League of extraordinary citizens offer lake protection
Story by Roxann Edsall
Photos by David Smith
Submitted photos
The water’s up, and the boats are out. We’ve been missing the warm days splashing in the water with friends and family, the cookouts and gatherings on the lake, the nighttime cruises and the early mornings fishing on the lake.
If you live on or near Logan Martin Lake, you may want to take a moment to thank a small group of people who have helped to make all that possible.
These agents of change are a league of ordinary people who are truly extraordinary citizens. Their shirt says Logan Martin Lake Protection Association (LMLPA), but “League of Lake Protectors” might be more fitting. In the nearly 30 years of LMLPA’s existence, these lake protection superheroes have been working to keep lake life great 24/7 for all who live near, work near, or play near the waters of Logan Martin.
If you’re confidently splashing in the water with friends and family, you may not realize that LMLPA constantly conducts water testing to ensure that it is safe for swimming.
Board member Isabella Trussell oversees that project and has since 1996. “At that time there were no women on the board, so I joined and said I’d take up water quality testing,” said Trussell. “We got ahold of the people doing Lake Watch at Lake Martin and learned how their program worked. Now we have 25 monitors who do chemical and physical tests monthly with an EPA-approved protocol and sponsored by Alabama Water Watch out of Auburn University.”
The cookouts and gatherings on the lake can happen for more months of the year now that the winter water level only goes down three feet, instead of five. More areas are still accessible by water, with fewer mud flats in the late fall and early spring when the weather might still be favorable for outdoor activities.
Linda Reuthemann has been a member of LMLPA for 23 years and currently serves as treasurer. She says the association was heavily involved in discussions about the changes in the winter lake level. “People didn’t want the lake to drop five feet in the winter,” Reuthemann said. “They wanted to be like Neely Henry and just drop one foot. We’ve been to the dam and have talked to everyone who would listen at the Army Corps of Engineers. We ended up with the three-foot drop based on these discussions.”
The higher lake levels have made some areas previously inaccessible by water in the winter available for fishing and for winter tournaments. Tournament fishing typically begins while it is still dark, so lighted buoys are a great safety feature on Logan Martin. Nighttime pontoon cruisers also benefit from being able to see lake hazards heralded by the presence of a lighted buoy.
Former LMLPA president Bud Kitchin works on the buoy program, kicked off in 2019. “We got the first one in the water in the latter part of 2020,” Kitchin says. “We knew our sister association on Lake Martin had started a program three or four years earlier, so we talked to them, then brought the idea here. We launched the program in conjunction with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency (ALEA) marine division.”
The group started by asking for buoy sponsors to raise the money to purchase and maintain the buoys. In the beginning, they were only able to purchase a few buoys, and none were lighted. Those have since been replaced with lighted ones. Right now, they have 70 lighted buoys installed and have ordered 15 more.
“The cost of the buoys has gone up significantly this year,” says Kitchin. “Each buoy, including maintenance is costing about $700 and every summer, we have to replace two or three that get hit or vandalized.” They have yet to reach their initial goal of 100 buoys installed. Placement of the buoys, he adds, is determined by recommendations, accidents or issues and is decided by ALEA.
Safety for people is not the only focus for the work of the LMLPA. They help to protect wildlife as well, through their fishing line collection and recycling program. Eagles, osprey, ducks and other birds around the lake can get caught in the fishing line left in the water or along the shorelines.
Randy Sparks manages the six fishing line stations set up at Riverside, Lakeside Park, Town and Country, General Lee, Poor House and Clear Creek. “We collect it and ship it to a company in Iowa that recycles it,” says Sparks. “The spools are also recycled and most of this is made into plastic tackle boxes.”
Managing the annual lake cleanup is also a major project for LMLPA. Each March, for the last 26 years, they have worked with “Renew Our Rivers,” a lake cleanup program sponsored by Southern Company on each of their hydroelectric dam lakes. Each year, a staggering 10 to 12 tons of trash and other large debris are removed from Logan Martin. Volunteers meet at one of six locations from Clear Creek near the dam to Lincoln to pick up bags and gloves and return the trash to the same location.
Lincoln’s Landing is the first site to see the benefit of the association’s latest project to obtain and install accessibility lifts. “I’d seen an article on these lifts,” says project coordinator Arlene Johnson, “and I thought we might need to do some of these. I thought of Lincoln’s Landing. The idea is to provide access to people who are handicapped to be able to use a boat and enjoy the lake.”
Johnson found a vendor and a local supplier, got board approval and in May of 2022, the lift was installed at Lincoln’s Landing. The lift itself was paid for through a grant from The Noble Foundation and the City of Lincoln.
Pell City’s Lakeside Park is the next location to receive an accessibility lift. “We just have to figure out where to put it,” explains Johnson. “It has to have a non-floating dock to be attached to, so we’ll either need to find a place or build one.”
The goal is for LMLPA to be able to add a third lift, which would be installed on the lower part of the lake at Double Cove Park.
Superhero work sometimes comes from regular folks. These are ordinary people, but through the LMLPA, these residents and friends of Logan Martin are showing their extraordinary passion for this body of water and the people who love it.
The group is small with just 175 members, so the workload is heavy. If you would like to show your dedication to protecting Logan Martin, they would appreciate your help. Support their efforts or join the Logan Martin Lake Protection Association at www.lmlpa.org.
Membership is $25 per family. You’ll feel like a superhero, or at the very least, extraordinary.
