Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast
Welcome to Lake Doctor: A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast, your go-to source for understanding and preserving the health of our local lakes. Join hosts Dr. Nate Bosch, an expert in limnology, and Suzie Light, a lifelong resident and passionate advocate for our aquatic environments, as they dive deep into the challenges facing Kosciusko County's lakes.
Dr. Nate Bosch grew up in Michigan and received his doctorate in 2007 from the University of Michigan in limnology. With 18 peer-reviewed publications spanning research from the Great Lakes to smaller inland lakes and streams, Nate has been awarded the prestigious Chandler Misner Award twice by the International Association of Great Lakes Research. At Grace College, Nate is a professor in the environmental science program, dean of the School of Science and Engineering, and leads the Lilly Center team, serving the local community with dedication and expertise.
Each episode tackles these critical issues head-on, featuring insightful interviews with our partners, engaging Q&A sessions, and fun segments for the science enthusiasts among us. You'll get a behind-the-scenes look at the impactful research and education efforts spearheaded by the Lilly Center and discover how we can all contribute to safeguarding our precious freshwater ecosystems.
Tune in bi-monthly starting June 2024, and join the conversation by leaving comments or emailing us at lakes@grace.eduwith your questions and ideas. Supported by the K21 Health Foundation, Rick and April Sasso, and DreamOn Studios, this podcast aims to inspire and inform the next generation of water-literate citizens and environmental stewards. Learn more about our work and how to support us at lakes.grace.edu.
Lake Doctor | A Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams Podcast
Buying a Lake Home: What to Know with Brian Peterson
Join us as we chat with Brian Peterson, owner of Brian Peterson Real Estate and a trusted voice in the housing market in Kosciusko County and northern Indiana. Brian brings years of expertise helping buyers find the home they're looking for, with ample knowledge navigating the unique dynamics encountered with lakefront properties. Explore how the quality of our local lakes—especially factors like water clarity, shoreline maintenance, and overall ecological health—can significantly impact both real estate value and buyer decision-making.
Together with the Lake Doctor hosts, Brian engages a variety of topics surrounding a buyer looking to purchase a piece of lakefront property. From recreational opportunities like boating and swimming to long-term concerns about water quality and erosion, this episode offers a fascinating look at where environmental stewardship and real estate intersect. Whether you're a homeowner, buyer, or simply love your local lake, this conversation will help you see lake life in a whole new light.
Visit lakesgrace.edu to learn more about the research mentioned in this episode and discover how you can support healthy lakes and streams in your community.
Learn more about the Lilly Center's work at https://lakes.grace.edu/.
Have a question we could answer on the podcast? Send an email to lakes@grace.edu or submit a comment below.
Help us improve the podcast by filling out this short survey: https://forms.gle/MzGSXHcnkEQC8T74A.
Thanks for joining us on our new set for the Lake Doctor podcast. I'm Suzy Light and my co-host, dr Nate Bosch, is a lake nerd.
Speaker 2:Yes, that's right. I received my PhD from the University of Michigan in limnology. Like oceanography, only freshwater. In today's episode, we're excited to welcome Brian Peterson. He's the owner of Brian Peterson Real Estate.
Speaker 1:And we might learn some tips about things to consider if you're interested in purchasing a property on a lake. We are so excited about today's episode. The doctor is in. Thanks for joining us today. We are so excited Brian Peterson is our guest. Brian, you are a lifelong resident of Kosciuszko County, not just Warsaw or not just Winona Lake, right?
Speaker 3:That is correct. I actually was just outside the county down by Tippecanoe Valley High School, but I spent the majority of my high school days here in the Warsaw area with various friends.
Speaker 1:Yes, so you're a Tippecanoe Valley grad and live here now with your family. Tell us a bit about your family, and then would you also tell us what do you do for fun? Brian Peterson.
Speaker 3:What do I do for fun? Well-.
Speaker 1:Family and fun.
Speaker 3:I have three daughters, so they provide a lot of entertainment. So I have a 27-year-old and she's working here locally at Cardinal Services, and I have a 24-year-old, a recent Grace graduate, and she's working in my business, Nate did she?
Speaker 2:Yes, I had her in class, yeah, so Haley is my oldest and she's at Cardinal.
Speaker 3:And then Emily is the recent Grace grad. And then Abby is my youngest and she's getting ready to graduate here in a few days from Warsaw.
Speaker 1:Cool. Okay, now fun. What do you do for fun, besides chase your girls around?
Speaker 3:So honestly, my business is my big hobby and passion and it's all tied into one so I spend a lot of time, you know, family business and then golf would be my main hobby that I enjoy and I still enjoy getting out on the lake. I've got friends here that we go out in Winona and we'll do pontoon cruises and spend a lot of time in the village here with Pickleball and various restaurants and stores.
