June 2020

by Scott Brown, Michigan Waterfront Alliance Board Member

A dramatic upsurge in the number of wake boats operating on Michigan’s inland waters has resulted in a significant escalation in reports of overturned kayaks, swamped fishing boats, and damage to both developed and natural shorelines. The increasingly alarming situation has not only elicited the intense anger of affected waterfront property owners, paddle boat enthusiasts, and fisherman but it has also helped attract the attention of local, county, and state government officials to an increasingly important water resource management issue. A sharp increase in sales of the extraordinarily powerful and frequently disruptive boats that are capable of generating wakes whose energy greatly exceeds those that occur naturally as a result of high winds has served to bring the contentious issue to the forefront of public debate.

Based upon the findings of recent studies of the potential ecological impacts of wake boating conducted on inland lakes located in the province of Quebec, by an “average of a factor of four times”, wakes generated by near shore wake boat passes induced a significant increase in the level of energy reaching vulnerable shorelines. Moreover, a study of the impact of wake boat operation on critical shallow water habitat also conducted on the lakes of Quebec, revealed that high levels of turbulence associated with wake boat operation and their high energy wakes is capable of re-suspending bottom sediments, damaging aquatic plants, and of disturbing critical fish habitat situated in depths of up to fifteen feet. Lake managers, aquatic biologists, and conservationists throughout Michigan and the Great Lakes region are increasingly aware of the fact that frequent exposure to the high energy waves generated by wake sport enabling boats is likely to be having a long-term negative impact on a steadily escalating number of vulnerable inland lakes and other ecologically sensitive aquatic ecosystems.

Michigan Waterfront Alliance would greatly appreciate you sharing your experiences with the negative consequences of near shore wake boat operation with your local law enforcement agency as well as with your respective state representative and senator.

Michigan Waterfront Alliance Votes to Support the 2020
Michigan Inland Lakes Convention at the ‘Platinum’ Level

Recognizing the overall importance of pro-actively supporting the on-going efforts of the Michigan Inland Lakes Partnership, a statewide collaborative organization dedicated to protecting our state’s vast heritage of high quality inland lakes by advancing stewardship, the Officers and Directors of Michigan Waterfront Alliance are pleased to announce that they recently unanimously voted to help enable the upcoming 2020 Michigan Inland Lakes Convention by being a ‘platinum’ level supporter. The Michigan Inland Lakes Convention is a biennial event that brings together lake management professionals, researchers, local government officials, lake enthusiasts, and others interested in protecting Michigan’s water resources.

In addition to providing financial support to the Convention, Michigan Waterfront Alliance has also elected to support the inland lake focused event by submitting three distinct proposals for speaker presentations. For more information regarding the topics of our proposed speaker presentations, please read President Bob Frye’s article that appears at the top of this edition of our newsletter.

Scheduled to occur on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, September 16th, 17th, and 18th, this year’s Convention will occur in a virtual format due to the significant public health concerns currently being posed by the novel corona virus pandemic. To learn more about the upcoming 2020 Michigan Inland Lakes Convention, visit the convention dedicated web page.

Primarily attributed to the overland transport of small-craft boats, recreational boaters are known to play a key role in the unintentional introduction of an increasingly diverse array of often harmful exotic aquatic invasive plant and animal species within thousands of public boating accessible inland lakes in Michigan. A multitude of problems associated with the introduction of aquatic invasive species have been compounded by the fact that neither the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) or the Department of the Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy (EGLE) are presently capable of providing any level of funding assistance to lakefront communities striving to protect valuable public natural resources from the often deleterious influences of exotic species.

In the absence of state funding, or other viable funding options, lake associations and township officials are therefore left little choice but to work together in order to deploy Public Act 188, the Township Public Improvements Act, that provides township officials with the means to assess inland lake property owners for the cost of managing or controlling aquatic invasive species (AIS). Recognizing the inadequacy and unfairness associated with Michigan’s only AIS funding mechanism, Michigan Waterfront Alliance is pro-actively seeking to establish a viable and sustainable means of stakeholder-based funding that would permit recreational boaters to voluntarily contribute to funding earmarked for aquatic invasive species management. Rather than supporting an outright increase in boater registration fees, Michigan Waterfront Alliance is working pro-actively in Lansing to promote the creation of a donation check-off box that would allow recreational boaters to voluntarily contribute funds to support AIS management efforts during the once every three year process of registering their water craft with the Michigan Secretary of State.

The efforts of Michigan Waterfront Alliance are supported by the findings of a number of academic research projects, including the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center sponsored research that is discussed in the previous article, which strongly suggests that the majority of the public stakeholders of our inland lakes, primarily recreational boaters, would in fact be willing to contribute more in terms of resource user fees, for example, in order to support enhanced funding of programs designed to prevent, manage, and control exotic aquatic invasive species.