St. Germain committee mulls wake boat ordinance

During a meeting of the St. Germain Lakes Committee on Thursday, May 16, committee member Bob Schell presented a draft ordinance to the body for its consideration. The ordinance — should it be adopted — would prohibit boats from using ballast or fins to create enhanced waves and wakes on lakes within the town.

The discussion followed a two-hour presentation on May 15 to the Sayner/St. Germain Fish and Wildlife Club by retired Presque Isle attorney Richard Phillips.

“Richard really knows his stuff,” Schell told the lakes committee. Referring to Phillips’ presentation, he said “It’s unfortunate, because I was expecting more people. There were 40-some. We were expecting more than that. Nobody from the town board showed up. I was hoping some of them would, because it’s becoming far and far more important.”

“I think most of you have been reading the papers,” Schell said. “Winchester adopted its wake ordinance in March. Newbold just adopted theirs last Thursday night. Lake Tomahawk and Cloverland have both submitted draft ordinances to the DNR. Lake Tomahawk will adopt theirs by mid-June. Several other Vilas towns are doing it, and I understand the Tribe has totally outlawed it, and they put in some tough enforcement. They said — I think — that they’re going to impound vehicles and stuff like that as fines. They’re not going to mess around.”

“So, it’s coming folks,” he said. “And that’s what this committee has been talking about for three years. We were waiting for the groundswell to hit. Well, it’s hitting; right now. And it’s something we should talk about.”

“Number one, the boats aren’t banned,” Schell explained, describing a legal technicality. He said what would be banned would be “the act of creating a big wake. You can’t ban a boat from a lake because of the Public Trust Doctrine. But what you’re doing is putting in ordinances to prevent enhanced wake. In other words, somebody can have a wake boat out there without a ballast in it. They can probably water-ski behind it. As long as they’re not performing the enhanced-wake function, they’ll be legal.”

“But once they start moving that stern down and putting ballast in their tanks,” he said, “it’ll be illegal.”

“Some of the justification of keeping them off the lakes is acquired from the literature from the boat manufacturers,” Schell said. “When they put out their brochures to sell their boats — and these boats are $200,000! A cheap one is a hundred-and-some thousand! — they brag about how high their waves are. They have certain models where the waves are four-foot-eleven or something. They brag that they can make a wave that big.”

“And they’re pretty dangerous,” he said. “They’re finding out that you can’t see over the bow of these things. That’s true of any boat, but especially with these.”

“Richard has written these ordinances for all these towns, which are pretty much the same,” Schell explained. “A lot of people were worried that there would be a patchwork of these things; that everything would be different; it would cause a problem. But pretty much all of these ordinances have been the same.”

“The only difference that comes in is that everybody’s got their own lakes,” he said, stressing local control as the key to effective legislation.

“The lakes committee knows here last fall, our representatives — Swearingen and Felzkowski — put in a proposal that was written by the boating industry,” Schell said. “It was so flawed, they put in there that you can’t run a wake boat on a lake that’s under 50 acres. Well, there’s already a law on the books that says you can’t have a boat making waves on a 50-acre lake.”

“Richard did some research for St. Germain,” he said. “Come to find out, the only two lakes we’ve got a real concern about would be — because Alma, Content, Lost, and Stella don’t have any areas that are over 20 feet (deep) — Moon has almost half of its acreage at more than 20 feet, but it’s only 131 acres. You can’t run too much on 131 acres. But Found Lake, — I thought it was more like 15 or 20 — but Found Lake only has seven acres where it’s 20 feet deep or more, so it’s pretty much impossible; those are just two separate holes.”

“Big St. Germain and Little Saint are two different stories,” Schell said. “As you know, Big Saint has got 1,500-something, and Little Saint has got 980. On Little Saint, West Bay is probably the only place that they’d be able to run. On Big Saint, of course, there are some reefs and bars out there, but that would be a target.”

“The reason I bring those two up is that the more towns that put in these ordinances, these folks want to find a place to go,” Schell said. “Where are they going to go? Where there aren’t ordinances.” 

