Our Lake District
Lake districts are special purpose units of government, and include; public inland lake protection and rehabilitation districts, sanitary districts, special districts, and commissions formed by local governments.
The purpose of a district is to maintain, protect, and improve the quality of a lake and its watershed for the mutual good of the members and the lake environment.
Our lake district was established in 1978 and exists both in the towns of Alden and Garfield.
Lake districts are governmental bodies with elected or appointed leaders and annual budgets funded from tax levies or special assessments. Districts also have some capabilities to regulate lake use, such as local boating ordinances and sewage management. Within a lake district, all property owners share in the cost of management activities undertaken by the district.
Residents who live in the district and are eligible voters and all property owners have a vote in the affairs of the district. This is accomplished at an annual meeting which must be held between May 22 and September 8 each year.
Church Pine Lake
Click for a larger Version. Source: WI DNR
107 Acres
Maximum Depth: 45 Feet
Church Pine Lake is named after the West Immanuel Lutheran Church that sits atop the hill at the south end of the lake. While on the water you can see the spire of the church sticking out from the treetops on the horizon. The old church dates back to the 19th century and is still in use today. Across the street is the new church center where the lake association meetings are held. The lake is about one mile long and a quarter mile wide. The channel to Round Lake is located in a bay at the northeast end of the lake. Glaciers formed Church Pine Lake as a V shaped trench. The 45 foot deep trench allows lake sediments to lay deep and undisturbed, making for exceptionally clear water.
Round (Wind) Lake
38 Acres
Maximum Depth: 22 Feet
Round Lake is the middle link in the chain of three lakes. Although fairly small at 38 acres, the lake features open water for water skiers and tubers as well as quiet, shady places with hungry fish lurking below. The lake is generally oval in shape with a few quiet bays. The waters from Church Pine Lake flow northward into Round Lake and then under the bridge on into Big Lake. A controlled outlet from Big Lake allows the waters from all three lakes to flow into Horse Creek, and then on toward the Gulf of Mexico. Round Lake features an island, huge white pine trees, rare water plants and nesting birds. You can often find painted turtles sunning themselves on lily pads. There is no public landing or boat launch on Round Lake.
Big Lake
Click for a larger version. Source: WI DNR
259 Acres
Maximum Depth: 24 Feet
Big Lake, so called because it is the largest of the chain of three lakes, is situated the furthest north. It is 259 acres in size and reaches depths of 24 feet. It is approximately 1 mile when measured diagonally and half as wide. Even on a hot July day, you are guaranteed a chilling dive because of the many underground, fresh water springs that constantly provide bracingly cold, refreshing sources of clean water (see History and Eutrophication articles on the District History Overview page).
The lake is a favorite of many sports enthusiasts because of its larger size and great variety of fish, including bass, crappies, sunnies, northern pike, plus the occasional brown trout and walleye. Water fowl and birds compete with residents and tourists for the fish - it is not uncommon to see majestic Bald Eagles circle overhead, with fish and reptiles clutched in their talons. Great Blue Herons and their smaller cousins, Green Herons, work the shoreline. The Green Herons are especially fond of fishing in the Big Lake Store's minnow holding pen, much to the irritation of the people who stock it!
There is a public boat launch at the southeast end, between Big and Round Lakes opposite the Big Lake Store. Pontoons, fishing licenses, gas, and supplies are also available to the area's many tourists and day visitors there. Residents include a mix of cabin/fair weather dwellers and year round residents. Many families, spanning two or three generations, have called Big Lake and the surrounding area home.
Who has led the District
Officers of the Church Pine, Round and Big Lake Protection and Rehabilitation District and the lake association that came before it, drawn from the board and annual meeting minutes in the District's files. Open any period to read what the lakes were working on at the time.
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Before the District: the Big-Round-Pine Lakes Association
A volunteer, dues-paying group of lakeshore owners. It kept meeting for several years after the District formed.
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1975
- President
- Frank Winiecki
- Vice President
- Dr. Alan Stewart
- Treasurer
- Joanne Johnson
- Secretary
- Janet Johnson
The August 1975 annual meeting at the Winiecki place on Church Pine drew, in the secretary's words, "a vociferous thirty-three." Members discussed swimmer's itch, weeds and algae on Big Lake, and shoreline erosion from high water and boat wakes, which the president called each owner's problem to solve. A DNR conservation officer explained new state boating rules, including slow-no-wake within 100 feet of docks and swimming areas.
That year the combined secretary-treasurer office was split in two. The association's bank balance at the start of the year was $52.81.
Source: Association annual meeting minutes, August 9, 1975.
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1978
- President
- Dr. Alan Stewart
- Vice President
- Frank Winiecki
- Treasurer
- Joanne Johnson
- Secretary
- Peg Einerson
With the new District taking on major lake projects, many members said they could not pay into two organizations. The association voted unanimously to keep meeting but drop annual dues for 1979. Secretary Marge Traun had resigned, and the annual spring party was declared a huge success.
