Wisconsin Lakes and the LWA
Call for Urgent Action to Protect Lakebed Life from Enhanced Wakes
See it happen – watch this 45sec video
Operating between 9 and 12 mph, specialized wake-surfing boats use their unique hull designs, additional ballast water, and powerful engines to displace a significantly greater volume of water than any other watercraft. This massive, focused displacement imparts a powerful, plunging energy downward, outward, and rearward, channeling destructive forces that blow up the lake bottom, shredding plants and smothering fish habitat.
These forces require much greater lake depth to dissipate the destructive energy, preventing damage to the lake bottom habitat vital to the lake’s health.
- Current Wisconsin law does not protect aquatic plant life or the life that depends on that habitat to survive.
- Current Wisconsin law does not protect the lake bottom and prevent the resulting resuspension of heavy metals and/or phosphorus, which fuels deadly algae blooms.
- Current Wisconsin law does not adequately protect Wisconsin’s $25.8 billion tourist economy, which heavily depends on its pristine natural resources.
Why Call for 30 Feet
A minimum of 30 feet provides:
- 25 feet for energy dissipation, the reasonable distance defined by research studies1, necessary to protect the aquatic plant canopy (tops) down to the sediment-laden lakebed.
- Plus a 5-foot additional buffer allowing for variation in lake maps, depth finders, and fluctuating lake levels.
An even greater depth than 30 feet is strongly recommended because:
- Wake boats continue to get bigger and heavier, with more ballast and more powerful engines than the models used in some older studies.
- Lake bottom contours change rapidly and suddenly, ex, shoals, reefs, and sunken islands.
- Aquatic plant colonies grow taller over the season.
- The impact of the start-up from a dead stop. Very much like a dragster on a racetrack in the first 50 feet, the resulting thrust as the boat struggles to plow a wall of water to overcome inertia is significantly more disruptive to the lakebed than the forces created once the wake boat is at surfing speed. The heavily ballasted boat is effectively trying to “climb” out of the hole it makes in the water. Driven by exceptionally high-horsepower engines, the force required to do this creates a localized “explosive pressure spike” on the lakebed during start-up, which resuspends phosphorus that fuels algae blooms and uproots desirable vegetation that cannot reestablish itself in the constantly churned sediment.
- After the dead stop start-up, a boat in surf mode leaves a trench of destruction below until the surfer falls, and the start-up cycle repeats itself.
Outdated Laws, Modern Needs
Wisconsin’s waterway rules were written decades before wake surfing existed. With today’s surf boats and their more powerful technology, current standards no longer provide adequate protection for lake bottoms, shoreline habitat, wildlife, or other lake users.
A Balanced, Forward-Looking Solution
Requiring wake surfing to occur in waters more than 30 feet is a reasonable compromise. It protects other boaters and near-shoreline users, safeguards sensitive habitat, and ensures that Wisconsin’s lakes remain enjoyable for everyone—now and in the future.
Call to Action
Please contact your local town, village, and city leaders, and state legislators, and urge them to define a qualifying “wake sports area” as:
- Not less than 700 feet from all shorelines,
- Not less than 30 feet deep,
- Not less than 100 contiguous acres.
Additionally:
- All ballast systems must be flushed with hot water before launching into a different Wisconsin lake to prevent the spread of aquatic invasive species (AIS)
- Maintain Local Control – Allow towns, villages, and cities to enact more stringent restrictions than state law.
References:
- University of MN – St. Anthony Falls – Phase 1 & Phase 2 Studies, Lake Waramaug Wave Impact Study, Lake Beulah Wave Impact Study