Speaker 2:Good stuff.
Speaker 3:We love it. Yeah, we love it here, and there's plenty to do.
Speaker 1:So the name of your company is.
Speaker 3:It's creative. I spend a lot of time on it. It's Bryan Peterson Real Estate Wow.
Speaker 1:Tells us who it is and what it does, right.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes and so yeah, been doing, been blessed to be able to do the business now for over 15 years, have a great team, would not be able to do what I'm doing without the support and the team that I have, and I feel very fortunate for that.
Speaker 1:So I can attest to that Brian helped us with a lake property. Brian, why is lake health important to real estate?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, having a healthy lake. You know people pay attention to that and they're making a huge investment. I mean, these lake properties each year continue to go up in value and people want to know are they, you know? Is it going to be weed free? Are we going to have to worry about zebra mussels on our boat props? You know, is it going to be weed-free? Are we going to have to worry about zebra mussels on our boat props? Is it going to be safe to swim in? Are we comfortable letting our kids get in the lake? Is it going to be aesthetically pleasing? When I look out, or am I going to have green algae scum floating in front of my seawall? Those are all things that people ask and want to know about. In certain times of the year they can look great and in other times of the year not so good, and it kind of depends where on the lake you're located too, because of the wind, yep.
Speaker 1:So how do you help advise clients when they're looking for a lake property or when they want to sell a lake property?
Speaker 3:they're looking for a lake property or when they want to sell a lake property. So that's a very good question. So the first thing is we try to do a lot of fact finding with our clients and figure out what the most important aspects of them.
Speaker 3:What are they looking for in a lake property? Is parking important? Do they want a sandy beach? Do they want a southwestern, or do they want a sunset view? Or do they want a sandy beach? Do they want a southwest? Do they want a sunset view or do they want a sunrise view? You know, do they want to be away from the wind? So there's a lot of different things that you need to find out from your client important to them, and then identify properties or put searches together that lines up with what their ultimate goals are with a property.
Speaker 1:So, Nate? I heard Brian talk about data and how data is important for his relationship with his clients. Data is important for Lilly Center. How do you look at Lake Health and what data helps you figure that out?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we look at a lot of different what we would call parameters of lake health, and so we'll look at things like how many nutrients are in the water that's going to cause those aquatic macrophytes you refer to them as weeds or phytoplankton, which are more commonly referred to as algae. Those nutrients are going to feed those sort of things, and most folks don't want to see an overabundance of those things in their lake, right? So nutrients would be one of those things. Another thing would be oxygen, and so if I could, as a limnologist, just take one measurement in a lake, I would choose oxygen, dissolved oxygen, the oxygen that's dissolved in the water.
Speaker 2:Oxygen, dissolved oxygen the oxygen that's dissolved in the water, and we can learn a lot about those plants that I just referred to and how productive they are in the lake. We can learn about bacteria that might be in the bottom of the lake using up oxygen, and the fish and the little zooplankton that are eating the algae. All of those things are producing or consuming oxygen. So by looking at oxygen levels as we go from the surface down to the bottom of the lake, we can tell a lot about the health of a particular lake, and then we can look at things that directly can cause people's health to be in jeopardy. So I think of things like E coli or microcystin, which is a toxin that algae can produce which can be harmful to people and their pets, and so those are some of the parameters that we'll look at and let people know about around the lakes so that they can be healthy and safe when they're using the water.
Speaker 1:Brian, have you heard of any stereotypes that either buyers or sellers might come to the table with in their perception of our lakes?
Speaker 3:That's a very interesting question and yes, the answer is I have. And actually the lake here in our backyard, winona Lake, I think there's always been a stigma if you will, probably goes back 40, 50 years ago that this is not a clean lake and it's not one that you really want to swim in, and that stuff. I mean, I deal with it, even today, where people come to me and say I'm not sure you know, we've heard that this lake is dirty and we're not sure we want to.
Speaker 3:You know, have a home on Winona.
Speaker 2:Do you notice a difference, brian, in people that are already here in Kosciuszko County, where we have over a hundred lakes and they're choosing to move on to a lake for the first time or maybe move from one lake to another or across the lake from where they are, versus somebody coming in from Indianapolis or Chicago kind of brand new to the area. In from Indianapolis or Chicago, kind of brand new to the area. Do you notice a difference in sort of those perceptions or maybe some of those legends that they've heard?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like it probably is more so. The people that have been here and maybe they're somewhere else, on a different lake or whatever the case may be, because of growing up or whatever, that know, whatever that they've learned or they've not, you know, forgotten.
