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The clearer the lakes, the greater the property values around them, Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams Director Dr. Nate Bosch informed the Warsaw Common Council Monday night.
“Tonight we’re talking about making Warsaw’s lakes clean, healthy, safe and beautiful, so we’ll zoom in on Pike, Center and Winona,” he said, beginning with the economic impact of those three lakes for the city.
Together, those three lakes generate about $3.4 million of annual property tax revenue.
“This study was done a few years ago, so just late last year, in 2024, we adjusted these numbers for inflation. We also talked about wanting to redo this study completely in the next couple years,” he indicated.
The property values of the three lakes total about $254,400,000. That’s looking at lakefront property just around those three lakes. The total county lake economic impact is over $400 million.
“So stated another way, if our lakes were to dry up, this money - every cent of it - would dry up. These numbers are all conservative just for the lake portion of those home values,” Bosch said.
He told the council they just finished a new study, which was completed last year. The United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) had an idea to tie the clarity of water in a particular lake to the property values around that lake. After looking through the Midwestern United States, Kosciusko County was chosen as EPA’s test case for the new relationship in part because the Lilly Center had a lot of economic data already gathered on the lakes.
Lilly Center got a paper published on the study last year.
“So we applied this tool that the EPA developed along with Matt Burlingame, our lead researcher at the Lilly Center. We applied it to 14 local lakes, including the three we just talked about here in Warsaw. We included over 9,000 homes in that research study and Secchi depths,” Bosch explained.
A Secchi disc is a black and white disc used to measure water clarity.
“So what we did, is we looked at all the average water clarities for all of these 14 lakes, and then what we modeled was, ‘What if, because of the Lilly Center’s work and our partners that work with us, what if we were to increase the clarity of the water on each of these lakes by a foot?’” Bosch said, which is a conservative measurement.
“So we’re making our lakes cleaner over time. That’s our mission. So if we’re successful in that, and we add about a foot to the clarity of these lakes, what is that going to mean for property values around the lakes?”
Center Lake would have a $1.7 million increase around the lake in property values. Pike Lake would have a $6 million increase, while Winona Lake would have a $18.3 million in property values increase. Bosch said Winona is only second to Lake Wawasee, which would have a $43.2 million increase, of the 14 lakes in the study.
“So, altogether, we’re talking about $26 million in property value increase around just these three lakes, if we’re able to do what we’re trying to do, if we do our job well, at the Lilly Center and we can make these lakes cleaner over time by adding a foot of water clarity,” Bosch said. “So we think this is a pretty encouraging result of this research study and really kicks us in the pants to move forward and make this happen.”
On water clarity for Center, Pike and Winona, he indicated Center Lake is the clearest of the three, while Pike Lake is the least clear. Winona Lake is somewhere in the middle.
“You might ask why. The clarity is a measure of how much sediment is stirred up in the water, as well as how much algae is in the water. So, in the case of Center Lake, I think this is really telling testament to how our Stormwater Utility is doing because if you think about Center Lake, there’s not streams going in. All that’s going into Center Lake is stormwater. So the fact that Center Lake is pretty clear indicates that our Stormwater Utility is doing good work,” Bosch stated.
Pike Lake, on the other hand, has Deeds Creek flowing into it, which goes all the way up to Pierceton and a lot of agricultural land. Bosch said agricultural land has a lot of nutrients and sediments, which cause algae to grow once they get to the lake. That’s why Pike has low clarity.
Winona is somewhere in the middle because it has streams that come into it, but there’s also opportunity for those streams to get a little filtered before getting to the lake in some instances.
Other areas that Bosch touched on during his presentation was the research Lilly Center does, the educational programs they provide and the collaborations with other entities.
To dive into the full study and learn more, visit lakes.grace.edu.
Having presented the council with a number of tax abatement continuations at their June 2 meeting, Warsaw Community and Economic Development Director Jeremy Skinner presented the last bunch that he’s received so far. The council unanimously approved all of them.
They included:
• Tecomet 2015, formerly Symmetry Medical USA Inc., was granted a 10-year tax abatement for personal and real property in July 2015, but they only submitted for personal this year. They spent around $2 million in personal equipment and had estimated at the time of adding 107 additional jobs but have not added any new employees since 2015. They’re in their 10th year of abatement.
• 2427 N. Boeing Drive, Lake City Heat Treating Corp., was granted a tax abatement in 2019 for personal property improvements estimated at around $4.8 million. They spent around $4.4 million in personal property improvements and hired 10 additional employees since 2019. The abatement is in its fifth year.
• Legrand AV (formerly Milestone AV Technologies LLC), 3100 N. Detroit St., was granted a personal property tax abatement. They spent roughly $266,000 in improvements since 2014. They estimated adding 30 new employees, but haven’t added any new employees to date. They’re in their 10th year of abatement.
• Banner Medical Innovations Inc., 1295 Polk Drive, was granted a personal property tax abatement. They spent over $4 million in personal property and have hired 39 new employees since starting production in 2016. They’re in their ninth year of the tax abatement.
In other business, Oakwood Cemetery sexton Hal Heagy requested to transfer $2,000 from contracted repair and maintenance to improvements other than buildings. The reason for the transfer was to have the roads within the cemetery sealed. The council unanimously approved the transfer resolution.
Warsaw Municipal Airport Manager Nick King requested the council approve, on first reading, an ordinance for an additional appropriation for $500,000 in the Aviation Depreciation Fund. A public hearing on the additional appropriation ordinance will be held at the July 7 council meeting, followed by the council being asked to approve the ordinance on second reading.
King reported the Kosciusko County Commissioners at their last meeting approved the $500,000 that they budgeted for 2025 for the airport. The funds will go toward phase I of the airport’s east-west runway rehabilitation project. Because King didn’t know the funds would be coming until after his budget for 2025 was approved in 2024, the additional appropriation process is required to spend the money on the project.
The council approved the ordinance on first reading.
