CAMDENTON (AP) - Prodded by state and federal officials who call the move long overdue, a group of concerned locals is forming a citizens’ environmental brigade to keep better tabs on Lake of the Ozarks water quality.

The group - yet unnamed - hopes to also monitor the network of rivers and streams, known as a watershed, that drain into the sprawling lake. It’s modeled after similar local efforts that track pollution and educate users of Table Rock Lake, the James River and other bodies of water in southwest Missouri.

"This is a call to order, a challenge to the community," said Kathleen Fenton, a community organizer with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s regional office in Kansas City.

Prospective members have met several times in recent weeks, most recently on Monday night at Camdenton City Hall. Although the group remains in its formative stage, participants agreed that the lake’s economic, social and environmental value is too high to risk long-term damage.

Area residents outlined an array of threats to the lake, formed 75 years ago when the Union Electric power company, now known as AmerenUE, created Bagnell Dam.

Issues include chemical runoff from farms, lawns and golf courses; rapid, unchecked development; erratic enforcement of watercraft speed limits; and health concerns.

Osage Beach resident Kristina Price described a neighborhood dog that lost most its hair after frequent frolics in the lake.

"If this is happening to an animal, what’s happening to our children?" she said at the forum.

Jim Rogers, who owns a real estate company on the lake’s growing western shore, urged the new group to seek creation of a unified sewer district to replace the patchwork network of septic systems that vary in age, size and permit requirements.

"That has to be the No. 1 priority for the lake," he said. "If that lake isn’t there, we have no reason to be here."

With 1,150 miles of shoreline - more than the state of California - spread among four counties and a half-dozen municipalities, the lake suffers from a lack of unified oversight, participants said.

That makes speaking with a unified voice all the more important, especially when it comes to advocating in the hallways of Jefferson City or the nation’s capital, said Barbara Lucks, a solid waste educator for Springfield who serves as a liaison with several citizen watershed groups in that area.

"I can’t tell you the power that’s available," she said Monday night. "It took us a while in southwest Missouri."

The James River Basin Partnership, for example, began in 1997 as a government-backed monitoring group. Two years later, it had evolved into an autonomous not-for-profit whose members hold pollution control workshops, help homeowners pump dirty septic tank and test homeowner’s lawns and soil for contaminants.

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