Quote:
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Originally Posted by GWC...
"...Your "mountain lake" contained boathouses, long before you were born, so why the "go to Miami" approach to the situation...?"
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I'd been
sort of neutral on the boathouse issue — until reading this.
For decades, we've been looking across at a crooked, antique boathouse built out over the lake on creaky rock cribs. It's been the target of our "long swims" for
as long and may date from the 20s or 30s. It's just a normal part of our view.
Over time, dozens of other boathouses have popped up within our casual view.
Complete with the noise and debris of excavating/dredging, tree-cutting, reconstructing with living quarters within or above, bird-excluders, plastic owls or screens, there are other considerations:
1) One older multi-story Tuftonboro boathouse that was built in/over the lake started to convert to a huge house. DES found out, and reversed that infraction. It may have been a compliant owner, but it remains a too-rare DES success story.
2) Another owner (in sight here) cut the trees for his boathouse and then casually flipped open his checkbook to pay the fines for cutting
all the trees that remained along his shoreline.
3) Lately, dredgers have tried to contain the silt and clay residue with booms and pumps. There are always leaks -- identified by the cloudy waters drifting from the site. (As previously noted, silt and clay contribute to favorable milfoil habitat).
Sidebar: The required so-called black plastic silt fences around new lakefront construction are one of my pet peeves: They're installed by unknowing builders to "Keep Legal". They
fail when properly installed and
fail when casually installed. They succeed only in locations where there's no reason to have them installed!
4) Also (and not previously mentioned) is that any shorefront impediment to natural rainwater runoff will increase
the speed of runoff around it into the lake. (Think of a giant shorefront boulder).
Runoff has nowhere to go...runoff speeds up...and more effectively washes soil, nutrients, and the normally-stabilizing "duff" of tree litter
around the impediment and into the lake. That's why "ridge-development" (like
Äkwä Vistä's many "impediments") will negatively affect the long-term health of the lake. IMHO.
We're surrounded by mountains -- and loon calls: I'll defend our "mountain lake" description. As a long-time Miami resident, I know how the "Beautiful People" can alter shore-scapes.
Maybe there
will be fewer boathouses in the future. There's always lakeshore-friendly canvas awnings that can be rolled up for the winter.