Speaker 1:So, Nate, I think you've got some myth-busting data that could help Brian in his work with customers. Tell us about some of your publications or the website where data is available.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So we would encourage everybody to go to our website, lakesgraceedu, and we've got data there for all of those lakes over 100 lakes. There's information about every lake on our website, and then there's a number of lakes that we have very detailed information for. So every year, we come out with what we call our Beneath the Surface Annual Report and that lays out all of the data for 16 different lakes over the last three years. We look at lots and lots of different parameters, as I said before, to look at the lake health and help people make choices about lakes and how they want to interact with different lakes, and I want to pull some of that data out and look at that, if we could here. So in front of me here, and those of you who are listening right now to the podcast might want to switch over and check it out on YouTube instead so you can visually watch this, and we'll try to put these figures up so that you can look at them. They also come out of our Beneath the Surface publication each year that I just mentioned. So right here in front of us, brian, we have a historical average depth of fish habitat. So remember how I just said a moment ago. If I was going to take one measurement in a lake, I would want to look at the oxygen level. Okay, so here we have the depths of different lakes as far as how far down the oxygen stays above two milligrams per liter. So milligrams per liter is a concentration of oxygen in the water, and so we have averages here for July and August for four common lakes that, brian, you had mentioned to us before we started recording here the podcast that you often sell properties on Big Chapman Lake, tippecanoe, wawasee and also Winona Lakes, and so we have all of the data going back here since 1912. It's our first recorded data that we have for our lakes, which is just amazing to me. I wanna just mention that for a moment. Our earliest data we have in our county goes back to 1875 actually, which I believe is just 10 years after the end of the Civil War, president Lincoln being assassinated. Already samples being taken here of our local lakes For oxygen data. It starts in the early 1900s, so 1912 and 13.
Speaker 2:And we can look at these four lakes and we can see how it changes over time. So in purple here we have Winona Lake, which is the one you were just referring to, brian, just right in our backyard. Literally we're recording this in the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams on Grace College's campus, and just down the hill behind us is where Winona Lake is, so in purple here you notice we had fish habitat going down about 50 feet. Winona Lake happens to be about 80 feet deep in total. 50 feet. Winona Lake happens to be about 80 feet deep in total, and so almost over half of the lake then is habitable for fish in the summer months. And then you can notice as we go over time already in the 70s and then certainly in the 90s and into the 2000s those purple bars get much shorter and so our oxygen habitat starts to shrink over time. And that's a matter of what we were just talking about. An overabundance of nutrients causes an overabundance of algae and weeds to grow in the lake. When those things decompose they're sinking to the bottom. Decomposing bacteria is using up oxygen, and so that's why we lose oxygen in the bottom of those lakes and so that's why the depth of fish habitat has been shrinking over time. So from that we can see we have an overabundance too much of a good thing, which is those nutrients coming into our lakes.
Speaker 2:If we look at some of the other. If we look at the green bars, that would be lake wawasee. That's our largest natural lake here in indiana, so obviously our largest lake in our county, and we can see those green bars as well, starting to shrink from in 1913, where we had data. Wawasee is also about 80 feet deep at its deepest point and so the depth went down about 50 feet and now in more recent years it's gone down to more close to 20 to 25 feet of habitat. So we've lost half of the fish habitat, half of the oxygenated parts of the water. And then if we look at Big Chapman, which is in blue, you can see here we started at maybe around 25 feet of fish habitat and now we're typically around 15 feet of fish habitat, and so there we've lost quite a bit of ground as well.
Speaker 2:Tippie is an interesting case. So Tippie is our deepest natural lake here in Indiana, right About 125 feet deep, and when we look at oxygen profiles, when we look at oxygen all the way down to the bottom, we'll notice it starts to drop, like other lakes do, around 20 to 30 feet, but then it increases again and then it decreases again. So since Tippie is so deep. There's some interesting, and we probably don't have time to get into it here on the podcast today, but there's some interesting things going on there with some of the bottom contours of the lake and some of the respiration that's going on there. With some of the bottom contours of the lake and some of the respiration that's going on, with bacteria at different depths. That makes that lake behave a little differently than our other lakes, and the data shows that as well.
Speaker 2:Tippy, all the way back in the early 1900s, only had about 20 feet of fish habitat. That's just 20 feet up near the surface. There is some fish habitat deeper down, as I was just mentioning, and then that comes down a little bit, maybe into, you know, around 15 to 18 or something. 2023 had a higher amount of oxygen going further down in Lake Tippecanoe, and so from this we see that, indeed, our lakes have degraded in their quality of those ecosystems. The thing, though, that most people think about, I would guess, is not about oxygen levels and where fish live. When they're looking to purchase a home, they're probably looking more. Can I stand out on my pier and does the water look crystal clear?
Speaker 3:right, Okay.
