Happy New Year Grand Lakers!

Here’s hoping everyone ushers in the New Year tonight on a safe and happy note. I’d like to also take this opportunity to thank each of you for stepping up and becoming a part of the silent majority. We’ve made some strides this year in becoming a voice in the mix when it comes to the future of Grand Lake. As most of you know, the issues we wanted to address first we’re the shoreline management plan and the ill fated millet seeding plan intended to benefit migrating water fowl.

As I’ve stressed in previous reports, there is still a lot of ground to be covered before the SMP reaches the final stage of the initial draft. The final meetings of the stakeholder working groups have yet to be scheduled. This will be the final opportunity for the stakeholders making up the committees to comment on the final draft as a group, but don’t think this will be the last you hear from some of them. If their recommendations are not fully accepted, I’m sure a dissenting opinion will be filed with FERC. The “Fleming Fearless Forecast” is that legal action is just around the corner and will delay the implementation of the plan regardless of what it looks like in the end.

There is a movement afoot by some to step forward and promote some middle ground that could be accepted by a majority of Grand Lakers. Although I’ve had some encouraging discussions with some, I’m not feeling all warm and fuzzy about a consensus being reached prior to the public meeting stage of the process.

Many of you know by now, there is a grass roots campaign being championed by SMP committee member Lea Carson to soften what the committees have recommended on the zoning and vegetation management plan. She has developed a petition, on both issues, that urges changes in the draft. Although we didn’t develop this petition, we did mass mail it to the dock owner list just as we did on the lake level petition. Not all of our members will agree with everything in these documents, but I felt it was close enough to our major concerns, the impact of zoning on property values and the vegetation management plan, that it would be in our best interest to assist Lea with this undertaking. These petitions are supposed to be presented to the committees by Representative Doug Cox at their final meeting. It’s encouraging to see the committees themselves starting to splinter on these issues.

Like Grand Lake, Lake of the Ozarks is also in the middle of the smp process dictated by FERC. But these two mighty economic engines are far different than the average body of water in FERC’s jurisdiction. We plan on visiting with some of the key players in Missouri to see if there would be anything to be gained by joining forces in our efforts to insure some kind of workable plan for all in the end.

It should be an interesting first quarter.