For a place that residents describe as paradise, there are a lot of people complaining at Smith Mountain Lake. If it's not an 8-foot-tall roadside chicken that gets folks riled up, then it's fecal bacteria floating near campgrounds, or high-powered speedboats blasting through the water. Homeowners cringe at multifamily housing encroaching on their once-secluded homes. More and more boat docks are gobbling up the shoreline.

In some respects, one of Virginia's most popular retirement and tourist destinations is suffering from its own popularity.

Some of the conflicts are rooted in culture. Locals, who can sometimes trace their families' roots in the lake area back for generations, are often rubbed the wrong way by affluent retired Northerners. Newcomers at times seem confounded by the slow pace of change.

Take in a local government meeting in any of the three counties that surround the lake and you'll get a feeling of the level of frustration. Decisions affecting the lake's future often cause contention among local governments, lake-area civic clubs and private industries that have a stake in the lake's economy.

Smith Mountain Lake is nearly 40 years old, but it's still suffering from growing pains that are sharp at times.

Freedom's just another word

When Joe Altadonna put an 8-foot-tall fiberglass rooster at Franklin County's Westlake Corner two years ago, he had no idea it would split the Smith Mountain Lake community.

The small-businessman wanted to draw attention to his latest venture, a miniature golf course on Scruggs Road near Virginia 122. It got people's attention, all right.

Some residents called in the law to remove the chicken, judging it garish, tacky and out of character with their upscale neighborhoods.

Others defended the rooster as a down-home landmark and sold "Save the chicken" T-shirts to support it and named it Freedom. Ultimately, a judge ruled it could stay where it was.

In many ways the battle was comical. But underlying it was a serious clash between middle-income and working-class locals and the people they perceive as wealthy, retired Northerners who have moved to the lake and want to control everything.

"We changed the whole culture for the people who live here and they resent it," said Ralph Brush, who moved to the lake from Connecticut in 1993 and is now president of the Smith Mountain Lake Association.

The lake's most prominent civic club and arguably the most influential, the SMLA was formed in the late 1960s as a club for retired business executives intent on preserving the lake's environmental and economic attributes. The SMLA says it has more than 1,300 members.

While the association has been on the ground floor of a number of efforts to keep the lake clean, many in the lake area perceive the SMLA's board of directors to be a bunch of retired corporate executives and outsiders who arrogantly flaunt their opinions on nearly every aspect of the lake. Even some SMLA members are sensitive to that perception.

"I think we stick our nose into too many issues," said Russ Johnson, an SMLA board member and recent transplant from New Jersey who owns The Blackwater Cafe in Franklin County.

Anti-chicken residents lost the skirmish over the chicken in court, but they could ultimately prevail in a larger battle over what future commercial development will look like. That fight continues.

Last year, Franklin County passed stricter zoning rules for the rapidly expanding Westlake Corner, the lake's commercial hub.

Bedford County is studying how best to manage growth along Virginia 122, a major connector between Bedford and the lake. New water and sewer lines and a Virginia Department of Transportation plan to widen the road are expected to hasten commercial growth. The county has taken measures, such as inviting citizen input, to try to avoid controversy sparked by the Westlake plan.

The SMLA worked with the Franklin County government in creating the Westlake Overlay, which regulates what storefronts and parking lots can look like.

"You have to grow; you have to do it smartly," said Charles Poindexter, the supervisor who represents the Union Hall district. "I can't see another 20 or 30 years at the pace of the last 20 or 30."

But some Westlake business owners, including Altadonna and developer Jim McKelvey, challenged the new ordinance in court. A Franklin County judge in March nullified some of the new rules. Franklin County is now trying to rewrite the regulations to fix problems the judge found; McKelvey vows to fight those, too.

"We cannot let that document stand as is, not and remain commercially viable," McKelvey said.

'There's a lot of people upset right now' f+b

f-b In January, Rocky Mount boat dealer Johnny Ford gleefully invited reporters along as he took his 130-mph twin-engine speedboat out for its first ride on Smith Mountain Lake. The resulting publicity in newspapers and on television caused fear, alarm and anger in the lake's tight-knit boating community.

Lynn Swain, who lives in Franklin County and earns his living building docks on the lake, was far from amused.

"We're on Smith Mountain Lake, not Miami," Swain said.

People such as Swain had a reason to feel concerned. Smith Mountain Lake is considered Virginia's most congested waterway, and a case can be made that it's the most dangerous, too. With a population topping 31,000 full- and part-time residents and an increasing number of tourists, there are more boats than ever before.

A tally in summer 2002 counted 1,105 boats on the lake on July Fourth between noon and 4 p.m. By Saturday, July 6, the number had nearly doubled to 2,102 during the same period.

From 1997 to 1999, seven people died in boating accidents on the lake. There hasn't been a boating-related death on the water in 3 1 / 2 years, but there were 47 boating accidents in 2001 and 36 in 2002. In all, the lake accounted for 23 percent of all boating accidents in Virginia last year, including the state's portion of the Chesapeake Bay.

