Lake County”s boat inspection program for the quagga mussel is a little more than a month old and whereas many boaters are embracing the inspection plan — more than 18,000 boat inspection stickers have been issued — others are call it a waste of time and money.
For the most part the locals and out-of-area boaters have endorsed it, but not all. The complaints range from the cost (a minimum of $10 to get a sticker) to no inspections being done.
The problem appears to be that the county has provided very little public information on how the program actually works. Most of the out-of-county boaters believe that they are required to have their boats physically inspected prior to launching their boat. That”s not the case.
According to Carolyn Ruttan, who heads up the operation of the county”s quagga mussel program, first-time boaters to the county are required to visit one of the designated screening stations where they must fill out a questionnaire. One of the questions deals with where their boat has been. If their boat hasn”t been to an infected body of water, they are issued a sticker.
However, if the boater says he/she just came from Lake Havasu, Lake Mead or the Colorado River, areas where the mussel exists, the boat will be inspected.
Ruttan said very few boats need to be inspected and she knows of no boats being physically inspected to date. If the boat needs to be inspected, the fee is $15 for a boat under 12 feet in length, $25 for boat 12-18 feet in length, and $40 if the boat is longer than 18 feet. In addition, if the boat has ballast tanks or a bladder — such as most of the wake board boats — there is an additional $20 fee.
If a boat is suspected of being contaminated with the mussel or its larva, then it must be decontaminated and that includes being steam washed with hot water. The county did purchase four decontamination stations but they are sitting in a warehouse in Lakeport and it”s unknown where they will be located and when they will be used. The thinking now is that fewer than 10 boats per year will have to be decontaminated and that the four stations could be reduced to one.
According to Ruttan, the program is centered on voluntary self-compliance. That”s the way the program works in the Midwest in such states as Minnesota and Wisconsin, where the program has been very successful.
Another major part of the program is enforcement. To make the program successful the Lake County Sheriff”s boat patrol has to start issuing tickets for boats not carrying a sticker. I suggest that for the first violation a written warning be given and the boater be directed to obtain a sticker immediately. Along with the warning would be a list of the locations of current screening stations. For the second and subsequent violations, citations would be issued and fines imposed.
Once the word gets out that the boat patrol is issuing citations the compliance rate will increase dramatically.
Ruttan said that stickers issued to local residents are good indefinitely and stickers issued to out-of-county residents are good for the calendar year. In other words, those stickers will expire on Jan. 1, 2009.
No one wants to see the quagga mussel get into Clear Lake because if it does there are bound to be severe restrictions placed on boating and fishing.
In fact, there is a good chance the lake could be closed to all activities, something that would be devastating to the top bass lake in the West.
The key to a program of this magnitude is education. Boaters have to learn they must keep their boats clean and dry. In fact, boaters should do a walk-around inspection of their boats every time they take them out of the water. It only takes a few minutes to inspect your boat and in the end it could save millions of dollars.
The county also has to play a major role in educating the public and to date this hasn”t been done. The worst thing about a program of this nature is misinformation and there has been plenty of that lately.