Source: Association annual meeting, September 2, 1978, adjourned early so members could attend the District meeting that afternoon.
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1981
- President
- John Scanlan
- Vice President
- Dr. Alan Stewart
- Treasurer
- Joanne Johnson
- Secretary
- Peg Einerson
Church Pine cottage owners reported water skiing at all hours of the night, loud parties, and strangers using private docks. Members suggested the District post signs limiting skiing to 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., and John Scanlan volunteered to carry those concerns to the District's meeting the following week.
Source: Association annual meeting, August 22, 1981. This is the last association meeting in the files.
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The Protection and Rehabilitation District
Established August 8, 1978 by Polk County Resolution 73. Commissioners are elected at the annual meeting and choose officers among themselves.
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19781980
- Chair
- Don Jahnke
- Treasurer
- Sheldon Weiss
- Secretary
- Jeanne Berke
The first commissioners, appointed by the county, met on August 24, 1978. At the first annual meeting on September 2 at Alden Town Hall, members adopted bylaws, approved a budget of 2 mills, and held the first election: Don Jahnke received 17 votes.
Early work included runoff from a field into Church Pine, septic systems, regulations mailed to 300 households, boat traffic on Church Pine, and a push to keep regional planning out of local lake decisions.
Sources: Board minutes August 24 and 30, 1978; annual meetings September 2, 1978 and August 19, 1979.
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19801981
- Chair
- Ken Peterson
- Treasurer
- Dick Larson
- Secretary
- Jeanne Berke
Speakers from Cedar and Bone Lakes shared their lake studies, and members voted to look into forming a sanitary district. Ken Peterson won his seat 31 to 7 but resigned before the 1981 annual meeting, and Dick Larson served as acting chair.
Source: Annual meetings August 17, 1980 and August 22, 1981. No board minutes from 1980–81 survive in the files.
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19811984
- Chair
- Dick Larson
- Treasurer
- Dick Berquist
- Secretary
- Jeanne Berke, then Bea Hinz (1982)
Members voted in 1981 to restrict water skiing hours, and in 1982 the Town of Alden approved the District's ordinance with hours of 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., later extended to all towed craft. In 1983 the District mailed a survey to every lake owner, voted 45 to 0 to raise the levy for weed cutting, and hired the Alden township constable to patrol the lakes.
Sources: Annual meetings 1981–1983; board minutes April 17, 1982 and June 25, 1983.
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19841987
- Chair
- Dick Berquist
- Treasurer
- Fred Homan
- Secretary
- Bea Hinz
The District rebuilt the outlet dam below Big Lake in 1985–86 to keep carp out of the chain, hired Lim-Tech for a water quality study, and received a 1986 Stewardship Award for involving people in lake improvement. Fred Homan began regular Secchi disk readings. In 1987, after many complaints about reckless boats, skiers and water bikes, members approved up to $5,000 for boat control.
Sources: Special board meeting August 25, 1984; annual meetings 1984–1987.
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19871989
- Chair
- Dick Larson
- Treasurer
- Fred Homan
- Secretary
- Bea Hinz, then Kathy Videen (1988)
The District bought its own patrol boat in 1988 for $1,650. That summer deputies stopped 130 watercraft, and the board noted reckless operation dropped once people knew a patrol was out. In 1989 a meeting with property owners about jet skis led to a no-wake beach area on south Church Pine and new slow-no-wake buoys. Dick Larson resigned as chair in July 1989.
Sources: Board minutes March 25 and April 23, 1988, July 8, 1989; annual meeting August 13, 1988.
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19891990
- Chair
- Dick Berquist
- Treasurer
- Fred Homan
- Secretary
- Kathy Videen
A questionnaire on priorities put weed control at the top. At the 1989 annual meeting a member asked whether boats could be slowed to keep them from making waves; the answer was that it would be very difficult to enforce. The DNR stocked 6,000 walleye, and the board worked on slowing nutrient-laden North Creek.
Sources: Annual meeting August 19, 1989; board minutes January 6 and May 17, 1990.
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19901993
- Chair
- Don Jahnke
- Vice Chair
- Dick Berquist (from 1992)
- Treasurer
- Fred Homan
- Secretary
- Kathy Videen
Dory Hogan ran the water patrol and taught boating safety classes. In 1992 a mailed survey asked members to rate weed cutting and the patrol and whether to continue each; members at the annual meeting then voted to keep both. The 1992 board created the District's first vice chair position.
Sources: Board minutes September 1, 1990, September 5, 1992; annual meetings 1990–1993.
