January ebulletin

How We Spend Your Contributions

The fourth quarter of each year triggers a careful planning process by your Lake Leelanau Lake Association (LLLA) board to set goals and a budget for the coming year. This lengthy process culminates in an operating plan and a budget, companion documents which the board discusses, modifies and typically approves in January of each year. A copy of the Association’s 2022 operating plan is available here. In this and in future e-bulletins, we would like to provide you with a brief overview of our goals for 2022.

The work of the Lake Association’s board is divided into four main areas: Lake Stewardship, Community Engagement, Finance and Governance. The board has established committees to coordinate its work in each of these areas. Committee members include engaged and experienced individuals from the community as well as board members.

The vast majority of LLLA resources (more than 75% of its budget) is devoted to Lake Stewardship. We are undertaking a multifaceted science-based program to prevent, monitor, and eradicate aquatic invasive species in Lake Leelanau this spring and summer. The most aggressive and important of these threats continues to be Eurasian watermilfoil (EWM). We continue with the third and most comprehensive year of EWM control to date, with our goal to eradicate an additional 3.5 acres of EWM. This involves five contract employees, including trained SCUBA divers, and multiple volunteers, in addition to dedicated individuals working on the project from the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians.  Our team will be using the latest GPS mapping technologies along with aerial and underwater drones to map precise locations and sizes of all EWM colonies throughout the entire lake. This information will allow them to accurately place benthic barriers over the larger beds and quickly locate and pull smaller beds by hand. These maps will also enable us to accurately monitor our progress controlling EWM each year.

Beyond EWM eradication and control, other key Lake Stewardship goals for 2022 include:

• Financing and installing a second boat cleaning station, most likely at the DNR launch int The Narrows;
• Educating community members and visitors about the importance of clean boats;
• Launching a new initiative to explain to lake front property owners how the health of the shoreline and the health of Lake Leelanau are inextricably linked; and
• Completing, in conjunction with the Leelanau Conservancy, a ten-year watershed protection plan

The total budget the Association has approved for 2022 anticipates expenditures of approximately $419,000. Your board of directors would like to thank Jennie and Darren Keller for their generous commitment to underwrite the costs of the Association’s aquatic invasive species control programs this year. This extraordinary support, combined with the financial support of our members and local businesses, enables us to focus our attention on addressing the EWM threat to our community without devoting time and energy to raise these critical funds. The Keller family has expressed a willingness to continue to support the invasive species control program in Lake Leelanau in 2023 and 2024. By that time, the recently established public foundation, the Friends of Lake Leelanau Foundation, should be in a position to help underwrite these costs and protect the lake far into the future.

We will provide additional details on other LLLA activities in future bulletins. Thank you for your support, both past and present. Together we can improve and preserve the waters of Lake Leelanau for generations to come!