Speaker 2:So let's look at, let's look at the next figure then here Um, so this is looking at what we call water clarity and we measure this. We have a little black and white disc that we put down in the water and we see how far we can see it down into the water and then we measure that depth and so it's kind of a depth of visibility, if you will. Again, we're looking atuly and august. We're looking at how far does that disc go before it disappears, um, and then we're looking at years, and so we have this data going back for winona lake and purple, all the way back to 1902, which is amazing. So, um, some of the actual I'm a nerd right for lakes, right.
Speaker 2:And so some of our very first limnologists in this country Burge and Juday a couple last names they were professors later at the University of Wisconsin. They actually did some research here on Winona Lake early in their careers and so we have an actual hand-drawn map of Winona Lake by Chauncey Juday, and he's the one who did some of these Secchi disk measurements way back in 1902. So that was just a little bonus aside there so we can see then over time the water clarity kind of bounces around. We don't have as clear of a trend as we did with the oxygen levels, because water clarity can be influenced by a lot of different things and we've talked about some of those on the podcast already in the past.
Speaker 2:Boating can stir up the bottom if that's done in too shallow of areas. We've done research on that and recommend people stay in at least 10 feet of water when they're making a wake with their boat. Also zebra mussels. You mentioned zebra mussels. A wake with their boat Also zebra mussels. You mentioned zebra mussels a few moments ago, brian. So zebra mussels actually will filter out the phytoplankton or the algae out of the water and that makes the water then look clearer.
Speaker 1:But not necessarily healthier.
Speaker 2:Right, not necessarily cleaner. Right, clearer, but not cleaner, and we've talked about that on the podcast in the past as well. So you have zebra mussels which shift towards bad types of algae, like blue-green algae, which can produce toxins. You have boats which can stir things up, and so the historical water clarity, then, is not really a good measure. For is our lakes getting cleaner? Are they getting dirtier? Are they clean? Are they dirty? Winona Lake, for example, typically doesn't have a very. When we look at this figure and we look in the most recent year of data that we have here, winona Lake has a water clarity on average of less than four feet, whereas, you see, wawasee has an average clarity of greater than eight feet. So we have almost double the clarity in Wawasee versus Winona.
Speaker 1:But Nate is.
Speaker 2:But not necessarily cleaner water in Wawasee versus Winona, but not necessarily cleaner water in Wawasee versus Winona, which we'll talk about in the next figure.
Speaker 1:Is Winona versus Wawasee the depth of the lake? Because I think Winona is shallower than Wawasee, isn't it? So does that play into the?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the depth definitely can play in if we have a shallower lake. Actually, those two lakes both have their deepest point of about 80 feet in water depth, but there's large portions of Wawasee that are very shallow and so when you look at a map of where the lake is greater than 10 feet deep in order to do some of the boat activities like we recommend, it quickly constricts down to the area of boating activity, as we would recommend. But Winona has bigger areas that are deeper than Wawasee does.
Speaker 1:So it would be important for you, as a realtor, to know what interests your clients would have when looking for a lake. Do they want to fish? Do they want big boats? Do they want swimming places? Sailing Nona's pretty good for sailing, isn't it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and Wawasee, as our biggest, is wonderful for sailing. A lot of sailing regattas and different competitions and stuff will happen there. So the last figure I could talk about figures for the whole episode here and I won't.
Speaker 2:But the last one that I wanted to show you, too, is looking at microcystin. So microcystin is one of those toxins that algae can produce in our lakes, specifically the blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria as we call them, and so we have the microcystin concentration then that we're looking at over time from 2011 to 2024. And again, we have these same four lakes that we've been talking about here so far in the podcast Big Chapman, tippecanoe, wawasee and Winona same colors that we've been looking at in the past. And what we have here is we have this charcoal line across, which is the dog threshold, for where it is no longer safe for dogs to be in the water. According to the Indiana Department of Environmental Management, we follow their recommendations in this regard, and you can see several lakes which are, on average, above the dog threshold. So not just individual weeks above the dog threshold, but the average through the entire months of July and August is above the dog threshold.
Speaker 2:That's not something that we want to see for our lakes, and which ones do we notice that are doing that?
Speaker 2:We see the blue and the green bars, which is Big Chapman and Wawa Sea.
Speaker 2:We back up to the last figure, those were the two clearest lakes.
Speaker 2:So how interesting is that we look in the water and we see clear, and so we assume clean and we assume maybe safe. And they are clean and clear and safe at times of the year as well, but our algae research is showing that at certain times they are not clean and not safe for pets. Specifically Now the human threshold is up at eight parts per billion, which is not even on this figure and our numbers have not approached that human threshold over the last several years, but certainly there's been a number of weeks on these lakes where it has gone above the dog threshold. So again, if you're looking to sell a property for a family that has a dog or two or three and they consider them part of the family, they're going to be very, very focused on looking at these sort of things, and so the notification system that we have can be really helpful to families to know when it's safe for those pets to be in the water versus when they need to keep them out.
