Public meetings slated after petition to stop wake sports at 10 Vermont lakes – VTDigger

In April, Vermont enacted long-debated, statewide restrictions on wake boats, designed to create large wakes for recreation with a goal of preventing environmental harms. The new rule only allows wake boats in 30 of the state’s inland lakes.

Now, nine associations representing 10 of those lakes are asking the state to prohibit the activity. 

The Westmore Association is petitioning to stop the sport on Lake Willoughby. Diane Ledher, who is helping to organize the effort, said the fact Lake Willoughby is large “doesn’t make it suitable for this kind of activity.”

Willoughby’s steep, glacially carved banks “cause the wave action to become more dangerous and unpredictable, and that happens to be an area where we have a huge population of paddle boarders, many of whom are novices,” she said. 

In response to the petitions, the Department of Environmental Conservation announced Tuesday that it will hold two meetings inviting members of the public to comment. 

A meeting on Dec. 10 in Newport is slated to cover petitions filed by Great and Little Averill lakes, Echo Lake, Lake Parker, Shadow Lake and Lake Willoughby, and a second meeting on Dec. 12 in Montpelier will cover the Waterbury Reservoir, Lake Fairlee, Caspian Lake and Joe’s Pond. Members of the public can also submit written comments to the department until Dec. 23. 

The state’s decision to issue restrictions on wake sports came after a long and passionate debate about the ramifications of the sport on lake ecosystems and public safety. Those restrictions cover nearly all of Vermont’s 823 lakes.

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Advocates of restrictions have often pointed to research showing that wakes can damage habitat for nesting waterfowl, erode shorelines, cause turbulence that can disrupt plants and creatures living in the lake sediment, and pose safety concerns for other people recreating on the lake. Water from the boat’s ballasts can also transfer invasive species from one lake to another, and the rule contains new requirements intended to prevent those transfers from occurring. 

Some of the discussion throughout the process focused on a concern that, if wake sports were banned in some lakes and not others, the practice could be concentrated to some of the lakes where it remained an allowed activity. 

Jenifer Andrews, president of the Shadow Lake Association, in Glover, said she only knows of one wake boat that has been on the lake so far. As she was sitting on her dock when the boat passed by, the wake was big enough to lift up her dock and her, she said. 

“That’s the kind of public safety stuff that we’re really worried about,” she said. 

Laura Dlugolecki, an environmental analyst with the Department of Environmental Conservation, said last summer, when the rules went into effect, the department did not see concerns materialize about more boats showing up on lakes where wake sports are still allowed. 

“Out of all the motorized boating that occurred in Vermont, wake sports made up about 1% of the motorized boating activity,” she said, based on interviews with game wardens who enforce the new restrictions. “It’s kind of a small portion of recreational activity in Vermont.”

Still, she said the department “can’t see everything,” and that the summer flooding may have kept some people away. 

Dlugolecki said the state will look at the petitions to see if lake associations can prove that the statewide rule “wasn’t protective enough.” Maybe there were active recreational conflicts, she said, or maybe the lake has a special protective designation, unique ecological habitat, or something else. 

“There needs to be some kind of evidence to support an additional rule,” she said. 

While Andrews’ concerns about wake sports on Shadow Lake are largely oriented toward public safety, they don’t stop there. 

“Shadow Lake has just been taken off of the aquatic invasive species list,” she said, explaining why the group has filed a petition to prohibit the sports. “We had milfoil in our lake, and we battled that back with tens of thousands of dollars as well as tens of thousands of volunteer hours.”

Ledher, who wants to prohibit wake sports at Lake Willoughby, said the lake is the only one in Vermont considered a national landmark. People are visiting the lake with increasing frequency, she said. 

“We’re on all the best-of, top 10 lists,” she said. “We’ve been discovered. And the problem is, when that happens, you use up whatever is it that was special, that brought people in the first place. That’s the kind of thing that’s at risk with this.”