nearby Zeba and others who live in the region. The water is also important for recreation. La Fave and his wife, Jan, and their five children have long visited the beach at the L’Anse waterfront to cool off on hot summer days, and there are community concerts to enjoy at the waterfront park on summer nights.
A recent project to improve the village’s wastewater services, with funding from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development (RD), will help keep Lake Superior’s Keweenaw Bay and other local waters pristine.
With $1.875 million in grants and $625,000 in low-interest loans from RD’s Water and Waste Disposal Loan and Grant Program in 2021 and 2022, L’Anse was able to make extensive upgrades to its wastewater treatment system that make it more efficient and reliable. About 1,800 rural Michigan residents rely on the village to treat their wastewater, which comes into the system from residential and commercial sources in L’Anse, the community of Zeba, and elsewhere in L’Anse Township on the east side of Keweenaw Bay: homes, shops, churches, restaurants, a marina, elementary and high schools, a community college, a veterinary clinic, a hospital and even a county jail. Effective treatment is essential, because the treated wastewater discharges into Linden Creek, a Blue Ribbon trout stream that flows through L’Anse directly into Keweenaw Bay.
“We have a very tight permit that we work with,” La Fave said. “It’s very important that we’re doing as much as we possibly can to make sure we’re doing a good job of returning a good environmental product back into the general environment.”
The Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC) shares this concern and care for the local environment. One vision outlined on its website and within its strategic plan is that “the waters of Lake Superior, inland lakes and streams are the cleanest water in the world.”
“The waterways are central to KBIC’s identity here,” said Brigitte LaPointe-Dunham, Chief Executive Officer of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community. “It’s ingrained in our values to protect and keep the water clean.”
She added, “The relationship between KBIC and the L’Anse village office has really grown stronger because of impactful projects like the wastewater project—mainly because we’re all working toward a common goal, and that is keeping the environment clean, keeping this place pristine as it’s supposed to be, and working together to do that.”
Through the extensive project, completed in February, the village replaced wastewater collection pipes; repaired its sewer main; and replaced or upgraded the headworks, sludge storage, primary clarifier, electrical aeration blowers, and several lift stations at its treatment facility.
Some bids for work came in higher than expected, which affected the amount of funding needed, and supply-chain issues delayed the arrival of a few components, but the project was ultimately a success. A longtime engineering vendor for the village and dedicated people within L’Anse’s wastewater department provided information and input about critical needs, and the village found a good contractor, La Fave said. RD Area Specialist Crystal O’Neal at the USDA’s service center in Gladstone, Michigan, helped L’Anse obtain the grant and loan funding.

“RD was just a great partner,” La Fave said. “It’s great working with an agency that you know is understanding and receptive to some of the challenges you’re facing.”
The RD funding will help L’Anse keep rates affordable for customers, who ultimately share in system-related costs.
“When you have funding sources where you have generous grant and very-low-interest loan opportunities,” La Fave said, “it allows us to make those investments in the system that are necessary, and also that help enhance and protect our environment, and it helps keep the cost of running those systems lower.”
Now fully operational, the upgraded system uses best-in-class technology, he said. The project also addressed some issues associated with aging equipment that isn’t a good fit for today’s realities.
One example is clay collection pipes that were put in place about 100 years ago. When the ground gets saturated by heavy rains—which La Fave said are becoming more common in the last five to 10 years—those old pipes are susceptible to cracking and to allowing inflow and infiltration, which can result in higher wastewater volumes.
“The types of storms, rain events we’ve been having are very different from what I remember growing up as a kid living in Michigan,” La Fave said. “We’ve been getting these really intense, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes where you’re getting over an inch of rainwater all at once.”
Unexpected increases in wastewater coming through collection pipes—“volumes sometimes that are not typically what we’ve seen over the last 100 years or so,” La Fave said—can lead to capacity issues at treatment plants and in lift stations. By replacing those old clay pipes and reducing inflow and infiltration into the collection system, La Fave said, “we can help make sure we’re treating the product that we’re supposed to be treating that’s coming into our system and also helping to be good stewards of the environment around us.”
The village wants to provide the very best in the services it offers, La Fave said, including wastewater treatment.
“We want to help make sure that we are continuing to build a future for the folks that do decide to live here—that there is a future for them,” he said, “and that we maintain the resources that make this place an attractive place to be.”