Lake Tom town board OKs hazardous wake ordinance

With an audience of approximately 30 people looking on, the Lake Tomahawk town board passed a hazardous wake/enhanced wake ordinance at its May 8 meeting.

Town chairman George DeMet made a motion to send a draft of the ordinance to town attorney Greg Harrold and the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

The ordinance has been in development for a few months and its approval by the town board last week took less than a minute, occurring after a nearly 50-minute presentation from Carol and Richard Phillips of Presque Isle. 

The presentation by Carol Phillips, a retired civil engineer, was with regard to the environmental aspect of the hazardous wake/enhanced wake issue. Richard, a retired corporate attorney for Exxon/Mobil, focused on the legal aspects such as enforcement of hazardous/enhanced wake ordinances. 

“Some of you have probably heard stories about wake boats damaging docks, damaging more boats, the shoreline erosion,” Carol Phillips said at the beginning of her portion of the presentation. “That’s really just the tip of the iceberg. There’s stuff going on underwater also.”

Her slideshow and narrative included information on the differences between a waterski boat and a wake boat. 

“Ski boats try to make the least amount of wake possible so that somebody has a smooth skiing surface,” Carol Phillips said. “A wake boat is the exact opposite. They try to make the largest wake possible.”

This is accomplished with added weight and she talked about the use of ballast tanks, how those are installed, how they help the wake boat achieve the “bow up” effect that results in large waves that damage other boats, docks and the shoreline.

She also noted that the tanks are never empty, which can lead to the transfer of aquatic invasive species from one lake to another. 

Carol Phillips also touched on how the wake boats, with the propellor on their inboard engines angled to the lake bottom, stir up mercury that has been in a lake’s bottom in the sediment.

The mercury, she said, is on lake bottoms as the result of air pollution over the years. 

Not difficult to do

Richard Phillips introduced himself as “a recovering lawyer,” telling the town board as a corporate attorney for Exxon/Mobil, “I know about trade-offs between the economy and the environment.

“I’m OK with making internal combustion engines,” Phillips said. “I’m not OK with these (wake boats).”

 He said he retired early because he “detested the practice of law” but “became a lawyer again.”

“I have the world’s narrowest legal specialty,” Phillips said. “I am a specialist and probably know as much as anyone in the state about enacting boating ordinances in Wisconsin. For free.”

He touched on the ability of towns in the state of Wisconsin to create ordinances such as a hazardous/enhanced wake ordinance. 

“You have the privilege of living in one of the few places in the country where, at the local level, where you live with the lakes, where you can make the decisions on what the lakes do,” Phillips explained. “As of today, 20 Wisconsin towns and cities have enhanced wake ordinances in place. In full legal effect. Of the 20 ordinances, 16 wholly prohibit enhanced wakes from ballasted boats. Four others, all in Sawyer County and all on massive flowages, restrict wake boats to 700 feet from shore. They permit them but require them to be 700 feet from shore.”

Fifteen more Wisconsin towns, “quite a few of them in Vilas and Oneida,” are working on hazardous wake ordinances, he added.

“My own town of Presque Isle finally, after three years, looks poised to pass an ordinance,” Phillips said. “I’m working with three other towns ... in Vilas and Oneida county and on the Waupaca chain. Lots of other places are in the process of putting in place ordinances. Right now. It’s not difficult to do this.”

He said Wisconsin law “clearly authorizes” the ability of each city, town and village “to regulate its waters.”

“Counties cannot do this,” Phillips said. “Counties cannot regulate lakes in the state of Wisconsin. A county can only regulate rivers flowing through the county. So, to protect the lakes of Lake Tomahawk, you have two choices, either your town board can do it with the support of the citizens or Madison can do it and my best advice: don’t wait to rely on Madison.”

He mentioned a manual the DNR has published that contains information needed “to put an ordinance in place.”

“It’s really quite easy,” Phillips said. “One of the basic steps is you prepare a draft ordinance and a condition report. You provide these to the Wisconsin DNR.”

From there, he said the DNR has 20 days to review the material submitted by the municipality.

“The principal purpose of the their review is to identify if in any regard, you’re doing something that conflicts with state law,” Phillips said.

Once that’s done, he said there’s a period of 60 days from the time a town board “can vote for an enact the ordinance.”

“Once you’ve enacted the ordinance, you give a copy of it to the DNR because they keep a huge database of every town ordinance for every lake in the state and you post simple signage at every public landing on all affected lakes in the town.”

Phillips said one of the more “complicated issues” involves what he described as “border lakes” or lakes a town shares with other towns. 

An example of that would be Tomahawk Lake, which is part of a chain and won’t be subject to the hazardous wake ordinance for Lake Tomahawk. 

Another question that has come up frequently involves enforcement of the hazardous wake ordinance.

“I very often hear two things, one is ‘It’s not enforceable,’” Phillips said. “I spent a lot of time working with the 20 towns that have an active ordinance in the state. The number of times in the entire state of Wisconsin that any of these ordinances has been enforced is zero and that sounds surprising. There were two instances where a caution was given and in both cases, the boater claimed to not know the ordinance and in both cases, when they learned of it, they stopped immediately. They went to another town.”

He said wake surfing is “so obvious” and “gets on the nerves” of many other people on the lakes “that if there was an ordinance in place, there is just no instance in the state of Wisconsin where, thus far — the first ordinance was in 2008, 16 years ago in Mequon ... there’s no instance where anyone has ever had to enforce an ordinance. It may come some day but by and large, people will respect laws.”

Phillips took time to go through the process towns without magistrate judges have to pursue enforcement if needed, making the point there is a way for town or village officials to proceed through a county’s circuit court. 

When he was finished with his presentation, Phillips received a round of applause from the people in the room as did the town board soon after when DeMet made his motion to proceed and it passed.

After the meeting in comments to The Lakeland Times, DeMet reiterated the ordinance doesn’t include Tomahawk Lake “because it isn’t solely within the township.”

“All lakes that lie totally within the township boundaries will be effected,” he said.

DeMet was also asked once again about the enforcement issue and he indicated that his stance hasn’t changed. 

“We’re not too concerned because generally, your neighbors are who you have to answer to if you’re violating the ordinance,” he said. “We’ve already had one or two instances where people have used wake boats and a neighbor will talk to them and that usually resolves it right there.”

Brian Jopek may be reached via email at [email protected].