The Lake Where You Live

“Harold? You don’t need to wear a patch on your arm to have honor.” — Lt. Kaffee to Lance Corporal Dawson in the movie “A Few Good Men.”

One of the best-conceived and most successful lake protection programs I know about is rolling out across Minnesota.

Called Lake Steward, it began on the Gull Chain of Lakes at Brainerd, but it is now spreading to lakes statewide under the leadership of Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates, the state lake association.

The premise is simple: Ask property owners to volunteer to have their lakefront sites evaluated according to a few simple criteria. Those who meet the criteria receive a colorful Lake Steward sign to post on their lakefront.

What do those criteria look like? The Gull Chain program looks at whether the property has a buffer of vegetation from the water’s edge 25 to 50 feet inland; to what extent the rest of the property (the upland) has trees, shrubs and natural ground cover; whether there is rock riprap at the shoreline; and whether the property owner uses fertilizers, pesticides and other chemicals.

The state program is bit more involved: its additional criteria include proper maintenance of the septic system and the capture of stormwater runoff on the land. In both cases, the criteria represent practices that owners generally can adopt without significant effort or expense. There’s nothing coercive in either scheme — it’s all strictly voluntary. And far from shaming people who do not follow wise practices, it rewards people who do, with public recognition.

How effective is this program? Gull Lake provides an example. After the first three years, the Gull Chain of Lake Association had recognized 85 Lake Stewards, had 127 more properties being evaluated, had a 25 percent participation rate among lakefront property owners, and had placed three miles of shoreline under Lake Steward protection.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of the program: it is self-propagating. When Gull Chain association leaders stuck pins in a map to mark the locations of Lake Steward properties, they discovered that the pins cluster. That is, a property owner posts a Lake Steward sign, and suddenly neighbors are curious — they want one, too, and ask how to get it.

The greatest thing about these programs is that the best practices they advocate, although simple, are the kind that when taken together and widely applied can have substantial benefits for fish and wildlife habitat, water quality, scenic values, and more.

I would certainly like to see this program, with some tailoring to local conditions, replicated here in our lake-rich northern counties. If Lake Steward interests you or your lake association board, you are welcome to contract me.

Meanwhile, there’s no need to wait for this program to roll out officially in your county or on your lake — you can voluntarily adopt these best practices on your property at any time. To borrow an idea from “A Few Good Men”: You don’t need to have a sign on your pier to be a Lake Steward. Somewhere in there perhaps lies the seed for a New Year’s resolution.

Ted Rulseh is a writer, author and lake advocate who lives on Birch Lake in Oneida County. His new book, “Ripple Effects,” has been released by UW Press. You can learn about it by visiting  https://thelakeguy.net.