Officials want people off state-owned land

Neighboring landowners are treating the lakeside property as their own.

FREDERICKTOWN, Ohio (AP) — State wildlife officials are warning people who live near Knox Lake to stop mowing grass on state property and treating the land as their own.

Bill Swaim, 60, who lives near the lake about 45 miles northeast of Columbus, was fined $175 last year for mowing what he views as his backyard.

Swaim’s property, like most near the lake, stops just shy of the water. For years, he took care of the state-owned buffer zone, mowing, planting flowers and even installing a bench swing there.

Swaim said he didn’t think he was doing anything wrong. Recent state enforcement is too harsh, he said.

“I could find better things to do with the state’s money,” he said.

State Division of Wildlife officials have sent warning letters reminding homeowners not to treat state land around the lake as their own.

Other homeowners have cut trees and mowed state property for a better view of the lake, said Dan Huss, the area’s manager for the wildlife division.

“People will say, ‘It’s just not right for you to come in here and say we can’t do this anymore,’” Huss said.

But disregard for boundaries is getting out of hand, he said.

The state created the 469-acre Knox Lake in 1954 with money from sales of hunting and fishing licenses. The lake was intended to become a refuge for wildlife and people who enjoy the outdoors. It quickly experienced a building boom as farmland was parceled off and erroneously sold as lakefront property.

Huss said the state-owned buffer around the lake varies from several hundred feet in some spots to a couple of inches in others. In some places, people have clear-cut swaths of trees up to 600 feet wide. Other homeowners used tractors to dig up state property to bring the lake onto their land.

“Basically, if you wouldn’t do it to your neighbor’s property, don’t do it to state land,” Huss said.

Similar issues have cropped up around many other state lakes and parks, said Jane Beathard, an Ohio Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman. The state is working to bring homeowners into compliance around Rocky Fork Lake near Hillsboro in southwestern Ohio, and around Pymatuning Reservoir on the Pennsylvania line.