Invasives Inspections in Wright County gets mixed reviews
By Javier Serna
Assistant Editor
Pulling up to the Wright Regional Inspection and Decontamination Station late on the morning of the Fourth of July, I assumed there might be a slight backup on this busy holiday that tends to bring out boaters.
Having covered for Outdoor News the controversial aquatic invasive species pilot project in Wright County – one that required mandatory boat inspections – for more than a year now, it seemed if ever there were going to be a day when the inspection station might be inundated with traffic, this might be that day.
No dice.
One of the main concerns regarding the pilot inspection station – which anybody launching a boat on Sylvia, Pleasant, or John lakes needs to head to beforehand – is that it would create “unreasonable” wait times on top of what is already as much as a 15-minute drive from the station to any of the boat ramps. That’s a key concern of the Minnesota DNR, which is requiring extensive documentation to ensure that long wait times are not occurring.
Vern Wagner, of Anglers for Habitat and a vocal critic of the project, agreed to have me tag along with him as he put his bass boat through the inspection process a couple of times, first before launching the boat and then afterwards, for another inspection and decontamination.
His boat needed to be decontaminated, he reasoned, since Sylvia already is infested with a less common but widely feared aquatic invasive, starry stonewort. That’s one of the main complaints anglers have leveled at the pilot – that exit inspections, now absent at the three lakes, are far more critical with these infested waters.
“It’s backwards,” Wagner said.On the flip side, the whole point of the project is to see if by pooling together resources from several lakes of various sizes, the lakes of a larger regional area can be protected, providing inspections for smaller lake communities that might not otherwise have the resources to have an AIS inspection station.
Wagner arrived with his boat at the station at 10:34 a.m., just as two inspectors were finishing with a boat inspection.
The inspectors were friendly and brief enough, and the inspection took less than two minutes before one of them placed the seal on the boat’s tow strap. Wagner pulled away from the station at 10:37 a.m. “That didn’t seem like a very thorough inspection,” Wagner said, noting that the inspector had marked five of 10 possible boxes on the proof of inspection receipt, which was to be left on the dash of Vern’s vehicle after we’d launched the boat.
The inspector had checked the boxes on the form next to drain plug, trailer inspection, hull inspection, transom inspection, and motor/propeller inspection, but didn’t mark that the livewell/bilges/ballast or anchor and line or bait bucket. Three other unchecked boxes were for “other,” partial decontamination, and full decontamination.
At the boat ramp on Sylvia, where about 15 other trucks and trailers were parked, Wagner noticed that the seal hadn’t been properly affixed. Instead of holding the boat and trailer together, requiring it to be broken in order to launch the boat, it was simply snapped around the boat’s tow strap and Wagner was able to pull it off unbroken.
A few of the parked trucks and trailers that did not have inspection receipts had literature left on their windshields, informing the owners of the rules. The owners were not ticketed (the county may level hefty fines for violations).
A sheriff’s deputy arrived at the boat ramp parking lot briefly, appearing to write down the license information of one violator. A Wright County watercraft inspection official later appeared at the ramp, checking to make sure the serial numbers on the inspection receipts and seals matched up, and said she did call the sheriff’s office to inform officials of violations.
“I don’t know if any tickets have been written,” she said.
Wright County Sheriff Joe Hagerty, in a phone interview, said 27 violations were noted among the three lakes that day, but that no tickets had been issued, yet. “We’re trying to just educate the public at this point, though we do have the option of writing a citation for blatant violators,” Hagerty said.
Many boaters interviewed at the launch said they thought the whole process was a waste of time.
Kai Thomsen, of Edina, was frustrated after making two trips to the inspection station because of boat troubles that required him to pull the boat out after launching it the first time. The additional inspection cut into his 27-year tradition of spending time on Sylvia with family, he said, and he didn’t see the point with the lake already infested.
“They need to be spending money cleaning boats coming out of this lake, not going into it,” he said. But not all boaters viewed the inspection as a hassle. “We don’t mind it,” said Layton Prosser, of Ramsey.Prosser said he had received a warning the first time he launched there this year and didn’t go through the inspection. He didn’t realize it was needed.
“We’re happy with it,” said Prosser, an occasional visitor to Sylvia. “It seems to be cutting down on the boat traffic.”
The fishing outing on the lake with Wagner was cut short by lightning, and there were many boaters on the lake to be seen – mostly pleasure boaters. Only one other boat of anglers was noted.
Back at the ramp, Jim Peraro, of Big Lake, said he had been through the inspection about 20 times this season, and that the longest it had taken to get through the process was 10 minutes, “but I come early in the morning.”
Peraro, who didn’t view the inspection process as that big a hassle, said the thoroughness of the inspection he has received has varied widely, with some doing a good job and others seeming to barely inspect his boat. “They have some that don’t go through all of the steps,” he said. “I don’t mind it, but they don’t always check it good. “They are nice, but I don’t think it’s going to work,” he said, suggesting that inspections aren’t consistently thorough enough to catch 100 percent of violations and that it would be better to have decontamination units at each of the boat ramps.
That could get pricey, but the pilot is costing a lot of money, too. The future of the pilot could be in jeopardy now that the Lessard-Sams Outdoor Heritage Council has turned down a request from the Initiative Foundation to extend the project. IF contributed $623,000 out of a $4 million LSOHC grant set to expire next June though there is money remaining. The Legislature could still approve the extension, but there is talk now about adding additional lakes to pool together more money (lake associations, property owners) to cover the loss of grant funding and keep the pilot going.
Wagner’s second boat inspection took a bit longer when the inspectors objected to this reporter taking photos of the inspection process, even after they received assurances their images wouldn’t be included in Outdoor News.
A stalemate over the issue ended with two Annandale police officers arriving on the scene and a less-than-thorough decontamination of the boat.
