CMWD Board Closes Lake To Outside Boats

Mollusk threat to drinking water supply leads to 3-2 vote

By Daryl Kelley
Thousands of anglers will have to find another place to fish after directors of Lake Casitas, one of the nation's premier bass fisheries, but also the Ojai Valley's main source of water, voted Tuesday night to shut it down to outside boats for up to a year to avert a potential infestation of a destructive mussel.
Directors of the Casitas Municipal Water District voted 3 to 2 to ban outside boats from the huge reservoir, despite assurances from state officials that they were already doing enough to keep the lake mussel-free and pleas from dozens of boaters to work with them without the ban.
Effective immediately, the ban of outside boats still allows anglers to rent boats at Lake Casitas or to store their craft there for $80 a month if there is space.
An overflow crowd of nearly 300 showed up at Nordhoff High School Tuesday night, mostly to object to the proposed ban.
The crowd clapped loudly and responded with applause and shouts of approval when speakers supported keeping the lake open, and an occasional soft hiss when speakers wanted it closed.
After the deciding vote ended a three and a half hour hearing, some in the audience chanted softly "Recall, recall," a comment apparently aimed at the three directors who voted for a ban that will keep out most of the 26,000 boats that visit the lake each year.
Directors Russ Baggerly, Rich Handley and Pete Kaiser voted for the one-year restriction, while Jim Word and Bill Hicks favored a far shorter ban. Hicks said he wanted a 60-day ban to work out an air-tight inspection program and to set up a boat-washing device the state offered to provide. Word did not specify how long of a ban he favored, but he said state officials were apparently now motivated to address the problem more effectively.
"It's certainly good to hear the state agencies seem to be gearing up," Word said.
But Baggerly said he could not rely on state assurances that Casitas was already doing enough, especially since state officials had been dragging their feet in implementing a statewide anti-mussel program approved nine months ago. Repeatedly, Casitas officials have not even been able to get state Department of Fish and Game representatives on the phone to talk about the issue, he said.
"I can't go with that; I have to protect this water resource," he said. "We've got (the state's) attention. Now they're going to get off their big fat behinds and start doing something."
Terry Foreman, fisheries manager for the state Department of Fish and Game, acknowledged in an interview that the state had moved slower than he'd have liked.
"For the state to move, we have to have money," he said. "We've had a hard time coming up with sufficient money."
But he said officials from a number of state departments are going to meet within the next month with the aim of more effectively dealing with the mussel problem. At least $1 million more will be available, he said.
Of about 30 speakers Tuesday, only about a half dozen favored excluding outside boats. But one speaker said he was certain most local residents favored the board's cautious approach to protecting the water supply of about 60,000 residents in the Ojai Valley and Ventura and 6,000 acres of agriculture.
Since the quagga mussel threat surfaced last year in San Diego and Riverside counties, the district has been checking boats for water or vegetation that could carry the mussel's microscopic larvae and asking boat operators if their craft have been in infested lakes and excluding those that had.
Casitas directors imposed the boat inspections in mid-November, and officials said 158 of about 2,800 screened boats have been excluded, usually because they still carried water from other lakes.
In a series of recent meetings, dozens of boaters have cited the economic harm of a ban since Casitas is a premier bass fishing lake. District staffers have estimated such a ban would cost the water agency more than $600,000 a year in recreation revenue while also hurting nearby businesses.
At the Tuesday hearing, Larry Elshere of Ojai said he'd conducted an informal survey of businesses, and found that they would lose about $1.8 million a year.
"It could be devastating," he said.
Ron Cervenka, who hosts bass tournaments at the lake, said fishermen have been the lake's greatest supporters and the board's best allies.
"Bass fishermen are not spreading quagga mussels," he said. "They're spreading the word about quagga mussels … Our anglers are ambassadors for you."
And another fisherman warned that closing the lake to outside boats might boomerang.
"If you close the lake, what's going to keep a disgruntled fisherman from infesting (it), so it doesn't have to be closed," said bass fisherman Tom Hutchinson.
Repeatedly, fishermen said there was no evidence that the mussels have been transported by boats in California. State officials say the mussels have infested eight Southern California lakes through a series of aqueducts, not by boat, although the initial infestation in Lake Mead was apparently from a houseboat moved from the Great Lakes area.
But some community members said an infestation would be much more expensive than a ban on outside boats, clogging the lake's waterworks and ravaging its ecosystem.
They asked for an immediate ban on outside boats, citing the billions of dollars agencies have spent in the Great Lakes region since 1988 to combat the invasive zebra mussel, a close cousin of the quagga, which apparently migrated to the United States aboard freighters from the Ukraine.
"We're either going to have a lake that is infected, or a lake that is protected," said local resident Ralph Steele. "After the lake is protected and a workable decontamination solution is installed, the visiting boaters can be invited back."
Reacting to the same perceived threat, managers of Lake Cachuma have proposed closing that scenic Santa Barbara County reservoir to outside fishing boats. The issue is set for hearing March 11 before Santa Barbara County supervisors.
Two weeks ago, the Casitas board asked Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to declare a statewide emergency because of the mussel infestation, so California could qualify for federal emergency money to fight it.
"We are urgently seeking your leadership to help prevent an impending catastrophe stemming from an invasive non-native species that could destroy the water quality and cause an unprecedented escalation in maintenance costs for virtually every California resident and business," said a letter to Schwarzenegger.
"The mussel threat is of extraordinary magnitude because these mussels have been found to consume most of the food chain upon which many other species depend for survival," the letter added. "The quagga and zebra mussels also may clog pipes of almost any diameter."
The most likely way a mussel may be transported is by trailered boats, the letter said.
One large utility in the East Bay of San Francisco has already responded by banning any boat from Southern California or outside the state from its reservoirs. That move came in late January after a zebra mussel was discovered near Gilroy in San Benito County, just south of the Bay Area.
Foreman, the state's fisheries manager, said Tuesday, in an interview, that it's not clear where the zebra mussel came from. But that it's possible that it was by boat, in a bait canister or by bird, although he said the possibility of its arrival by bird was extremely rare.
The zebra discovery was the first for a quagga or zebra mussel in the State Water Project, an elaborate set of dams, canals and reservoirs that provide most of the water in the state.
It was also the first zebra mussel found in the western United States, officials said.
The quagga mussel's migration northward, after it was discovered at Lake Mead and Lake Havasu 14 months ago, has occurred in the sprawling canal system of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, they said.
And that's why Foreman said Tuesday that he thought Casitas was doing more than enough to staunch to mussel threat. "So far it's been water movement, not boat movement," he said.
The infestation of the zebra mussel in the Great Lakes area, discovered two decades ago, now costs utilities about $140 million a year to try to control and to clean encrusted facilities, Casitas spokesman Ron Merkling has told the board.
And in a report considered by the Casitas board Tuesday, the water district's staff said costs of an infestation here could be astronomical — to $1 million to $100 million, depending on whether a particularly devastating type of algae bloom associated with it develops.
"We can't afford this," said director Handley. "If the state can't handle it, then it's up to us five guys sitting here … We want to take a little breather … This lake is going to open up again. We're not advocating permanent closure."