Ford's demonstration, many in the lake boating community believed, fed the perception of how dangerous the lake is. It worked against all their efforts in recent years to reduce the number of accidents.

Separately, the SMLA's Water Safety Council, the Coast Guard Auxiliary, the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries and marina owners who rent boats to tourists have been doing their best to educate the public on safe boating practices.

About 500 people took the game department's free six-hour safety course last year. The courses are offered throughout the summer.

It seems to be paying off, said DGIF Lt. Karl Martin, who has spent 32 years patrolling Smith Mountain Lake's waters. The lake is safer and boaters are more respectful of one another than ever before, he said.

"It's about as orderly as it can be," Martin said. "In years past, we had people who would assault each other over disagreements."

In another respect, however, boats are still leaving some people boiling mad. The DGIF is fielding more frequent complaints of boat noise from lake residents.

Bob Russell has owned his Franklin County lakefront home for 15 years, and it's on one of the busiest parts of Smith Mountain Lake - the Roanoke River channel about a mile south of Hales Ford Bridge. But since he retired there three years ago, the noise is driving him crazy.

"It actually gets so loud at times, you think your windows are going to blast out," he said. "I'm getting calls [complaints] from people who are way down the lake."

Russell's neighbor, Dave Talbott, who's also retired, is so upset that he's asked state legislators to pass a law that restricts boat noise. Harry Yates, a retired internist from Roanoke who owns a cottage on the lake, said he's so irritated he may sell and look for a quieter place.

Part of the problem is that Virginia's boating laws don't have a lot of teeth. Unlike other large resort-type lakes in the country, there are no speed or noise limits for boats. Virginia's boating law is vague: It requires only that boats be "properly muffled" and operated in a "reasonable manner" - but it defines neither. Many residents say specific limits ought to be enacted.

"Do we need a noise ordinance? There's a lot of people upset right now," said Brush, the SMLA president.

Chuck Poss of Roanoke, 58, who is president of the Smith Mountain Lake Boating Association, has been boating at the lake since the 1960s. He acknowledges the noise and speed problems, but said a small number of boaters are to blame.

"People sometimes just don't think about what they're doing," Poss said.

But Poss said residents need to understand "if they're living on the lake, there's going to be boat traffic."

For now, the two sides have reached an informal detente. The SMLA has pledged not to lobby the Virginia General Assembly for tougher legislation if the 300-plus-member boating association can clamp down on boaters causing the problems.

Both sides say there is no deadline for that action. But if things aren't better by the end of this summer, it seems likely the General Assembly could hear from the SMLA this winter.

Getting things done f+b

f-b At Smith Mountain Lake, organizations, residents and businesses have tried over the years to solve community problems and make the lake more economically and environmentally sound. But sometimes those good intentions run aground.

Two years ago, the executive committee of the Smith Mountain Lake Chamber of Commerce / Partnership abruptly fired administrator Charlotte Lawrence, causing board members, chamber employees and volunteers to quit in protest. Chamber board members wouldn't comment, but Lawrence said she was fired over a dispute that arose after negotiations to merge the lake's chamber with chambers in the surrounding counties broke down.

Before that, Hilde Hussa, former executive director of the Smith Mountain Lake Policy Advisory Board (now the Tri-County Lake Administrative Commission) came under fire in 1998 for raising alarms about the lake's water quality. Business owners accused her of exaggerating problems and hurting commerce. Lake developer Ed Waters became so incensed that he told the board to either get rid of Hussa or move their offices out of Bridgewater Plaza, which he owns.

Part of the problem at Smith Mountain Lake is that no one entity makes or enforces laws and regulations that govern the entire lake area. Instead, that responsibility is split among three county governments, two state agencies, a federal agency, an electric utility company and several civic and environmental organizations. When a real problem arises, such as the woody debris and trash that cluttered the lake after the spring floods, there's confusion and finger-pointing about who needs to take action to solve it.

That's why more than 300 residents showed up at Resurrection Catholic Church in Bedford County in October to listen to a proposal by the Smith Mountain Lake Association to form a town.

At first, they listened intently to how a town of Smith Mountain Lake could more directly address their concerns, including debris removal, weed control and testing water quality.

On the surface, the proposed benefits were notable: uniform zoning of waterfront lots, a local, more responsive police force, curbside trash collection, and tighter control over what happens on the lake.

But when the members found out that becoming a town meant they'd have to pay additional taxes, the proposal collapsed. Their collective responses came down to this: They want the three counties they live in to take more of an interest in the lake.

"If the existing system were satisfying the needs of the public, these things wouldn't arise as issues," Penhook resident Bill Reidenbach said.

The SMLA is studying the possibility of creating a special tax service district around the lake to address water quality issues. SMLA president Brush said the idea behind the town and the service district is to give lake residents a say in what happens to their community and provide the finances to get things done.

