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| Message Subject: ais meeting last night | |||
kodiak |
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Posts: 1224 Location: Okoboji | So what went down? | ||
| FAT-SKI |
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Posts: 1360 Location: Lake "y" cause lake"x" got over fished | they got up and made a presentation about what their plan would be to stop the AIS. They truly believe that they would be able to stop AIS all together if we implemented their plan. I disagree with that IMO. They made a point to start out by saying that they were not going to go into details about their plan, only to discuss it initially. Toward the end of the meeting, we went into a Q and A. As the people around us started asking questions it was clear the Mr. Schneider and Mr. Osgood were not ready for some of the questions as they stopped answering some of the questions being asked. Not sure if they were choosing not to answer of if they did not have one. For example.. One of the anglers against this new program asked what would happen if we did nothing? If we didn't try to do anything with gates or "limiting access". At first they just looked at the guy and didn't do anything, until someone in the crowd yelled out "answer the question". Mr Osgood came up and said "it would be bad I believe" But had no details to why it would be bad. No scientific back up, no reports from other infested waters. All he basically said is that the number of lake on the infested list will increase. Well What does bad mean. Does it mean that we wont be able to fish? does it mean that we wont be able to walk on our own beaches? They did pretty much pigeon hole the boaters as a group, stating that boaters were the main cause of AIS being in so many lakes. When we know that a few lakes were indeed infected by boat lifts. They claimed that wildlife cannot transport AIS from one water to another, or that it was a very miniscule amount. However if you look at Stone Lake (small little lake off highway 7 on the way to Victoria) has no public access, yet has Milfoil, Pretty much being that the only way milfoil got there is because of wildlife. Though I have seen people fishing it, it is more of a canoe lake. No where to launch a boat. They said that there is an 80% to 20% compliance rate from boaters, meaning 80% of us do what we are supposed to do when removing our boats, but there is the 20% that don't do what is needed to keep AIS out of the lakes. If truly 20% of boaters weren't doing what they needed you would think lakes like Vermillion and Leech, lakes that are predominately used by anglers would be infested as well? Just like the MPLS lakes, they want to have gates put up at all 30 access points around Tonka. They feel that it would not be all that inconvenient. You would have to be checked getting on the lake, and "possibly" decontaminated once you come off the water. I think it would make more sense to make sure everyone decontaminates once they are off, and not restrict access getting on. What about the guides who use Tonka all the time and need to be on the water an hour before sunrise? which would most likely be an hour before any inspectors were on sight. The presenters also brought up the idea of using electronic gates. But again that posses a problem, What if you are coming off the water "after hours" and for whatever reason the power to the gates goes out and you can't remove your boat? Are we supposed to sleep on the lake? Or how bout the sail boaters who take 30 minutes to launch and remove their boats? Will the gates stay open? It seemed pretty obvious that they were not enterily prepared for what the rest of us were bringing to the table. They made that clear when they stopped addressing our questions. You could see the look on their faces every time someone (who did not support their cause) had to ask a question. What I didn't think they realized is how much this is going to affect the local businesses, even the marinas. An Owner of a marina asked last night. They launch and remove all of their customers boats, sometimes two times a day. "So if we have to get inspected every time we enter the water and decontaminate when they leave, and sometimes twice a day per person", are they supposet to drive to a "dedicated inspection/decontamination site? That would cost a lot of money for the local marinas. This is not just an inconvience... This goes directly against our government set up. We as a country chose to be a democracy. There are systems in place for this sort of thing and one person brought up the fact, that the two people making this presentation and supporting this plan. Pretty much went behind the backs of all of the other people in their coalition. This plan was worked on privetly between them and a few others. They did not include a lot of the others people that work directly with them. The point is, things may not go as fast as some people want them to, but that democracy for ya. Their is a system that needs to be followed for anything major to be implemented into a system. This is something they are trying to push to have gates up on all accesses for the 2013 open water season. There will be rules and hours of regulation that people will or will not be able to get on the water. There was a lot of questions left unanswered, and a lot of details left out of their initial reports. This would need legislator approval, MN DNR approval, City and county