"environmental consultants" work their magic by playing with the idea of subjectivity. This will be a chronic problem for people who truly care about lakes in Northern Wisconsin. On the one hand, it is hard to "prove" that piers cause environmental damage. A person could put a dozen purple plastic piers all the way across my lake, and and I don't think the bald eagles, loons, and fish would care. And it is hard to "prove' that it causes damage to the "naturalness" of a lake, because what you notice is "subjective". I personally hate the big colored rafts that people put on the water. But at some point, it is hard to prove why that it is less aesthetically pleasing than my dock (though it is).
I think that we have to learn to make better arguments about this. I think we have to confront the current notion that we can't regulate aesthetics. I think the state should be able to decide whether a dock diminishes a public resource or not. After all, we regulate the number of junked cars that can sit on a property.
the next step would be to make the argument that we are protecting future financial resources. Only a small number of people can benefit from the private use of lake property. But the number of people interested in ecotourism is increasing. Forward looking States, counties, and townships are going to move to protect what "place" there is by restricting what private landholders can do.
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