By Jonathan Friendly, LCA Board Member

Beauty is said to be in the eye of the beholder; utility is a little harder to discern.

And that is why reasonable people can disagree about the greenbelt of natural vegetation that Lake Charlevoix’s towns and cities are now trying to protect because of its value in filtering out pollutants and combating erosion.

In the mid-80’s, when the lake level was much higher than it is now (and the style of summer homes somewhat more modest), the vegetation formed a mostly green border marking the line between land and water.

But as the lake has gone down, the exposed littoral of rock and sand became less appealing to the eye (not to mention tougher on the feet). Not much grew in the transition zone, and what did tended to be scrawny, stringy plants and, more recently, invasives like phragmites australis.

Soaring prices for lakefront property encouraged a new approach of larger, more imposing houses with manicured, fertilized lawns that seemingly cried out for more decorative, man-made shores to mark the boundary between land and water. The role of the native plants -- taking up phosphates before they got to the water and aided cladophra bloom -- was easy to overlook. In lot after lot, the new aesthetic overwhelmed the hodge-podge of marsh milkweed, bristly sedge and swamp loosestrife.

And those of us – I include myself -- who liked the shoreline the way nature made it had no inherent right to complain about what a neighbor wanted to do to make his beach more fitted to his taste. I forfeited any right to complain about human artifacts when I got the permits necessary to perch a blue-topped gazebo near where the water used to stop, even if the swamp behind the structure was pretty much what it had been after the glaciers receded 12,000 years ago.

But the fact remains that those greenbelts and the land below them are important. Without the greenbelts, even moderate rains can carry pesticides and fertilizers and oils into the lake. The greenbelts give shelter to nesting birds and promote the plankton that good fish habitat needs.

If we allow ourselves to continue to disturb them, we risk losing what we most value, a lake of unsurpassed water quality surrounded by nature’s tranquility.

The good of a natural shoreline is not always apparent to the naked eye.

But it is to the thoughtful mind.

Having land on the lake confers great privilege and equally great responsibility. We need to think before we alter what nature has given us.