“One of the first times this topic came up,” interjected an audience member who did not identify herself, “We were at our annual meeting. There were a bunch of individuals sitting right behind me from Lake Minocqua. And the guy said ‘Well, if we can’t do it on Minocqua Lake, we’re coming here’.”

“I know some people that would take their wake boat to Lake Tomahawk,” Schell said, “but now that ordinance has gone in. Where are they going to go? We’d better not take too much longer on this.”

“I have for you a draft ordinance for St. Germain,” he said.

“Good!” replied two audience members in unison.

“This is an ordinance that follows all the other ordinances that have been put in,” Schell explained. “This has met the test of the DNR in all these instances. There’s 21 enhanced-wake ordinances that have been passed, and about 10 of those have been passed just in the last seven months or so, just to give you an idea.”

“The biggest part of doing the ordinance is passing the DNR approval,” he said, “And something to do for that is called a condition report. There’s a manual that the DNR puts out on how to put in a boating ordinance. And in that thing, one of the things it calls for is a condition report. We looked at the condition report for the Town of Newbold — right south of us across the highway — and this is what they used.”

“Within this, each lake is delineated in an Excel spreadsheet,” Schell said. “All the characteristics of it are defined. But this is what we would have to do for St. Germain, and each lake would be responsible for that.”

“Who’s going to enforce this?” an audience member asked.

“That’s a good question,” Schell replied. “Most people want to follow the law. There’s always a few who don’t. But there are a lot of examples where if the law is there…there are ways to enforce it as a town, just like we can enforce zoning infractions. The town board has the authority to enforce.”

“Your greatest weapon is this,” he said, holding up his cellphone. “You take a video of the registration and you show it to your town officials. Generally, that will go to a warning. The second time, the officials can go into the courthouse and get it enforced.”

“Generally, though,” Schell said, “If you’re coming up from Milwaukee or Wausau with a wake boat, you’re not going to go to a landing where it’s not allowed.”

“Are you presenting this to the town board?”, another audience member asked.

“No, this is for us, the Lakes Committee,” Schell answered. “This is a going thing, and every lake has got to put in their piece. You’ll see by this condition report, it goes lake-by-lake.”

“We can’t do anything today with this,” Schell explained. “But we can get it on the agenda, and it will be a discussion/action type item. I don’t think we’ll get it done in one meeting ... I just wanted you to have an idea of what we’ve got going.”

“We’ll attack this starting next month,” he said. “And I’ll be in on the discussions.”

“What’s the timeline?,” asked an audience member. “If we discuss this at our next meeting in June and potentially put together our own draft, then we have to present it to the town board at their next meeting after that?”

“Well, we’re going to have to decide if we can get our acts together,” Schell answered. “Because every lake is going to have to contribute their own piece to go into this. We have that manual from the DNR to follow. We have to notify the DNR 60 days in advance, so we’re talking about into August.” 

“I’m a little confused,” another audience member said. “We’re going to do all this work before the town board even considers adopting this?” 

“That’s exactly why we have to meet next time,” Schell replied. “Because normally, we’d go to the board with a recommendation saying ‘We would like to proceed with this ordinance,’ OK? And luckily, we can say ‘We already have a draft ordinance, and we already have all these pieces together’.”

Supervisor Patric Niggemeier is the newly-appointed lakes committee chairman. 

“The more information you bring to the table,” he said, “The more the board will understand.”

“It’s at that point where we can take that condition report and send it to the DNR for approval,” Schell said.

An audience member asked if the ordinance would pertain to “Big walleye boats with 350- or 400-horsepower engines” or to pontoon boats with similarly large power-plants.

“I know what you’re getting at,” Schell replied. “But this is only for enhanced wake, ballasted boats making those enhanced waves. They’re about four percent of the market now, but I’ve been told it’s growing exponentially … This would be a start.”

“It’s just a draft; it’s just a starting point,” Schell told The Lakeland Times immediately following the meeting. “We’re trying to put our hat on good science here; not just folklore.”