Wake surfing advocates challenge Lake Waramaug ban

A lake-use advocacy group is challenging Lake Waramaug’s newly approved wake-surfing ban, claiming the tri-town ordinance was adopted improperly and without sufficient evidence.

The Lake Waramaug Friends for Common-Sense Regulation group announced on Nov. 19 that it had petitioned the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to overturn its October approval of the ban and instead implement consistent statewide regulations.

The group said the ban, adopted by a joint vote in Kent, Washington and Warren on July 31, is “arbitrary, unreasonable and overly restrictive,” and unlawful because it “was realized based on insufficient evidence and without due process.”

Wake surfing is a slow-moving tow sport in which participants ride a boat-generated wave created by ballasts and weighted tanks.

Over the past decade, the activity has surged in popularity on lakes across North America, fueling regulatory disputes between supporters and critics.

Lake Waramaug is the second lake in Connecticut where voters have called for banning the sport.

The Lake Waramaug Friends group said the data used to shape the ordinance — drawn from a 2024 report by consulting firm Terra Vigilis — does not justify a full prohibition. That study examined the effect of large wake propagation on the lake bottom and found that wake boats operating in “surf mode” can move water down to 26 feet, potentially disturbing long-settled particles. But the report did not include a formal water-quality analysis to determine whether the sediment disruption actually harms the lake, a gap that opponents of the ban say undermines its environmental rationale.

Many long-time residents and lake users countered that any threat to the lake’s fragile health was enough to support the prohibition. During public hearings and meetings leading up to the vote, several speakers pointed to the lake’s well-documented period of poor water quality in the 1970s and 1980s, when it was largely unusable.

Others raised concerns about safety, saying large wakes have knocked kayakers off balance or shaken docks when wake-surfing boats pass. These reports, however, are anecdotal, and no formal safety study specific to Lake Waramaug has been conducted.

Lake Waramaug Friends and other opponents maintain that the concerns are overstated and that, without concrete water-quality data, there is no evidence to support an ecologically based ban.

The group also says it did not receive a public hearing after submitting its own set of proposed regulations to DEEP in June, accompanied by 80 signatures. It argues that the agency’s refusal violated state statute, rendering DEEP’s later approval of the ban invalid.

The group says that the approval sets a “troubling precedent: allowing municipalities to prohibit safe, legal activities without evidence of harm, while ignoring affected constituents and denying them meaningful participation in the decision-making process.”

The ban is scheduled to take effect in February, when DEEP publishes its updated Boater Safety Guide. DEEP has also commissioned its own study of wake-surfing impacts on Connecticut lakes, with findings expected that same month.