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19931996
- Chair
- Ed Bruno (co-chair with Dick Berquist, 1993–94)
- Treasurer
- Danese Jahnke
- Secretary
- Kathy Videen
The patrol reminded boaters to stay farther from shore to cut down on erosion. In 1995 members adopted bylaws for the District as a unit of government under Chapter 33, and a vegetation control committee began the work that led to a DNR-funded weed study.
Sources: Board minutes September 4, 1993, August 27, 1994, August 26, 1995; annual meetings 1993–1996.
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19961998
- Chair
- Ed Bruno
- Treasurer
- Dick Rudolph (probable)
- Secretary
- Dave Olson
Barr Engineering surveyed plants in all three lakes, and volunteers helped set up buoyed test plots on Big Lake comparing lime slurry, herbicide and cutting. Dick Rudolph took monthly clarity and temperature readings and was recognized by the DNR for his volunteer work.
Sources: Annual meetings July 31, 1996 and 1997; board minutes April 27, 1996. Few board minutes survive from 1996–98.
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19982001
- Chair
- Ed Bruno
- Treasurer
- Dick Rudolph
- Secretary
- Diane Martin
After a 1999 survey on dredging the channels, the board mailed ballots to every member; the project passed 120 to 37 and was finished in 2000. A 1999 count found 106 watercraft on Big Lake alone. Members also asked the Town of Alden to address safety and sanitation at the Church Pine landing.
Sources: Board minutes September 5, 1998; annual meetings 1998–2001; spring meeting May 27, 2000.
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20012006
- Chair
- John Schulte
- Treasurer
- Dick Rudolph
- Secretary
- Diane Martin, then Doug Thompson (2004)
The District paid to have the County Road K bridge between Round and Big Lakes built higher and wider than the county's design. In 2004 members debated and voted down evening and morning no-wake hours, 19 to 40, then approved more enforcement and posted rules at the landings, 47 to 15. The District hired its own patrol officers and hired Mary Hazzard to build its first website.
Sources: Annual meetings 2002–2005; board minutes July 6, 2002, August 31, 2004, April 2, 2005.
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20062008
- Chair
- Merle Paulson
- Vice Chair
- Mary Hazzard
- Treasurer
- Dick Rudolph, then Jerry Schlagel
- Secretary
- Doug Thompson
Clean Boats, Clean Waters inspections stepped up at both landings to keep Eurasian watermilfoil out. The 2006 election for a Big Lake seat was the closest on record: 20, 19 and 10 votes. No board minutes from 2007 were in the files when they were scanned in 2013.
Sources: Board minutes September 2, 2006; annual meetings 2006–2007.
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20082009
- Chair
- Mary Hazzard
- Vice Chair
- Tim Formo
- Treasurer
- Jerry Schlagel
- Secretary
- Bob Meyer
The board hired Harmony Environmental to prepare an aquatic plant management plan and joined Lake Wapogasset in buying a patrol boat leased to the Polk County Sheriff.
Sources: Board minutes August 23 and December 5, 2008; April 24, 2009.
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20092011
- Chair
- Bob Meyer
- Treasurer
- Jerry Schlagel
- Secretary
- Heidi Hazzard
The DNR approved the District's first aquatic plant management plan in December 2010, and a three-year AIS control grant of $93,221 followed in 2011. The first herbicide treatment for curly-leaf pondweed came that May, and by August the beds were reported down 95 percent. Grant-funded treatment continued for more than a decade, until the remaining beds were too small to treat effectively. Student inspectors staffed both landings.
Gary Ovick brought the board a proposal for I-LIDS surveillance cameras at both landings, to back up the inspectors. At the May 2010 informational meeting, a straw vote favored taking the idea up at the annual meeting. The plan drew questions about cost and enforcement: a December 2010 motion to drop the cameras from the grant tied 2 to 2, so they stayed in. Polk County then required a guardrail costing about $10,000 at Big Lake, and in July 2011 the board voted 4 to 3 to install only at Church Pine. That camera went live on August 5, 2011, with videos shared with the Polk County Sheriff.
Sources: Board minutes December 4, 2009, May 14, August 28 and December 18, 2010, April 4, June 20 and July 11, 2011; informational meetings May 22, 2010 and May 21, 2011; annual meeting August 27, 2011.
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20112013
- Chair
- Gary Ovick
- Vice Chair
- Steve Oswald
- Treasurer
- Jerry Schlagel, then Jerry Tack (2012)
- Secretary
- Heidi Hazzard
A 2012 member survey drew a 52 percent response. The Round–Church Pine channel was dredged with a grant covering half the cost, all minutes back to 1986 were scanned for the website, and the District's bylaws were retired in favor of Chapter 33. Steve Oswald worked to clear up the title to the District's dam, which still carried Dick Berquist's name, and arranged the engineering inspection the DNR requires every ten years. Members accepted a new lake management plan in 2013.
Sources: Board minutes August 27, 2011, December 10, 2012, March 4 and August 12, 2013.
