Buying on Hamburg's chain of lakes? You may help pay for the weeds

A lot of Hamburg Township sits on water. The Huron River widens here into a string of connected lakes — Zukey, Strawberry, Gallagher, Whitewood, the Portage lakes — that boaters can run end to end, sometimes called the chain of lakes. It’s pretty, and it’s the reason home prices climb the closer you get to the shore. It also comes with a line item a lot of buyers don’t see coming.

The lakes grow weeds. Invasive milfoil and nuisance algae spread fast in shallow, warm water, and left alone they choke props, snag swimmers, and turn a clear lake green. To keep that in check, the township runs a special assessment district — a SAD — for aquatic weed control. Lakefront and lake-access parcels get assessed a share of the cost each year, and a contractor treats the water with herbicide and mechanical harvesting on a set schedule, usually starting in spring.

This is worth knowing before you buy, because the assessment rides with the property, not the prior owner’s goodwill. Ask whether a parcel falls inside the district and what the yearly charge runs. The chemical treatments are regulated by the state environment agency, EGLE, so the schedule and the products used are on the record if you want to read them.

None of this is a reason to skip a lake house. It’s the cost of keeping the water you paid for actually usable — open enough to swim, run a boat, drop a line for bass. But it’s the kind of place-specific fact that doesn’t show up in the listing photos: the calm green water in that drone shot is calm and not-too-green partly because the people who own it chip in, every summer, to keep it that way.