Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, January 15, 1993 TAG: 9301150014
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ED SHAMY
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
BOAT OWNERS' CASE TO USE COVE DOESN'T HOLD WATER
Last summer, Roanoke's water czars floated the idea of banning private boats from Carvins Cove Reservoir to prevent the introduction of the dreaded zebra mussel into the lake's waters.The idea was hooted down by a mob of angry boaters.
Their boorish insistence will cost us lowly city taxpayers about $30,000 just through June. Then we get to cough up more.
Let's introduce our main character. The zebra mussel is a shellfish that never does get larger than your thumbnail. The mussels live in close quarters - as many as 70,000 in one square underwater meter. They fasten onto pipes, dock moorings and organized crime corpses, and churn out 30,000 babies a year.
In 1989, the businesses and public buildings of Midland, Mich., shut down for two days because zebra mussels clogged water pipes from Lake Erie to the city.
The mussels first showed up in the Great Lakes in the mid-1980s. Since then they've spread to the Susquehanna River and the Mississippi Valley and have been detected in the Tennessee River. Anti-mussel policies are popping up at water authorities all over the eastern half of the country.
Little more than slugs in shells, the mussels travel ably by latching onto the hulls of boats. Their larvae, invisible to the naked eye, travel well in outboard motors and bait containers.
We pay people to make sure that we have drinking water in ample supply that runs through pipes to our homes and our workplaces and our schools.
They felt Carvins Cove reservoir should be protected from zebra mussels. If they didn't sound the alarm now and mussels overran our reservoir, we'd accuse them of being asleep at the wheel.
"I feel, like Paul Revere," says Craig Sluss, the man we pay to manage our Water Department, "running around yelling, `They're coming, they're coming!'"
The water experts suggested that private boats be banned from Carvins Cove to reduce the risk of importing the pest. Boats, under the plan, would have been rented.
Boat owners went ballistic. Thirty of them spoke at a public meeting in August. Their incentive?
"I have a $1,000 boat in my back yard," fumed Thomas Faron of Salem. "Rental boats don't cut it."
And James Elston Sr. of Roanoke: "If rental boats are there, can you justify a $23,000 boat sitting in my back yard?"
Their comments, part of a lengthy transcript of the public hearing, may be the most telling.
Roanoke's City Council reacted to the loud, often self-serving noise and buckled. Private boats still will be permitted on Carvins Cove.
But first, the city spent $10,000 to build fencing and to buy a two-way radio.
A new city employee began work Jan. 1. His job is to inspect boats for signs of zebra mussels.
He works a 40-hour week. Come April 1, when boating hours are expanded, he'll need part-time helpers. City Council will pay $19,444 in salaries through June, to police for the insidious shellfish. A new budget year dawns July 1, presumably with more money.
Last year, boat permits brought in $11,600, though that may shrink this year because for the first time, only residents of Roanoke and Salem and Botetourt, Roanoke and Bedford counties will be permitted to float their boats on our reservoir.
On our dime.
Taxpayer's revenge? Boaters actually might be better off with rentals. They'd have to certify to the city that their boats have been in no other water for the previous three weeks before dipping into our reservoir.