Lake & River Enhancement Program
The goal of the Division of Fish and Wildlife's Lake and River Enhancement Section is to protect and enhance aquatic habitat for fish and wildlife, to insure the continued viability of Indiana's publicly accessible lakes and streams for multiple uses, including recreational opportunities. This is accomplished through measures that reduce non-point sediment and nutrient pollution of surface waters to a level that meets or surpasses state water quality standards.
To accomplish this goal, the LARE Program provides technical and financial assistance for qualifying projects. Approved grant funding may be used for one or more of the following purposes:
- Investigations to determine what problems are affecting a lake/lakes or a stream segment.
- Evaluation of identified problems and effective action recommendations to resolve those problems.
- Cost-sharing with land users in a watershed above upstream from a project lake or stream for installation or application of sediment and nutrient reducing practices on their land.
- Matching federal funds for qualifying projects.
- Feasibility studies to define appropriate lake and stream remediation measures.
- Engineering designs and construction of remedial measures.
- Water quality monitoring of public lakes.
- Management of invasive aquatic vegetation
- Sediment removal from qualifying lakes.
- Logjam removal from qualifying rivers.
December 16, 2011 message Division of Fish and Wildlife, Indiana Department of Natural Resources:
The LARE program goals include operating a scientifically-effective program in a cost-efficient manner to protect and enhance aquatic habitat for fish and wildlife; and to insure the continued viability of Indiana's publicly accessible lakes and streams for multiple uses, including recreational opportunities. This is accomplished through grant projects that reduce non-point sediment and nutrient pollution of surface waters to a level that meets or surpasses state water quality standards.
Earlier in 2011, the Indiana General Assembly passed, and Governor Daniels signed HEA 1343 amending the types of issues that the Lake and River Enhancement (LARE) Program deals with. In addition to previous focus areas including invasive aquatic plant control and sediment removal, the new legislation added logjam removal in rivers as a focus for funding.
This necessitated updating LARE policies to help potential sponsors and contractors better understand eligibility for LARE-funded grant awards. These policies involve some complex tangential issues pertaining to current laws and promulgated rules regarding Indiana’s natural, scenic, and recreational rivers as well as the salmonid streams so important to certain species of fish in Indiana and is linked here.
The deadline for all 2012 LARE applications for all types of projects is January 15, 2012, so this set of interim policies was developed to provide guidance to potential project sponsors and contractors as soon as possible. Since the amount of available funds was not increased, the competition for limited funds will be greater than ever, but this set of interim policies should help everyone to move forward with planning for the upcoming year.
Click here for the interim policies regarding sediment removal, logjam removal and invasive plant and animal control. All other application forms for LARE projects are available on the LARE program manual in the section called “Applying to the LARE Program.” All applications can be completed and submitted electronically.
Your input, comments, and suggestions can be provided via e-mail to: lare@dnr.IN.gov
Or mailed to:
Lake and River Enhancement Program
Division of Fish and Wildlife
Indiana Department of Natural Resources
402 W. Washington Street, W-273
Indianapolis, IN 46204
These changes have been made to make the administration of the program more efficient, as well as making it possible to award LARE funds to more projects. They put more responsibility upon the sponsors to actively be involved in completing their projects in a timely manner. The state’s accounting system makes it imperative that LARE grant funds be reserved to those projects demonstrating not only a need, but a local commitment to getting the task accomplished in a timely manner at a reasonable cost.
The amount of funds available compared to the amount requested will not satisfy all applicants' requests. Our challenge in the LARE program is maximizing the effectiveness of the limited amount of dollars available on an annual basis, to address as many projects as possible.
Thank you for your continuing interest in and support of the DNR’s Lake and River Enhancement Program.
More Information About LARE
Technical assistance to this program is provided through the LARE staff's aquatic biologists, and program specialists.
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