Our Water!
The Barbee Lakes chain is composed of seven interconnected, natural lakes located southwest of North Webster, Indiana. The lakes include Kuhn, Big Barbee, Little Barbee, Irish, Banning, Sawmill and Sechrist. They are interconnected by Grassy Creek which extends upstream from the chain to Ridinger Lake and downstream to Lake Tippecanoe. The lakes’ watershed stretches southeast into Whitley County, encompassing approximately 33,150 acres or 52 square miles.
To get an idea of the water flow through Tippecanoe check out the USGS gauge at Oswego.
The Barbee Lakes and their watershed formed during the most recent glacial retreat of the Pleistocene era. In Whitley and Kosciusko counties, the receding glacier left a nearly level topography dotted with a network of lakes, wetlands and drainages. If you want to find out what the chain looked like in 1900 check out the picture to the left.
Here is what the property ownership looked like in 1914,
Us!
The purpose of the BLPOA is to keep our lakes clean and safe for recreation; attempt to control our weed problems; work with DNR to preserve the natural state of our lakes; encourage safe operation of boats; install and maintain all buoys and signs; and encourage property owners to work together for improvement and welfare of the lakes to maintain high property value. To read our bylaws click here.
The BLPOA has meetings on the third Saturday of the month from March through October at 8:30am. They are held at the North Webster Community Center. Please attend. Minutes from the April 2023 meeting are here.
The BLPOA Executive Committee include the following:
Lon Sloan (Kuhn) - President, Bethany Chanley (Big Barbee) - Vice President , Larry Brey (Kuhn) - Treasure, and Laura Roman (Little Barbee) -Secretary .
The BLPO Board includes Steve Dillman (Sechrist), George Hiatt (Irish), Chuck Parr (Sechrist), Patrick Perry (Sechrist), Laura Sloan (Kuhn), Larry Emmick (Big Barbee), Andrea Kuzma (Big Barbee), Cullen Reece (Little Barbee), Neil Schwartz (Little Barbee), Roger Bruce (Irish), Bill Thompson (Irish), Carla Trobridge (Irish), Darla Davis (Kuhn), Dave Redden (Irish), Dawn Chanley (Sechrist), Greg Bird (Little Barbee), Austin Heuchan (Sechrist), Nicole Heuchan (Sechrist), Willadean Duncan (Kuhn), Dave Civicek (Big Barbee) and Chuck Brinkman (Irish). Contact information for the Executive Committee and Board for 2024 are here. Minutes from the 2022 annual meeting can be referenced here.
There are about 1500 residents in the Barbee Chain. In 2023 there are 642 members/donors to the BLPOA as of 8/19/2023 that fund the weed costs for the whole Chain. Weed treatment costs are increasing significantly each year especially with starry stonewart so it is important to become members and donate for weed treatments and other expenses.
To the upper right Jed Pearson, IDNR fish biologist, is addressing the attendees at the 2015 annual meeting. His topic was aquatic plant diversity and treatment of the invasive weeds.
There is another group that we work with called the Tippecanoe Watershed Foundation (TWF). The purpose of TWF is to monitor the water qualiity of the watershed and implement projects to improve the water quality of the Tippecanoe Watershed. The Barbee Chain is a subwatershed of the Tippy Watershed. Click here for more info on TWF.
Trip down Grassy Creek to the Dam
I wanted to see if there was enough water to go over the dam after 1.3" in the rain gauge this morning. So I headed downstream from Sawmill. Two girls playing on the dam answered that question. It's still about 3" short of going over the dam. The only boats I saw were the two shown below. Spatterdock and mallows are blooming in lots of places.
