I recieved a flyer in the mail and today I saw a billboard for this group advocating protection of waterfront property owners???

MADISON – Wisconsinites will soon begin seeing ads supporting a bill aimed at protecting the rights of waterfront property owners who want to build piers and docks.

The ad campaign is sponsored by the Wisconsin Homeowners Alliance and will feature statewide radio, mail, video and digital ads. It's called "Protect our Piers" and will begin airing Monday.

The bill for which the ad campaign is hoping to drum up support is a response to a 2018 Wisconsin Supreme Court decision that ruled a Price County couple could not build a pier off their waterfront property because another couple owned the land under the lake bed.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley wrote the court's ruling overturned rights recognized under the common law for at least 140 years.

"The consequences of what began as a family squabble are not confined to the parties before us but fundamentally transform property rights for thousands of Wisconsin property owners along hundreds of flowages," Grassl Bradley wrote. "Such a dramatic change in the law should be the legislature's prerogative, not that of the four justices comprising the majority."

For more information on the "Protect our Piers" campaign, visit protectourpiers.org.

Thanks for sharing. I also saw a billboard today. Didnt really make sense to me.

If the large changes and people are allowed to anchor piers to a lake bed that another person owns I wonder if that will affect water trapping in privately owned lake beds.

My thought exactly- I'm wondering if the dispute is determining the Ordinary High Water Mark? here's how the Wisconsin DNR defines it:


Wisconsin's Waters Belong to Everyone

Wisconsin lakes and rivers are public resources, owned in common by all Wisconsin citizens under the state's Public Trust Doctrine. Based on the state constitution, this doctrine has been further defined by case law and statute. It declares that all navigable waters are "common highways and forever free", and held in trust by the Department of Natural Resources.

Might want or need to check on who owns the land to the middle of the flowing water on flowages etc. The water is public but the land underneath is not if it is a flowage or a river for the most part. As to this pier in question if the person would have constructed a floating pier that is attached to the land via the lot line then there would not have been any involvement in utilizing the land beneath the pier. This could really get hairy for those that want to exercise their rights as lake flowage and river land owners. I trap in a couple flowages where I am not having issues, who knows how that would go down the road.

Bryce