Piers, lifts, and permits on Winona Lake

Winona Lake appears by name in the Natural Resources Commission's Information Bulletin #61, "Listing of Public Freshwater Lakes", under Kosciusko County, described there as located 1.5 miles east of Warsaw. That listing is what puts the lake under state jurisdiction. Indiana's Lakes Preservation Act, IC 14-26-2, and the rules adopted under it at 312 IAC 11, govern what may be built on such a lake. As the Natural Resources Commission summarizes it in Information Bulletin #56, the Act places full power and control of a public freshwater lake in the state of Indiana, to hold in trust for the use of all citizens of Indiana, to preserve natural scenic beauty and for recreational purposes. Lakefront owners keep real rights on such a lake, and those rights are statutory and have to be balanced against the public's.

The general license: what goes in without paperwork

Under 312 IAC 11-3-1, placing and maintaining a temporary structure is authorized without a written license if the structure satisfies each of the following:

• It is easily removable.
• It does not infringe on an adjacent landowner's access to the lake.
• It does not unduly restrict navigation.
• It is not unusually wide or long relative to similar structures in the vicinity on the same lake.
• It extends no more than 150 feet from the shoreline or water line.
• If it is a pier, it does not extend over water that is continuously more than six feet deep out to 150 feet from shore.
• It is not a marina.
• It is not a group pier.
• It is placed by a riparian owner, or with a riparian owner's written approval.

Miss any one of those and the structure needs an individual written license under 312 IAC 11-3-3 instead.

How the depth off your shoreline shortens your pier

The sixth condition is the one that surprises people, and it matters on a lake with a basin like this one. The rule includes three worked illustrations:

• Water six feet deep or less from shore out to 150 feet: maximum pier length 150 feet.
• Water continuously more than six feet deep beyond 75 feet from shore: maximum pier length 75 feet.
• Water that is not continuously over six feet deep from shore: maximum pier length 150 feet.

In other words, the general license lets you reach across a shallow shelf, and stops you at 75 feet where the bottom drops away early. Winona Lake has both situations along different stretches of shoreline, so the answer for your frontage depends on your own soundings rather than on what a neighbor across the lake was allowed to build.

What counts as temporary

"Temporary" has a specific definition at 312 IAC 11-2-25: a structure that can be installed and removed from the lake without using a crane, bulldozer, backhoe, or similar heavy or large machinery. The rule then gives two examples, and the examples are the practical test most people need.

• A pier supported by auger poles or other poles no more than three and a half inches in diameter resting on the lake bed, and not mounted in or made of concrete or cement.
• A boat shelter, boat lift, or boat hoist with a canvas top and sides, supported by poles no more than three and a half inches in diameter, not mounted in or made of concrete, designed to float or to rest on the lake bed under its own weight, and no wider than ten feet nor longer than twenty feet.

A lift larger than ten by twenty feet falls outside that example, as does anything set in concrete. Those are the details worth checking against a quote before a contractor orders materials.

What needs a written license

Rule 4 of the same article covers the work that requires an application and a decision from the department. The categories that come up most often on a residential lake are new seawalls, seawall refacing, boat well excavation and boat well fills, and group piers. The shoreline guide covers the seawall and erosion side of that list in detail.

The group pier definition at 312 IAC 11-2-11.5 catches more situations than the phrase suggests. A pier is a group pier if it provides docking space for at least five separate property owners, at least five rental units, an association, a condominium or cooperative or other horizontal property, a subdivision or addition, a conservancy district, a campground, a mobile home park, or a club organized around boating. A shared pier serving several condominium units on this lake is a group pier whether or not anyone calls it one, and 312 IAC 11-4-8 states plainly that a person must not place one without a written license.

