Are riparian laws enforceable on Michigan’s inland lakes?

By Linda Alice Dewey

Sun contributor

Part three in our series explaining riparian rights and recreational boating laws. Read the first two installments here and here.

Sometimes, when riparian landowners on inland lakes feel their rights are being infringed upon or they sense potential danger, they feel the need to call in the law. Most often they will call the sheriff’s department.

Sheriff Mike Borkovich says you’ll see several different law enforcement departments on the lake—DNR, the county sheriff, National Park Service, and occasionally state police for body recovery. Of those, he says, “normally, you’ll see the sheriff’s boat.” All of them handle issues such as “drunk boating enforcement,” he says, “but we do more [of them].”

Some may be surprised to learn that local ordinances for individuals on land also hold true for those on the water, including drunk and disorderly conduct as well as indecency and nudity. There are some differences when you’re on a boat, however. The sheriff explains several.

“It’s not illegal to have an open beer,” he says, “but it is [illegal] to be over the legal limits of being impaired or drunk. You can probably have a couple beers and not be impaired at all.”

He points out that many violations on the water are easy to enforce. “If someone is obnoxious,” he says, “we’ll do a standard field sobriety test, looking for signs of drugs or alcohol. Underage drinking is easy to enforce.” So is smoking marijuana, littering, reckless operation, jet ski jumping immediately next to a dive flag, boats cutting off sailboats too close (as occurred this summer during a yacht club race), and people riding in the bow of boats. On that last one, he explains that passengers are not allowed to ride way up in front with their feet hanging off the bow of the boat when the boat is going faster than a no-wake speed.

Borkovich continues his list of easily enforceable situations: “If they throw their Coke cans overboard or litter is going off the boat, or nude behavior, or urinating off the boat, nude sunbathing … a really, really loud stereo…”

He stops there. “That [loud stereo] is not as easy but more of a common-sense thing,” he clarifies. To put a definition on it is very subjective.” In other words, what one person feels is too loud may not be so to another. He notes that noise enforcement entails setting up equipment and taking decibel level readings, which can be affected by water noise and the wind—hard enough on a snowmobile trail, but “boating’s a lot harder to define. If someone is in a boat where they’re drifting…” You get the point.

However, just what those noise and nuisance ordinances don’t allow depends on the township, says Tim Cypher, zoning administrator for several Leelanau County townships. “We have nuisance per se ordinances that may or may not apply in this matter,” Cypher says. In some townships, “nuisance” is not spelled out in as much detail as others. “Check with your local township,” is his best advice to riparians.

 

Riparian rights enforcement isn’t so easy

Though many ordinances and laws are easy to enforce on inland lakes, “when it comes to riparian rights, those are difficult to enforce,” says the sheriff.

This is due to the lack of clarity in riparian rights laws. As a result, common practices have developed over time that are based on common sense combined with court decisions on a few specific cases. There appears to be much misunderstanding within these practices.

And yet, says Borkovich, “The law is clear. It’s all in the interpretation.”

But whose interpretation—the riparian complainant’s or the public boating defender’s?

“It comes down to what the prosecutor and sheriff decide [and] how hard they’re going to enforce it,” says Glen Lake riparian Chip Hoagland. “I had a neighbor complain,” Hoagland explains. “He had the sheriff come out and check PFD’s [personal floating devices like life jackets and cushions]—a little harassment.” It took care of the problem, Hoagland says.

This brings up more than a few questions. Was this harassment legal? And can one assume that the sheriff’s interpretation of the law is always correct? (Borkovich erroneously stated in a Sun interview earlier this summer that public temporary anchoring is not allowed on inland lakes, only on the Great Lakes.)

Hoagland does understand that temporary anchoring is allowed. “I’ve gone to people and told them, ‘no, this is our property,” he says. “We don’t mind short term, we’re not happy with long term.” (For a detailed look at the legalities regarding anchoring on Michigan’s inland lakes, read “Can we swim and anchor here?”)

Beside the county sheriff’s boats, the other major law enforcement presence on Leelanau’s public inland lakes is the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). In addition to criminal law enforcement, the DNR will enforce a riparian case but only when the law is clear, says Lt. Tom Wanless, the DNR boating law administrator in Lansing. Otherwise, he says, “we let the court deal with it … unless there is a court case specific to that body of water or situation … We don’t want to step in and do something, when the laws are vague or poorly written.”

 

Taking the law into their own hands

This leaves much of riparian and public water rights issues in the hands of the people, unless they want to take it to court.

Irene Bagby lives near Chip Hoagland on Big Glen Lake. When things get out of hand with public boaters in her area, Irene is often the one to call the sheriff. One concern for her is when several pontoon boats tie up and “raft” together. “They tend to, just right out in front of us, gather together,” she explains. “Sometimes they’re very, very nice, and other times—” The groups can become rather large, she states, and sometimes create a navigational problem for other boaters to get around them.

While there is no law against rafting boats together in public water, they must not get in the way of other boats. When that happens, it can become a legal issue.

Bagby also raises the issue of how far away boats must be from private anchored rafts, docks, swimmers, and the shoreline. Bagby believes boats must stay 100 feet from moorings and swimmers, citing a State of Michigan pamphlet on personal watercraft, which she thinks also applies to boats. But Michigan law states only that boaters must observe a “slow—no wake speed within 100 feet of the shoreline, any watercraft, pier, person, raft, swimming area, and swimmers.” It doesn’t say they can’t be there.

One thing is clear. Every riparian interviewed for this series agreed that most boaters are respectful and aware of the privacy issues for those living onshore. Until the day when the Michigan legislature passes new legislation, law and order on Michigan’s inland lakes will necessarily continue to be maintained by its citizens, more often than not. In that process, a modicum of decency and common sense will go a long way.