Readers write for Monday, June 28

I want to compliment you for your series "Losing our lakes" (June 20-22). This is the kind of investigative reporting that we need more of. Having an informed public is vital for a successful democracy.

Hopefully this kind of information will lead to more being done to not only pass tougher rules for protecting our natural resources and water, but to ensure enforcement as well. It is obvious that much needs to be done to eliminate agricultural runoff and the overcrowding of our lakes.

Keep up the good work.

BOB BIRNSTENGEL, LAPORTE, MINN.

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Bravo! Your likely award-winning series points out the lunacy of selfish lakeshore property owners and greed-driven developers to have their way with our public assets, our priceless lakes.

Sadly, those with designs on our lakes are aided too often by compliant or apathetic public officials, bowing to those who would assault Mother Nature to fit their grandiose lakeshore dreams and development schemes. Officials thus belie their public trust obligations and deny giving due diligence to their stewardship roles, doing disservice to us true-blue lake lovers and to the public at large.

Will our lakes survive the onslaught? In the future lies either redemption or additional irreparable harm to 12,000 lakes, public assets to be protected, not despoiled by limitless, willy-nilly lakeside developments run amok.

GARY L. LARSON, OUTING, MINN.

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Your excellent series of articles on the overdevelopment of our lakes was sadly not news to many of us who live in north-central Minnesota. We see planning commissions, boards of adjustment, county boards and city councils act as if customer satisfaction (not to mention the satisfaction of their attorneys) is more important than protecting public assets. We see those same ruling bodies regularly ignore valid citizen concerns, especially when it comes to the long-term health of our region's lakes.

When good ideas get proposed, such as revising the state's minimum shoreland standards or setting reasonable limits on docks, some cry foul and use their political influence to water down the rules. This is the classic case of "death by a thousand cuts," in which the thousands of exemptions and amendments all add up to dying lakes.

If our lakes -- and indeed our identity as Minnesotans -- are to survive decades of bad decisions, we need thousands of voices clamoring for change. These are our waters, folks. We need to take them back from those who view them as short-term, profit-generating widgets.

PHIL HUNSICKER, BRAINERD, MINN.

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"Losing our lakes" only touched the tip of the iceberg. It's not just the residents, developers and the planning commissions that are destroying our lakes, but also the other regulatory agencies and the agriculture community. Farmers can let manure run through yards or directly into our lakes, and no agency has control over it. There are at least six different agencies that deal with the area within 1,000 feet of a lake or river, and the best any of them will do is to tell you it's not their responsibility; it's a different agency's role.

If Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature really wanted to do Minnesota a favor, they'd put the regulation of everything that happens within 1,000 feet of any lake, river, stream or wetland under one department so someone has to take responsibility for it.

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Your series should have included an additional fourth part, focusing on the other more insidious cause of lake degradation: old septic systems that leach nutrients to the lake and cause algal blooms and oxygen depletions. But failing septic systems remain the elephant in the room that no one wants to blame, especially the sanctimonious "not in my back yard" residents who criticize new-to-the-lake residents. Those new residents should ask their established neighbors to add a dye to their septics to see if they are part of the 39 percent failure rate cited by the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency.

It's especially two-faced by those long-term cabin owners who claim to watch the loons from their quaint, little cabins with their wooded buffers but who are never required to upgrade their waste system because they keep their cabins in a trust, meaning that they never really change owners.

And so when new residents come along with a new state-of-the-art septic systems, the NIMBYs retain attorneys, conjure stories about their new neighbors and fight anyone who wants what they already have. If they truly want to save their lakes, they shouldn't flush their toilets.