The conditions the department attaches to a group pier license are worth knowing even if you are not applying for one, because they show the state's reasoning. A licensed group pier has to keep a reasonable buffer between itself and both the 200-foot line from shore and the riparian zones of adjacent owners, with at least five feet of clearance on both sides of a riparian line, and up to ten feet on each side where a qualified professional says navigation requires it. It must not cause unreasonable traffic congestion, must not be hidden or obscured in a way that creates a hazard, must minimize disturbance to near-shore vegetation and sediments, and must not extend more than half the width of the applicant's own shoreline.

Glacial stone against an existing seawall

One piece of shoreline work does fall under the general license, and it is the one this lake's geology supplies for free. Placing glacial stone on the lakeward face of a lawful existing seawall is authorized without a written license if the reface is made exclusively of glacial stone, extends no more than four feet lakeward of the shoreline at the base of the wall, adds no walk or structural tie on the existing seawall, puts no impermeable material behind or beneath the stone, anchors any filter cloth properly, and controls erosion from disturbed ground above the waterline.

That is the softening move available to an owner who already has a hard wall, and the stone itself is native to this lakebed.

Your riparian zone, and your neighbor's

Where one owner's water ends and the next begins is not settled by extending the property line straight out. The Commission's Information Bulletin #56, "Riparian Zones within Public Freshwater Lakes and Navigable Waters" collects the principles the DNR and the Commission apply, drawn from Indiana appellate decisions and the Commission's own indexed rulings.

Several points from that bulletin come up constantly on residential lakes:

• A homeowner association's governing documents come first. Where properties were purchased subject to an association constitution and bylaws intended to govern riparian rights, that document supersedes the other principles.
• Riparian rights typically include access to the water, placement of a pier to the line of navigability, use of accretions, and reasonable use of the water for boating and domestic purposes.
• Clearance at the dividing line. The bulletin says there should ideally be ten feet of clearance on both sides of the line between riparian zones, twenty feet in total, and that at a minimum a total of ten feet is typically required to be clear of piers and moored boats. That strip may still be used for loading and unloading and for active recreation.
• Reasonableness limits length. A pier is unreasonable if it interferes with others' use of the lake, and any extension beyond what mooring and launching require may be considered unreasonable. Riparian boundaries do not run to the middle of the lake, and they do not run to the 200-foot line where motorboats are held to idle speed.
• Riparian rights can be separated from the land. A deed can reserve them, an easement can convey them, and where an easement or right-of-way separates two fee owners, riparian rights generally extend to the centerline of that easement.
• The public gets navigation and recreation, and no more. Someone who is not a riparian owner has no right to place a pier or moor a boat.

The bulletin also notes that under IC 14-26-2-23 the department may require common use of a structure where that is needed to accommodate competing riparian interests. The bulletin's own framing is that riparian owners can be added without limit while the water stays the same size, so the two have to be held in balance.

When there is a disagreement

Structures placed under a general license are the subject of their own rule, 312 IAC 11-3-2, which addresses disputes over them. Contested matters go to the Natural Resources Commission through the administrative process at IC 4-21.5, and the Commission's indexed decisions, published in a database called Caddnar, function as precedent that the Commission must cite or distinguish. For a pier line disagreement between neighbors, that record is more useful than any general advice, because prior rulings on similar shoreline geometry are searchable.

Before you order a pier

• Confirm the structure is temporary as the rule defines it: no concrete, poles no more than three and a half inches, removable without heavy machinery.
• Sound the depth off your own frontage at 75 and 150 feet. That single measurement decides your maximum length under the general license.
• Measure your lift. The canvas boat lift example stops at ten feet wide by twenty feet long.
• Leave the clearance. Ten feet total at the riparian line is the working minimum, and twenty is what the bulletin prefers.
• Read your association's documents before you read the state rule, because they may control.
• Call the DNR Division of Water first for anything involving a seawall, dredging, a boat well, concrete, or shared docking for five or more owners.

This article summarizes rules rather than giving legal advice, and the rules are amended periodically. The text of 312 IAC 11 and the two information bulletins linked above are the documents to check before spending money.