He said the SMLA stands for working with all parties to accomplish that goal.

"That's basically what our mission statement is, to protect our investments by working together," he said.

But some members are already saying they don't want any extra taxes. Why should homeowners bear the brunt of the cost for maintaining the lake?

Because their properties are located in some of the highest-priced neighborhoods in Bedford and Franklin counties, lake residents pay a third of all of Franklin County's real estate tax and a fourth of Bedford County's. But many residents feel ignored by county governments. Reidenbach is one who believes the counties should give some of that revenue back to the lake.

Local government officials acknowledge the windfall in tax money that lake-area development has produced and say they're sensitive to residents' concerns. But they're not sure much can be done about it.

"Without the value of that [lake] housing, Franklin County would be struggling to do the things that it's been able to do, especially in our school system," Franklin County Administrator Rick Huff said. "On numerous occasions we hear people who say that because they pay a lot of tax money ... they should receive a higher level of services from the county." But, he added, "government services should flow to the population, not to wealth."

Managing the growth There's no denying that Smith Mountain Lake is growing both along the water and in areas near it. Nearly everyone on the lake agrees that managed growth is a good idea. But there's no agreement on how the growth should be managed and who should control it.

In 1986, Candy LaPerna and her husband, Tony, bought 7 acres of land in the Hales Creek section of Bedford County, on a cove just north of Hales Ford Bridge. Across from them stood 60 acres of undeveloped land. For most of the next 17 years, "all we saw for a long period of time were cows," Candy LaPerna said.

During those years the couple camped on their land, and built a home and three lakefront cottages to rent out for supplemental income. They retired to the lake in 1995 from Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The rentals took off; and the tranquil setting never lost its original beauty.

But it could.

One day this past spring, the LaPernas heard the rumbling of heavy machinery coming from the other side of a nearby hill. Construction workers were cutting a road to provide access to 36 residential lots. Since then, bulldozers have cleared the trees from at least one of the lots directly across from the LaPernas.

"We knew it would happen sooner or later," Candy LaPerna said of the development. "It was disappointing, but realistically it was inevitable." But they remain concerned about developers who want to squeeze as many homes and condos as possible on waterfront land.

Nancy Atkins and her husband, Mike, used to camp at Indian Ridge campground in Franklin County. In the old days, a campsite could be had for $25 a year. The campground was sold this year to make room for a residential subdivision.

By 1998 the Atkinses had saved up enough money to buy a lakefront lot in Franklin County's Indian Point area. They realized the property next door was zoned for multifamily housing. They built a home and moved into it in 2000.

Shortly afterward, they were stunned to learn that a developer was going to replace the woodland next door with 30 homes and three docks that would stretch as far as 120 feet into the cove. The Atkinses have battled the docks in the proposed Grand Harbour subdivision, saying they'll be a hazard to boaters, even though a DGIF safety evaluation didn't agree with them.

"If something isn't done to control the development, everybody's going to have a Grand Harbour somewhere real close to them," Nancy Atkins said.

Atkins' voice is one of many raised at the lake calling for some sort of control of growth.

"If we get too carried away, the beautiful lake we have now won't be a beautiful lake in the future," said Bedford County Supervisor Kirby Richardson.

Dale Wheeler, another Bedford County supervisor whose district includes the portion of the lake west of Hales Ford Bridge, welcomes more commercial waterfront development as a catalyst for tourism.

But development and tourism could be drastically affected by American Electric Power Co.'s plans for Smith Mountain Lake, said John White, who is perhaps the biggest developer on the Bedford County side of the lake.

He's one of the leading opponents of a shoreline management plan that AEP has been working on for more than two years. The plan would guide lake development for decades, and the utility hopes that putting one in place now will help it renew the license it has held for decades to operate the hydroelectric dam that created the lake.

The utility released its first public draft of the plan July 3 and held two public meetings on it July 23 and July 24. It's accepting comments from the public until Aug. 13.

The plan and its details quickly became the biggest controversy Smith Mountain Lake has seen in years. It's already causing some developers to postpone their plans.

Earlier this year, White put on hold plans for a $34 million, 100-condominium project at Hales Ford Bridge after learning that one part of the shoreline management plan would prohibit him from selling the project's 134 boat slips if the development is ever sold.

AEP spokesman Todd Burns said White could get permission to transfer the docks if he applies for a waiver. But White said he'd prefer to deal with the counties rather than fight AEP's restrictions that are "arbitrary and at their whim."

White speaks from experience. He began developing the 1,000-acre Mariners Landing golf resort and villas in 1992. He built his docks back then in violation of AEP's regulations, and if he hadn't, he said, "Mariners Landing would not exist today."

After a legal battle, he and AEP came to an agreement to let the docks remain.

White said if the two local governments don't watch out, AEP will ruin the lake's future as a tourist destination.

"They are losing a great opportunity for the future of their two counties," White said.

Computer assisted reporting editor Ray Reed contributed to this story.