approval as well. Then the question comes to Cost... Will this be expensive? YES!!! 8 million dollars is what they are suggesting they would need to get this done. When you have a roofer come to your house to give you an estimate on cost... 99% of the time the cost is more then what they told you in the first place. They say 8 million, I heard 10 million or more... Who is going to pay for this?? I doubt the Lake home association will fork out the money. that is a major question that is left unanswered. They made it clear in the beginning of the meeting that they are not trying to deny access. just "limit" it. They did not go into detail about how long inspectors would be at gates, or during what times of the day. They did not make it clear how many decontamination sites would be needed. They did not make it clear how this was all going to work. They had a rough idea of what they wanted to do, but I don't personally think they know exactly how to do it. There were supporters at the meeting, and people said some strong stuff about zeebs and milfoil. However if you look at Lake Minnetonka as it stands right now. The milfoil is decreasing, partially in part to the zeebs. The sunfish (bluegil) are eating the crap out of the zebra muscles, thus we will have a better pan fishery, and ultimately larger game fish. People were saying that if you caught a bunch of blue gill your live well would be full of crushed zeebs. One person spoke with a lake home owner on a WI has had zebra muscles in it for 10 to 15 years. He asked "what is the worst thing that you have seen in this lake because of the zebra muscles" The man simply replied, well we have to wear lake shoes while walking in the water as the muscles will cut your feet. But there were no other major effects. Look at 1987 when we first found Mill foil in Lake Minnetonka. The "professionals" said that the lake would be dead in 5-10 years and that it would take another 10 or more to recover. Last time I checked Tonka has been one of the leading recreational and angling lakes in the state of MN. Everyone freaked out back then just like they are today. If we just sit down and keep calm about this we can figure out a better viable solution. I do agree that something needs to be done, but I can promise you that this is not that something. Edited by FAT-SKI 8/10/2012 9:14 AM | ||
| bturg |
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Posts: 719 | Great report, Thanks for putting it up. | ||
| ArmPit |
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Posts: 450 Location: Waconia, MN | Thanks for the report, and thanks for being a voice for the people that couldn't attend last night. | ||
| lhprop1 |
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Posts: 200 Location: Minnesota | So they're proposing doing this at all of the public launches. It is not law, but a proposal by the lake associations. What is to prevent a private marina from providing unfettered, ungated access? | ||
| FAT-SKI |
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Posts: 1360 Location: Lake "y" cause lake"x" got over fished | Its hard to say that they would completely take away marina launches as they did not go into any detail on the matter. But yes, they would indeed put up a gate at every single public access on the lake. They also did not go into detail regarding what times people would or would not be able to get on the water due to inspector being present. They just briefly mentioned sunrise and sunset. Not sure what rules would/wouldn't apply to the marinas. | ||
| TC MUSKIE |
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Location: Minneapolis | To add what FAT-SKI said: they only mentioned controlling boats going in and out of the lake via the launches. What about the 1000s of boats that enter the lake in the spring and don't get taken out of the lake in the fall? There's a big enough population of boats that stay on tonka to spread milfoil and zeebs on their own... ...and then there's the floating weeds that can travel a great distance when the wind picks up and spread the attached zeebs.There's plenty of ways that these things can spread that DOESN'T involve boaters using the launches. They just want to point their fingers at a SINGLE issue to please themselves and others that they are "stopping" the spread of AIS... when really all they are doing is slowing one cause of AIS down... I think after this meeting their plan looks a lot worse to people who stand on both sides of the issue. You can't just rush into something this expensive without thinking it through. One of the major complaints (from some pretty important people there) was that hardly anyone heard of this plan at all until a day or two before the meeting. They are trying to dodge as many nay-sayers as possible to get this thing rolling when in reality it has a ton of loop holes and is poorly thought out. | ||
| Pointerpride102 |
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Posts: 16632 Location: The desert | Here is my issue with this: it seems like this is more about limiting access not stopping AIS. This now makes any future attempts at an actual AIS prevention plan even more difficult as boaters are already skeptical on the issue. Alienating them under the false goal of eliminating AIS makes the actual goal of preventing AIS even more difficult. Are there any more of these meetings? I'd be interested in attending. | ||
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