Area residents fear DNR will drop Eagle Spring Lake's water level

Sound familiar?
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Milw Journal Sentinel

...Such a drop in the level of the shallow-water lake will force many of the 240 property owners to extend their piers and shore stations farther into the lake at costs ranging from $500 to several thousand dollars, said Tom Day, chairman of the Eagle Spring Lake Management District. If they don't, they won't be able to get their boats into water.

An even greater fear is that the lower lake level will reduce property values because there will be less navigable water on the lake, Day said.

"Because suddenly it will be a less desirable lake for boating unless you want to just kayak, canoe," lake resident John Mann said.

...Lake management district officials, in turn, have asked the DNR to issue an order to allow the lake to permanently operate at the higher level.

But they believe, based on their reading of a DNR environmental assessment of their request, that state officials already have made up their minds and will order the water level reduced.

...He and Nate Cobb, a lake management district board member, countered that lowering the lake level would dry out about 12.6 acres of wetlands in the lake watershed. That land might then be overrun by invasive plant species such as buckthorn and purple loosestrife, they said, though the DNR assessment says native plant species could take hold in those areas.