Hundreds of Lake Freeman residents, businesses vent over low water, lost season, as day in court nears

MONTICELLO – Susan Wagner, climbing the steps to the gazebo at the White County Government Center, looked over the 200 or so gathered Saturday afternoon on the plaza in downtown Monticello for what was billed as the Lake Level Rally.

“I don’t recognize hardly any of you without a boat, I’m sorry,” Wagner, owner of Susan’s Freeman Bay along Lake Freeman, said.

“I need you in your boat.”

The line brought a few laughs but more groans from a crowd who knew that getting to Wagner’s gas pumps and convenience store by water on the most southern of Monticello’s Twin Lakes has been impossible for much of the summer. As of Saturday, after a year of scant rain, the lake was down roughly seven feet, exposing docks and boat lifts and stranding a big chunk of the region’s summer economy.

If the landlocked faces, many behind masks during the pandemic, weren’t immediately recognizable, the simmering frustration in the crowd and among those called to the microphone was plenty familiar after months of fighting, without much luck, for the attention of federal regulators to address what they called a desperate situation.

Chris Peters, owner of the Madam Carroll, a floating entertainment venue that quit cruising Lake Freeman weeks ago for fear of running aground, joked that someone asked whether he was going to wear a shock collar at the rally. That, he said, might prevent the string of words he figured would come out of his mouth as he recounted the brick walls he’s run into when looking for solutions to save the lake and save his boat docked within site of the Captain Bill Luse Bridge, a few miles away.

“I’m tired of hearing, ‘That’s not my job,” Peters said. “I need an answer today.”

At issue is a combination of factors, starting with a 2012 drought that exposed endangered mussels downstream from Lake Freeman. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recommended – and federal regulators agreed to – minimum flow rates out of Oakdale Dam, which creates Lake Freeman, to preserve run-of-river conditions to save the mussels. This year, that order has been exacerbated by a lack of rain that has left the Tippecanoe River, which feeds Freeman and Lake Shafer above it, and the Wabash River downstream low for much of the summer.

Lake Freeman residents have found sympathetic ears from local officials and state lawmakers – state Sen. Ron Alting, R-Lafayette, and state Rep. Don Lehe, R-Brookston, were among those in the crowd Saturday. U.S. Rep. Jim Baird has tried to intervene. And U.S. Sen. Mike Braun broached the subject in a Senate committee hearing a week earlier.

But those officials have consistently said they’ve not been able to make headway with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and other federal officials.

Saturday’s rally mainly was a chance to vent, put together mailing lists and to plead again with local and state lawmakers in the crowd to keep pushing.

More:Lake Freeman continues to drain while Senate considers revising Endangers Species Act

The timing came two days ahead of a Monday morning hearing set in a Shafer Freeman Lakes Environmental Conservation Corp. federal court challenge on the matter. 

In court documents tied to that case, filed in June in U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission responded to SFLECC challenge that it “preferred to address decreased water flow in the Tippecanoe River by pausing electric generation from one of the two project dams, and maintaining the level of the project reservoirs, which are regional recreation destinations.”

But according to court documents, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission “deferred to the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife) Service’s expertise in the field of species protection,” which called for “a minimum level of river flow over endangered freshwater mussels that live downstream.” So, documents say, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission told NIPSCO, which owns the dams, to “prioritize downstream river flow over lake level maintenance when the water is low.”

The Shafer Freeman Lakes coalition’s contention: The U.S. Fish and Wild Service overestimated how much water needs to be released from Lake Freeman to protect the mussels downstream.

FERC’s response in court has been that it properly deferred to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

George Wade, owner of the Sportsman Inn, told the crowd Saturday: “This is crap – I don’t know what these people are thinking.”

He told the crowd to get organized and start sharing what’s happening with whoever would listen.

“The voices have to be heard. Wait till next year? Chris is right. Next year’s too late,” Wade said. “Unless you all want to live on a beach – it’ll be more like a mud pit. I hope we don’t have to have this meeting again.”

Jill Robbins stood in the crowd with a cardboard sandwich board that read, “Where is the water?”

Robbins said she and neighbors were putting braces against exposed seawalls to guard against them washing out if and when heavy rains come and there isn’t the normal pressure of lake water pushing back. She said the other day she found a sapling growing at the end of their high-and-dry pier.

“How long is it going to take before the wild just takes it all over?” Robbins asked.

“Will all of this help?” Robbins said, looking around at Saturday’s crowd. “I just don’t know. I hope it will.”

Bob Dion, a Lake Freeman resident, maintains lakefreemanlife.com, a site dedicated to events and talk about the tourism spot.

“We’ve seen this before,” Dion said as the rally started to dissipate. “We all came together to save Indiana Beach, and look how that turned out.”

Indiana Beach, an amusement park on Lake Shafer, closed unexpected last winter, prompting community members to rally on its behalf until new owners stepped in an reopened last spring.

“These people need to come here and see what we’re dealing with,” Dion said. “They need to talk to us and quit hiding from what this is doing to our economy. They’re sacrificing this place when they don’t really have to, if you ask us.”

As rally organizer Gary Baldwin shared contact points from everyone from county commissioners to Vice President Mike Pence – after sharing his own lament about scraping bottom on his daily paddleboard trips around the shrunken lake – Monticello Mayor Cathy Gross stepped up.

“It’s been a long battle,” Gross said. “I hope it doesn’t have to keep going.”

Reach Dave Bangert at 765-420-5258 or at dbangert@jconline.com. Follow on Twitter: @davebangert.