Speaker 1:How do I sign up for that notification system?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so if you go to our website lakesgraceedu, you'll see right there how to sign up for our it's called our LG notification system.
Speaker 1:And is that a text or an email that comes?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that comes through as an email each week. That comes out on Friday, so we will sample all of the lakes Monday through Wednesday. We do the analysis on Thursday and then Friday. That comes out each week so that people know before the weekend whether it's safe to go in the water.
Speaker 1:And is that information in the publication beneath the surface?
Speaker 2:Yeah, we have all of our microsystem data every year comes in that annual report and that comes out in the fall after we've done all the sampling for the summer months.
Speaker 1:Brian, I'm going to hand deliver a stack of those to your office so you're armed with that information.
Speaker 3:Okay, that'll be great, thank you.
Speaker 1:So water quality is certainly important. Are there other things that maybe a first time buyer who's looking to live on a lake ought to be considering?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think one of the things is on the lake is like seawall condition, for instance. I mean, you got to think about things that are potential expenses when you buy a property right, and a lot of these homes were cottages, maybe refurbished over time, and sometimes when they were put in they didn't have maybe pilings or whatever. So you always worry about foundation right. Is the foundation structurally sound? Are we going to have any problems with that over time, potentially? The other thing is parking, because when you buy a lake property, typically you find out friends you didn't know you had.
Speaker 3:So you need to make sure, if that's important, do we have parking? Because it's kind of annoying to have to ask your neighbors hey, I've got people coming, can we borrow your driveway or?
Speaker 3:whatever and so those are things that you know come to mind, that you know are pretty important. Um, as well, as one of the big things nowadays is floodplain, because the maps have changed. So now there's even more properties that may be in the floodplain now that years ago were not. And flood insurance, with all the natural disasters we've had, has continued to go up. So that is an added expense to a property that some people may not be comfortable with or want to deal with. So that's another thing that we can research and find out is is this in a floodplain? If it is, can we get it out? Because there's ways some properties say a property is setting up on a hill, but they just look at the maps. They can't tell the elevation. So sometimes you can simply get an elevation certificate and then go and file for a letter of map amendment and get that amended to show that the structure is not in a floodplain because of the elevation. So you can save that money. So you could save that money.
Speaker 1:So, nate, would you explain what a floodplain is and who's in charge of determining it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so floodplain would be, as the name would suggest, when there is flooding.
Speaker 2:So when water levels would go up on one of our local lakes, what is sort of the plain or the surface area that that water would now cover, right, and so we can have flood plains that are natural along a stream that goes through, and as spring rains come or the end of the winter and we have snow melt, we have more water going through those streams and so they fill up over the banks and spill out into maybe a forest or a wetland or somebody's yard, who's along those, those creeks. Same thing happens in our lakes, the creeks and those streams. They come into our lakes and they can fill up the lakes and they can overfill the lakes at times, and so then the water can start to creep up in people's yards. And, like brian said, if someone's in the flood plain and usually there there are statistics about, you know, the five-year floodplain or the hundred-year floodplain or those sorts of things how often statistically would you expect water to get to that level? And then insurance adjusters and government agencies then look at those sort of things for considering whether you're in the floodplain or not.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure exactly which government agency sets the floodplain. I know they were recently redone. Do you know that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, and I'm not sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it's some sort of a collaboration between the insurance industry and some government agency, but I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 3:And it's important to note that if you're paying cash for one of these properties, you don't have to have flood insurance if you choose not to, but if you're getting a mortgage and the property is the lender requires it. But if you can get it amended and get a LOMA, which is letter of map amendment, lenders then usually drop the requirement to have flood insurance. So it's just an added expense and something to certainly be aware of.
Speaker 1:Are there other things that you can think of that? If I were interested in buying a lake house, how would you advise me?
Speaker 3:So I think another thing is surveys are really critical buying lake property, because when you're buying a lake home, there's a lot of, if you will, gentleman's agreements or napkins agreements that happened 50 to 80 years ago that let neighbors across the street park their boat and all of a sudden, maybe they have a walkway that's granted an easement, that's actually deeded, and maybe it's just a walkway they've always used between two properties.
Speaker 3:Oh, interesting, that really isn't, you know, legally binding. And those are all things that's really important to understand. Because we get into riparian water rights, which is you basically establish through a survey on the land, you've got the lot lines and then those lines go out to the center of the lake and when you get in off the seawall, you have those lines are yours, so a neighbor can't put a pier over your riparian line without your consent or without some kind of legal. So those are all things. And when you get lots that are shaped at various angles and different, you could have a lot in the middle, for instance, if it's like a pie shape, where the middle lot, if the neighbors put their peers out, you may be blocked in If you get, you know. So those are all things that you need to understand and be aware of we hear about that at the lily center a lot too.
