Keep feds out

Most of us love “the big lake.” It supplies the water we drink and generates cooling summer breezes. We fish, paddle, swim, dive and sail on and in it. We build boats. We camp in state parks at its edge: Kohler-Andrae, Point Beach, Peninsula. We never tire of watching its daily mood swings. It renews our spirits. We romanticize the dramatic stories of the boats, ships and sailors who took their final frigid plunge during every major storm before the days of rail and interstate highways.

We are now being told that we must cede control of much of our lakeshore, up to the high water line, to a federal agency that will establish a “marine sanctuary” to protect our shipwrecks (“New Sheboygan visitor center planned,” June 25).

Who could be crass enough to oppose a “sanctuary”? What could be more harmless than a mere “designation,” they ask. Never fear, they tell us. This federal agency has neither the will nor budget to track down all undocumented beachcombers, fishermen and divers, anyway. Although our federal government is pretty much bankrupt, local officials salivate at the thought of federal grants. That well never runs dry. Think of the tourism.

Despite the usual seductive promises, our public officials should not rubber stamp this expansion of federal jurisdiction over our lakeshore any more than they should agree that a federal agency should oversee our state parks, such as Kohler-Andrae, Point Beach or Peninsula. These wonderful places belong to the people of Wisconsin.

Art DeJong Sheboygan