This commentary is by Ray Gonda of South Burlington, who was conservation chair of a paddler’s club (Vermont Paddlers) and, with two friends, filed a petition to the Water Resources Board that resulted in speed limits in the two arms of Waterbury Reservoir and several other large lakes.
The Vermont Agency of Natural Resources is considering regulating the use of wake boats. Vermonters need to wake up to what these boats really are and what they do.
These boats, via enhanced ballast, ride deeper than other boats to deliberately create a large wake as they speed across the water. Surfboarders behind the boat, but not connected to the boat, can ride the resulting man-made tsunamis.
Sanctioning wake boats as a new use goes against most previous policies and efforts in the management of our lakes and ponds. The Agency of Natural Resources is proposing to, in effect, give a nod to legalizing the use of wake boats when they should be banned from Vermont’s waters.
The agency has proposed a boundary limiting wake boats to no closer to 500 feet from shore and containing at least 50 usable acres of lake enclosed by this boundary with water at least 20 feet deep. The belief that only a certain acreage in the middle of a lake permitted for wake boats to use is a reasonable proposition is wishful thinking. Are roped buoys going to be established to circumscribe that area each time a wake boat is operated? Of course not! The proposed rule will be honored in the breach more than in the observance, to the detriment of all other users.
We have enough problems already with jet skis and fast whirling-and-twirling motor play-boats without adding more to the mix. These are all an excessive form of recreation, emitting greenhouse gases from unnecessary polluting fossil fuel use, extremely disruptive of other recreational users, and erosive to shorelines. In short, they have every reason to be banned in Vermont’s inland waters.
In this time of climate change and the dire need to minimize the use of fossil fuels, these boats should have no place on our waters.
In the past decade or two, the huge increases in participation of quiet uses such as canoes, kayaks, stand-on-boards, streamlined shaped rafts, and everything else in between has created a demand for suitable waters where users can safely operate in a way that utilizes the best that nature has to offer. That means “quiet” waters.
That cannot happen when hug, powerful, mega-motored gas-guzzling boats are deliberately making huge waves and noise, threatening the enjoyment of our waters by everyone else. Where and when these boats do operate, they in effect eject other uses from the area due to the dangerous nature of them.
A fundamental rule of the Water Resources Board was to protect and manage existing uses of Vermont waters — a common-sense rule. Manual or wind-powered boats all use natural sources of propulsion, so it is irrelevant whether it is a canoe, a kayak, or a stand-on board. Such a natural power use was protected and managed. However, wake boats are huge step in powerboating — a new use, and a very disruptive one.
Such sanctioning, mainly available for only the rich who can afford these large, super-expensive craft, will create a situation where these boats will overshadow, threaten, or otherwise utterly dominate the passive-use paddler with a $300 kayak trying to enjoy a quiet day in nature and in safety while damaging to our shorelines.
Considerable effort of the state of Vermont has been directed at protecting riverbanks from erosion from hydropower operations, protecting floodplains by discouraging river channelization and encouraging restoration of flood plains, protecting shorelines from small, motorized watercraft wakes causing erosion on the shorelines of lakes and ponds, and finding ways to protect and manage the recreational uses of them.
Therefore, the Agency of Natural Resources is willfully supporting a use of our public waters that goes against its very reason for existence — to protect and be a steward of our natural resources.
The Water Resources Board was a panel of governor-appointed citizens whose mission was to protect and, where needed, manage existing recreational uses. That board made some very effective decisions by carefully listening to citizens. It brought democracy very close to the people — one of the strong points in the governing of Vermont.
Some decades ago, the board was abandoned in favor of absorbing its functions within the Agency of Natural Resources. Unfortunately, and as time would reveal, doing so became problematic. Now decision-making is too influenced by who constitutes the current administration. The Agency of Natural Resources is less responsive to citizens’ concerns.
The agency is too subject to influence through the political proces, since it falls under the administration and is somewhat dependent on any particular governor in power. It is clear Gov. Scott supports the “legalization” of wake boats.
The Water Resources Board was an exercise in democracy wherein citizen board members existed outside of the vertical political hierarchy and could make independent decisions. That, somewhat, ceased when the Agency of Natural Resources achieved ascendancy. Money talks through the political process from which even state agencies are not immune. Even legislators are not immune to influence by industry lobbyists for the motorized recreation industry and manufacturers. Today the ANR is more aligned with attracting out-of-staters to our lakes and ponds, to the greater detriment of our own citizens.
I beseech our legislators to step up to the task and return these decisions to an appointed Water Resources Board. Please, restore government closer to citizens and away from the influence of manufacturers, lobbyists and from those who feel that power through the pedal should reign king, rather than through the muscles or wind.
