Big Waves and Aquatic Invasives: Vermont’s Home Lake Rule
By Pat Suozzi
Letter to the Editor
Picture this: a motorboat puts into Lake Champlain. As you watch, you notice something odd happens: its stern is down, and its bow is up. It is producing very large waves and there is a person on a small board surfing on the boat’s large wake. What you are observing is a wake boat in wake sports mode.
The mechanism that allows wake boats to create these waves are ballast tanks that are filled with lake water when a boat enters a lake, and emptied when leaving. The problem is that those tanks – and wake boats usually have multiple tanks – cannot be fully emptied, always leaving some water. If that boat filled its tanks in a lake infested with an aquatic invasive species, that boat could potentially carry those invasives to the next lake the boat enters.
Aquatic invasives can damage lake habitats and impede recreation. Even very small fragments of an invasive like Eurasian watermilfoil or a few zebra mussel larvae, if carried into a lake in a ballast tank, can spawn a serious infestation.
However, this does not have to happen.
In the spring of 2024, the state approved new rules to regulate wake boats; including the Home Lake provision, which requires that all wake boats select one home lake where it will operate. If a wake boat owner wishes to operate in a different lake, they must show proof that the wake boat has been properly decontaminated.
Unfortunately, the Agency of Natural Resources has chosen not to implement this provision despite many of the lake associations on affected lakes offering to work with the Agency to shoulder much of the burden of implementation.
We are fortunate in Vermont to have so many still pristine and uninfested lakes. Yet the Agency of Natural Resources, the agency specifically charged by law to protect Vermont’s lakes and to stop the spread of aquatic invasives, has chosen to put the state’s precious water resources at risk. It takes just one boat carrying an invasive to add another pristine lake to the list of infested water bodies.
If you love Vermont lakes, you can help to stop the spread by cleaning, draining, and drying all your aquatic gear before entering any lake. Greeters at many lakes can also help by inspecting your gear and providing information about possible infestations.
Finally, a special request to wake boat owners: please consider keeping your boat on only one lake this summer. If you must move to another lake, please keep your boat out of the water for at least 14 days to allow any invasives to die. Also, remember that large wakes can cause shoreline erosion, and can be dangerous to other lake users, so please remain in the wake sports zone.
With all of us working together, we can protect Vermont’s very special lakes.
Pat Suozzi of Hinesburg Is president of the Federation of Vermont Lakes and Ponds