LAKE COUNTY >> As Monday”s deadline approaches, Lake County”s application for Quagga mussel infestation prevention funds from the California Parks and Recreation, Division of Boating and Waterways (DBW) received its final revisions Friday before submission.
While the county has relied on $90,000 from Watershed Protection District (WPD) funds to implement its boat inspection program, the extra grant money would serve to beef up the county”s education and outreach and hire up to 10 employees to monitor some of the most heavily used ramps around the county in its attempt to keep Clear Lake Quagga mussel-free.
The DBW”s total of $2.5 million is being offered to agencies throughout the state for such Quagga infestation prevention projects and each agency can receive a maximum of $200,000 if approved.
Water Resources Director Scott De Leon is optimistic Lake County will be a recipient for the full $200,000 as Clear Lake ranks number one for the largest, freshwater lake in California.
“I think Lake County has been on the radar with the state for our program and our needs for some time,” De Leon said.
However, the state is also expecting a large number of applications and if each agency received the full $200,000, only 12-and-a-half agencies would get a piece of the pie.
The application outlines the county”s plans for how it will spend the funds. $11,645, or 6 percent of the funds, is earmarked to recover an inoperable boat that, for the last 18 months, has been sitting in Lake Mead where Quagga mussels were discovered in early 2007.
In an original and promisingly convincing idea, Water Resources has planned to remove the boat, which by now is surely covered in the noxious mussels, and set up a portable display to show off at local fairs, at other water bodies in the region and at sportsman expositions. In addition to the costs of removing and transporting the boat, the county would purchase a pop-up canopy with custom designs screen printed on its roof and panels.
The rest of the money would go toward hiring ramp monitors, whose responsibilities would include putting boats through the county”s Quagga screening process, passing out educational materials and conducting boater surveys to evaluate how effective the county”s program is compared to other state or regional programs. Ramp monitors would be stationed at the most used ramps, including those in Lakeport, Clearlake, Clearlake Oaks and possibly at Lakeside Park in Kelseyville. De Leon said.
Even with the $200,000 though, the WPD would still have to chip in an estimated $43,000 over the next two years to supplement the ramp monitoring costs, according to De Leon. Currently, while the WPD is spending an estimated $90,000 on its inspection program, it”s pulling in about $50,000 from inspection sticker fees.
De Leon said that given the number of ramps the county is dealing with and its small amount of funding, the inspection program has been very successful.
“Does it have loopholes and weaknesses? Certainly, and that”s where we”re developing some type of plan to keep boats that haven”t been screened off the lake. We”re hoping to use this funding to get something like that started,” De Leon said.
The DBW”s $2.5 million has been collected after Senate Bill 2443 was passed in late 2012, which added $8 per year on freshwater boat registration fees for the purpose of preventing Quagga infestations. Compared to the billions of dollars that mass infestation of California”s waters could cost the state, the couple million doesn”t seem like much, though.
“I think that I would have liked to see the state do more on a statewide basis to control the Quagga and movement of boats out of infested areas, but what they”re doing with these funds is a great start,” De Leon said. “I”m hopeful that at a minimum, we”re going to raise awareness on a statewide level about how the mussels get moved, why it”s important not to move them and how disastrous an infestation would be.”
De Leon said the state is more than likely building up a reserve of the Quagga prevention fees and that more funding could be available in future years.
De Leon expects to hear back on the recipients of the DBW grant after the first of the year.