Speaker 3:We don't get into those legal disputes, obviously, but we hear a lot about them about, and a lot of it has to do with peers, as you said, um yeah, people don't understand and it's important to know and I tell people all the time that coming to the lake you know people can park out in front during the day and fish in front of your property and there's some growing up.
Speaker 3:That's different than permanently parking a boat on a pier or just parking it there in front of your place or, you know, storing it Right If you will, and they're not using it. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:You said something a little bit earlier, brian, about when people are selecting a lake property, thinking about what side of the lake it's on, maybe for sunsets, sunrises, wind, those sort of things. How often do people think about it to that level of specificity? I mean, is that common, or do you often bring that up to?
Speaker 3:people yourself. I bring it up because a lot of times again, if it's a naive buyer, they don't always know what they need to think about. So when I'm representing them, I try to let them know everything, obviously that I know that I think is important, without influencing them on what's important to them, but just making them aware, Because sometimes they might say three things that are important but they didn't even think about five other things, yes.
Speaker 3:So you know it's important to you know. Bring that, especially when we're at a property and I always use my phone a lot with my compass, because sometimes people don't. They think we're facing a different direction than we are and I'm like, no, they're really not. This is what you're going to be. This is where the sun's going to be coming up. This is where it's going to be sick.
Speaker 2:We've noticed some directional concerns that some people have on some of the lakes as well. At the Lilly Center we'll get questions from people who constantly have debris that's sort of floating up against their shoreline, whether it's a seawall or a natural shoreline or glacial stone, and part of that is just the natural way that a lake works.
Speaker 2:And so I'm thinking about people who might be on the west side or the southwest side of a lake and, uh, and we often have, um, our, uh, west western well, no, I'm sorry it would be on the east side, because we have the westerly winds which are going to blow things towards, and so maybe it's, maybe it's those weeds that get clipped off, you know, by somebody who's skiing or by a boat propeller, um, maybe it is leaves that are falling from a tree around the lake, and those things are all going to then flow towards that eastern shore and start to accumulate there, and the people then along that shore then sometimes will then have to rake those things out, and so it can be a little extra maintenance that maybe they didn't anticipate, just by where they're living around the lake.
Speaker 1:What are other resources that your team can help provide to the buyers?
Speaker 3:So you know we pride ourselves on having a really good concierge service. So I'll give you an example I've just recently sold a property here on the lake to one of my clients and I've connected them with getting a boat lift, helping find a boat, who's taking care of the yard, who's? Different things, different contractors, different things. They need lined them up with seven or eight different and they're all taking care of them right away. So one of the advantages is you can get really good service. You know the people that we partner with and work with take pride in obviously taking care of our clients, making our clients happy. We have a lot of connections with the schools. If they're worried about you know I need to learn about the schools or I need to know more about. We've got, like a lot of great school options in our area. You can get them in front of principals, whomever, administrators, whomever they need to, coaches, whatever the case is, to learn more about that.
Speaker 1:And we've got a great college in our backyard.
Speaker 3:We've got a great college. You know restaurants we can help with. You know good places to, you know go. So there's a lot of different things there that you know that we provide.
Speaker 1:Nate lake residents, we've learned, are the first line defense when it comes to lake health. What are things that you could help Brian inform his clients who are starting to live on a lake. What are things you can help?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so three things that we encourage all lake residents to do, and really this applies to residents throughout the drainage areas, the watersheds that flow into our lakes as well. But one is thinking about fertilizer on their property and so we want to have nice, healthy, green lawns, right. But one of the components often in fertilizer, phosphorus, is not really needed by our soils here in northern indiana, and so we can use phosphorus free fertilizer, and that that's just looking at the. At the bag of fertilizer, the middle number of the three numbers is the phosphorus, and so we want to have a zero there, and a lot of of our home improvement stores and hardware stores will have phosphorus-free fertilizer, and so you can still have a great looking lawn but not have the phosphorus. And when I was referring earlier to excess nutrients causing excess plant growth, like weeds and algae, the main nutrient that does that is phosphorus. So nitrogen can be important as well, but mostly it's phosphorus, and so we want to see phosphorus-free fertilizer. And if anybody's really convinced that they need phosphorus, we can help people with soil testing to see if their soil does actually need it or not, to know what's needed by those grass plants.
Speaker 2:The second thing that we encourage people to do is to not allow their yard waste to get into the lake, and so that could be like leaves or grass clippings. Sometimes people will say, hey, it's just natural, so why does it matter if the grass clippings go in the lake or the leaves? We get a lot of leaves on our, our yard, so we're just going to use a leaf blower or a rake and blow them all out into the lake. It's all natural. Well, it is natural, but it's it's plant material, just like those weeds and algae that then sink to the bottom, decompose, give the nutrients back off for more weeds and algae to grow next year, as well as using up all the oxygen, like we talked about earlier, which can hurt the health of the lake over time. So, phosphorus-free fertilizer.
