ROCK LAKE IMPROVEMENT ASSOCIATION, President’s Report, 2005

Board Members: Johanna Chworowsky, Jim Colegrove, Pete Ebbott, Larry Everson, Kevin Lehner, Stanley Smoniewski, Milt Strauss, Katie Travers, Karl Vonderohe,
Russell Wagner

The main focus for the last year has been the long range planning grant that RLIA received from the Wisconsin DNR. Patricia Cisero as lead the advisory committee and that committee has adopted a plan and prioritized 47 recommendations to be carried out in the years to come.
The sensitivity of Rock Lake has been demonstrated by the infestation of Eurasian milfoil and zebra mussels. The major problem with zebra mussels is that they feed on the algae that is used by the zoo plankton in the lake. These zoo plankton are the bottom of the food chain and feed the smaller fish n the lake. The zebra mussels will not feed on blue-green algae which is toxic to them. In the future the lake will likely clear considerably for the first couple of years and then the nutrients that were used by the algae will now be used by the blue-green algae and cause a considerable blue-green algae bloom, clouding the lake.
The RLIA board continues to attend workshops and state lake conventions to learn about protecting our resource. We also continue to carry on the actuates such as the goose count, boat count, and sending packets of information to new lake shore owners.
The board has changed its meeting night and now meets at 7:00 PM on the third Wednesday of each month at the Lake Mills Municipal Building.