The Geneva Lake Environmental Agency has been managing Geneva Lake since 1971, when a group of citizens expressed their concerns about Geneva Lake's future. The agency was formed under state statute 66.0301 as an intergovernmental commission that acts as a shared unit of the local governments of the Towns of Linn and Walworth, the Villages of Fontana and Williams Bay, and the City of Lake Geneva. Geneva Lake was the first lake in the State of Wisconsin to have a designated government agency whose sole purpose was lake management. The first lake district was formed in 1974 under Chapter 33 of Wisconsin State Statutes, three years after the GLEA was formed.