Speaker 2:We also want to see yard waste not go in the lake, but you can compost it. You can have a service come and pick it up. Many towns and cities will do that. And then the third would be native plants, and so we want to see native plants along the shoreline that can intercept any extra nutrients that might be coming from fertilizer, any sediments that might be eroding from the lake property. A lot of our lake properties are pretty steep when it comes from the home down towards the lake, and so that's a recipe for soil erosion, and soils will bring nutrients with them down into the lake, and so we want to keep that stuff on the land, and so having a buffer, a filter of native plants along the shoreline can help keep the water, make the water cleaner as it's headed towards the lake, and then those native plants can also keep some unwanted visitors away, like Canada geese, which love to come up on lakefront properties and leave their poop everywhere, which is an E coli hazard and also a nutrient source and just really gross to step in.
Speaker 2:And so having those native plants also will impede the view of some of that waterfowl, and so they don't feel comfortable coming up on your property. They'll go to your neighbors instead and mess up their lawn.
Speaker 1:One of the things you both have mentioned are seawalls. How does a seawall impact lake health?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so a seawall, a concrete seawall, is very common around our lakes, but it's not very helpful to the health of the lake. The reason for that is, as you have water hitting that seawall, the energy of that water then bounces away. It creates an upwelling where you'll get water splashing up over and sometimes that can cause erosion on your property. But it also does a downwelling where it will start to scour out the sediment from the front of the seawall. We call that the toe of the seawall, and seawalls then can fail over time. So you mentioned for someone looking at a property they want to check the condition of the seawall. That can be a quite expensive proposition if it's starting to fail. But we can add glacial stone to the front of a seawall which will help dissipate some of that wave energy, and that's actually doesn't require a special permit from the DNR. And so people can do that as long as they follow certain rules. They can do that without a permit and we're happy to help people know that information. Actually, one of my former students, madison, now works for the DNR doing the shoreline permitting stuff here in the state of Indiana. So that's kind of a plug for one of our former students.
Speaker 2:But yeah, so concrete seawall is the best type of shoreline, which you probably would have a hard time convincing some of your clients. But the best one would be a natural shoreline where we have kind of that natural sandy beach as we go. Some would love the sandy beach, but that only usually works in certain parts of the lake. But when we have a natural shoreline with vegetation that's holding all the soil in place and when waves come up they splash up on that vegetation, the vegetation holds the soil in place so there's not erosion, and then we can have lots of critters like frogs and turtles and things can move up and down from the water in and out. And then we can have lots of critters like frogs and turtles and things can move up and down from the water in and out, and then we don't bounce that wave energy back and create that bathtub effect of waves just bouncing from one shore to the other between concrete seawalls.
Speaker 1:So good, brian, you got another thing in your arsenal to help lake property the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams.
Speaker 3:Yes, no, it's a great tool and I'm happy to have all this information available to educate the clients.
Speaker 1:So sewers and septic tanks are a thing around our lakes? How are buyers looking at the opportunity to connect sewers or preference with septic fields?
Speaker 3:Yes, so most definitely the sewer system and the one they recently older systems that aren't as efficient and probably allowing leakage, unfortunately, and so now you're able to mitigate that and hook it up to a public system. Other thing is it certainly enhanced the value of a lot of these lots because when they had a septic system you only had so much space you could remodel or do anything with interesting number of bedrooms, all that. So now there's lots that are certainly a lot more valuable because you can do more with them than when they just had a septic.
Speaker 1:Including a washer and a dryer.
Speaker 3:Including a washer and a dryer. So it certainly is. It's a big enhancement to you know, improving not only in the lake keeping the you know, the stuff out of the lake that we don't want in there but also the property itself, is potentially going to be more valuable now.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, and we've done some research in that area, because that's the question that we've gotten. A lot is hey, should we put a public sewer system around our lake? We've had smaller cottages and a lot of septics. Some of those are failing. Should we invest, as a lake, in putting public sewer around our entire lake? And so, rather than just wondering about it or some sort of an emotional appeal, we said, hey, let's gather some scientific data.
Speaker 2:And so we, before one of our local lake chains, the Chapman Lake chain that you just mentioned, started having sewers. We used that as the control. And then the Barbee Lake chain, which has seven lakes in it, was getting sewers. We used that as the control. And then the barbie lake chain, which had seven, has seven lakes in it, was getting sewers. And so we did a before and after study and the barbie lake chain improved, um, but the chapman lake chain also improved, but there was no sewers added around the chapman lake chain, so we couldn't ascribe the improvement to the sewers themselves.