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20132014
- Chair
- Gary Ovick
- Vice Chair
- Ann Layton
- Treasurer
- Jerry Tack
- Secretary
- Steve Oswald
After shoreline owners reported silt filling in near the channel, the no-wake zone on the Church Pine side was extended south to reduce stirring of sediment. Curly-leaf pondweed treatments showed steady results.
Sources: Board minutes August 24 and December 3, 2013; 2014 annual meeting presentation.
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20142019
- Chair
- Gary Ovick
- Vice Chair
- Mike Reiter
- Treasurer
- Jerry Tack
- Secretary
- Ann Layton
The District was among the first to take on Healthy Lakes shoreline projects, began a three-year study of phosphorus released from Big Lake's sediment, and relaunched its website in 2017. In 2015 it repaired the dam it had rebuilt in the 1980s, working with Warren White, the engineer on the original project, at a total cost of about $11,000.
That same year Polk County reorganized its water patrol, and hours on these lakes dropped sharply. The patrol boat the District had shared with Lake Wapogasset since 2008 was put up for sale and sold in 2016, and the sheriff did not return to the earlier arrangement. The spring meeting was replaced with a newsletter to reach every member, and the board worked to shorten the annual meeting to draw more people. Gary Ovick resigned for health reasons in 2019 after about ten years as chair.
Sources: Board minutes August 23, 2014, August 29, 2015, August 26, 2017 and August 25, 2018 (officers kept in the same roles each year); board minutes June 2, August 4 and December 1, 2015, April 6 and June 7, 2016; annual meetings 2015–2019.
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20192020
- Chair
- Mike Reiter (interim)
- Vice Chair
- Warren Wasescha
- Treasurer
- Warren Wasescha
- Secretary
- Ann Layton
Mike Reiter stepped in as interim chair after Gary Ovick's resignation. Warren Wasescha joined the board to fill the open seat and took over as treasurer from Jerry Tack. Heavy July rains and a ruptured beaver dam upstream kept lake levels high, and the navigation report warned that speeding near shore makes erosion worse in high water. The board also moved to four regular meetings a year.
Sources: Board minutes August 24, 2019 and August 4, 2020; annual meeting August 24, 2019.
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20202023
- Chair
- Mike Reiter
- Vice Chair
- Beth Hartman
- Treasurer
- Warren Wasescha
- Secretary
- Ann Layton
The 2020 annual meeting was held outdoors because of COVID-19, and the first Labor Day paddle parade launched from Round Lake that fall. In 2021 the DNR asked the District to remove its slow-no-wake buoys because they lacked permits; the Town of Alden passed the ordinance needed to permit them in 2022.
After a series of community meetings, several held over Zoom, the District completed new aquatic plant management and lake management plans in 2021, and the DNR accepted both. Big Lake was also removed from the impaired waters list. Alden accepted about an acre and a quarter from West Immanuel Church to improve the Church Pine landing, a new solar-powered landing camera replaced one that had been vandalized, and a loon nesting platform went in on Round Lake.
Sources: Board minutes August 29, 2020, June 1, August 28 and October 5, 2021, April 12, 2022; annual meetings 2020–2022. The 2022 officer vote is not in the files.
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20232025
- Chair
- Mike Reiter
- Vice Chair
- Rusty Tuttle
- Treasurer
- Warren Wasescha
- Secretary
- Ann Layton
When Beth Hartman stepped down in 2023, Rusty Tuttle, who had received write-in votes, was appointed to her seat. Curly-leaf pondweed beds had shrunk so far that treatment was paused, and beetles released for purple loosestrife kept it from flowering. A DNR rule change requiring Chippewa-strain walleye from the St. Croix Band nearly doubled the cost of stocking.
After years of work by Jerry Tack, permits came through in 2024 and two buoys went in at each channel. Steve Schieffer's study found phosphorus in shallow well water around Big Lake and released from its sediment. No candidates came forward at the 2024 and 2025 elections, and in 2025 both Mike Reiter and Ann Layton, secretary for more than a decade, stepped down.
Sources: Board minutes August 26, 2023 and August 24, 2024; annual meetings 2023–2025.
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2025present
- Chair
- Dan Sprader
- Treasurer
- Warren Wasescha
- Secretary
- Tim Rudolph
Sources and gaps
This history comes from the District's board minutes (1978–2025) and annual and spring meeting minutes (1975–2026). Where the minutes don't record an officer election directly, the officer is inferred from who led meetings or gave reports, and marked "probable."
Gaps: no association minutes for 1976–77; no board minutes for 1980–81, 1996–98 or 2007; and no record of the officer votes in 2016, 2022 or 2025. Vice chairs are missing for several periods. Names are spelled as they appear in the minutes, which sometimes vary.
Have minutes, photos or corrections? Please contact the board.