By Jeff Forester, Executive Director of Minnesota Lakes and Rivers
Lake and river associations and their members are the unsung heroes of water resource protection in the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Lake association volunteers statewide spend over 1.2 million hours working at boat ramps as Aquatic Invasive Species, AIS ambassadors and inspectors, monitoring water quality, putting out navigational buoys, setting up shore lunch sites, managing fish stocking programs, restoring degraded shorelines, doing aquatic plant management surveys and more.
Lake home and cabin owners are critical partners to getting solutions from the lab to lakes, doing citizen science, funding research, and educating the public. Lake associations and their members are the indispensable lake and river stewards in Minnesota. They do the work that government either cannot or will not do. But every lake association officer and member is a citizen first. In that role we have the power to change the priorities of elected officials and bodies.
Often, lake associations organize in response to a specific threat. This is a reactionary approach. It consumes political capital and burns out advocates.
Civic Organizing, on the other hand is a proactive approach that organizes a community to have a water protection bias. It is ongoing and is not in reaction to a specific water threat. This strategy builds political capital and energizes advocates. It is sustainable, strategic and effective.
The Campaign and Election Cycle is a valuable opportunity to protect and restore lakes.
Just because a lake association is a 501c3 organization does not mean that their officers and members cannot play a role in the local election cycle. All of us are citizens first, and in that role we have a lot of power. The work of being an active citizen means more than just turning out on election day to vote. It is incumbent on us to find and promote candidates that will protect the water resources we steward. Lake association members can and should:
- Meet with candidates to identify those that have a strong water policy platform. Share the results of these conversations with the wider community, including your lake home and cabin neighbors,
- Run for these local boards and commissioner positions yourself.
- Show up at debates, forums, and fundraisers to keep clean water at the front of the local political agenda.
- Volunteer for candidates that have strong water platforms. Host fundraisers for them in your home. Invite the people from your community to attend and support these candidates.
- Write letters to the editor on water issues to raise awareness.
Build a local civic infrastructure to protect water resources in your community
In some areas lake associations are the largest civic organization in the community. Lake shore property makes up more than half the tax base in many townships and counties. Many of their members are leaders in local businesses, churches and other civic institutions. Lake associations have a significant stake in their local jurisdictions, but sometimes fail to use these institutional relationships to focus their communities on clean water priorities.
Our lakes, rivers and communities will benefit and our programs will be much more impactful with strong civic support of the local community, including the boards, committees and local governmental bodies that drive local priorities.
Minnesota Lakes and Rivers Advocates is working with a number of lake associations to develop a more impactful civic role for their members so that they can better protect the lakes they steward. By developing this “civic infrastructure” in their local communities, lake associations can create a climate for change. They are working to elevate water quality as a local value. The path to this change leads through the local institutions which make up the civic and political life in their jurisdictions.
Lake associations have membership committees, AIS committees, fishery committees, and executive committees. But most fail to have a civic engagement committee. They do not develop a strategic and disciplined approach to creating local support and commitment to lake and river protection among local governmental units and other institutions that will make the efforts of their other committees more effective.
In the last few years, MLR has worked with a number of Lake Associations who have realized how important this work is to serving their missions. In the past few years these groups have made powerful strides.
- One lake association used the election cycle to build relationships with local candidates for county commissioner, mayor, variance boards, county attorney and township board. A number of these candidates won their elections.
- Concerned about the direction the county commissioners had taken away from valuing local water resources, ran for a seat on the county board. His candidacy put water at the front of the local political agenda.
- Lake association members in a small town became concerned that local government was failing to protect their water resources, and are now running for township board and mayor.
- The Gull Lake Association was able to convince the township to include language about Lake Steward and shoreline management in their variance permitting form.
- In south central Minnesota, Fairmont Lakes Association, decided that the more people in the community that had a connection to the lake, the more support there would be for their lake protection efforts.
- They started a kayak rental service out of the city park. A local gas station near the park manages the rentals. The program has been successful and they will be expanding it in 2024.
- Connected with the Future Farmers of America and 4-H club to work with the high school biology teacher and grow native plants for shoreline restoration.
Lakes and rivers are key to the economic, cultural and quality of life of local communities, but often water is not given the value it should be given when local authorities and institutions make development, permitting, zoning and ordinance decisions. For instance, zoning boards often grant variances that sacrifice water quality for property tax base, county boards issue permits to projects that will pollute water, county attorneys fail to prosecute AIS violations which means local law enforcement does not write tickets. All of these are elected positions.
By engaging key stakeholders and institutions, Lake Associations can create a climate for change. They are building the local civic infrastructure necessary to protect water. They are central to engaging a larger base of local civic leaders and bringing the resources of local institutions and governmental bodies to the work of protecting and restoring the water resources everyone in the community relies upon.
Please contact MLR Executive Director Jeff Forester to learn more about the ways you and your organization can become more civically engaged. We will partner with you to form an exploratory group to expand the realm of influence for your lake association using the Civic Organizing framework. If we are to be successful meeting our shared mission to protect Minnersota’s water, we must use all of the tools available to us. Building a scaffolding of local values, ordinances and policies around our sensitive water resources is critically important.