Speaker 2:We waited three years, kind of, for a new steady state around the lake after the sewers were put in around the barbie chain, but we still didn't see an improvement that could be attributed to the sewer system Could be over time. You could see that Certainly, as you described, brian, if there was certain real egregious septic systems that were not being maintained properly, it's good to get those kind of offline and put into a public sewer system then and certainly it could be a benefit to the value of the property for what people might want to do with remodeling.
Speaker 1:So this is a question for both of you. Why is buying a lake property in Kosciuszko County a good thing?
Speaker 3:So I think you know I'm obviously biased to this community and I tell clients this all the time and I've been doing this for a long time. And I tell people, you know, I've had families come here for a job and they think it's only going to be two to three years and are going to keep climbing the corporate ladder and all of a sudden, 15 years later, they're still here because the lifestyle change. They've loved it. I mean this, the quality of life in our county. There's so many, with all the natural resources I mean we have over a hundred lakes and we have greenways. Now we've got, obviously, village of Winona. You go up in Syracuse, there's a lot of new places up there, north Webster, I mean throughout our county, right. And so we've got great school systems. Our property taxes are low, relatively speaking, for the rest of the country with what we have to offer. So I think that when you put all that together like it's just really tough to beat. And not to mention we've got large metropolitan cities. That's a two-hour drive away.
Speaker 1:Are you seeing generational owners? So I'm thinking of a friend of mine whose grandfather built a home on Wawasee and now the third and fourth generation are in the area.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. We're seeing that the properties stay in the family. I've got clients now that are looking to get legacy properties. They're buying with their kids and grandkids in mind. I'm buying this now and I'm going to pass it on, and I want a property that will stay in the family for a long time. So they're looking at making those big decisions and it's you know, it's neat that we have that opportunity and that's, frankly, one of the reasons I wanted to get this information out, because, you know, nate share a lot of information, but the bottom line out of what he shared is all of our lakes are safe for us to go out and enjoy, and that's the bottom line. I mean we can get into all the finite part of this data, but the reality of it is there's not a lake in our county that you should be worried about making an investment in, and I think that's the takeaway from this today.
Speaker 2:And I would add to that that, because the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams is here looking after these lakes and we're part of a university, grace College, that will be here going into the future. We are always going to be here to look after these lakes long-term into the future and so people can buy a property on our lakes. Rest assured that someone is going to be here to look after these lakes long term into the future and so people can buy a property on our lakes. Rest assured that someone is going to be looking after that lake in the future and letting them know if there's anything that should be of concern to them or their family and making that investment for multiple generations in the future. The Lilly Center is going to be right along with them for that time into the future, and we take great pride.
Speaker 2:The Lilly Center is going to be right along with them for that time into the future and we take great pride at the Lilly Center in helping families come together at the lake year after year, oftentimes over the 4th of July holiday is a time when many families have reunions and we've heard some of our supporters, some of our donors, say if it weren't for this lake, our family would not be as close as it is today. We would be scattered all around the United States and we wouldn't have one central location to come back to. But the lake is that central location. We're still coming back to the same lake that our great grandparents came to, and so we get to have a piece of that at the Lilly Center, where we can help protect that family heritage going forward into the future, and that's really inspiring for us.
Speaker 3:And I would add to you know, onto what you said, thinking of families and people coming here and enjoying. You know there is something when you get out on the lake, when you're in your big boat, you're in your big tri-tune, your wave runner excuse me, you need to be responsible and you know getting deep enough water before you really take off and get going, because when you're in shallow water and you know tearing around, that that does.
Speaker 1:Stirs up, the bottom Stirs up.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it, yeah and it. It's not good. So I think that some responsibility can be had by those of us enjoying the lake, um, and it just helps future generations, right, so for?
Speaker 2:sure, and there's no other county in the state of indiana that's looking after their lakes like we are here in kosciusko county. So, because of the Lilly Center for Lakes and Streams investment, all of the supporters and organizations that help make it possible to do what we do here for our lakes, our lakes are thoroughly studied and so our people are thoroughly safe when they use the lakes.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much. Thank you On behalf of our community. Thanks for the good work you're doing, brian. Thank you for the good work that you are doing and helping educate your clients about the beauty of our community and the responsibility of home ownership on a lake.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you're welcome.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to this episode of the Lake Doctor podcast. You can share your thoughts or submit a question by leaving a comment or sending an email to lakes at grace dot edu.
Speaker 2:Listening to this podcast is just the first step to making your lake cleaner and healthier. Visit lakes dot, grace dot, edu for more information about our applied research and discover some tangible ways that you can make a difference on your lake.
Speaker 1:We'll see you next time. The Doctor is In.