Boat Speeds Explored: EID Board’s Move Follows Earlier Bid to Ban Personal Watercraft on Silver Lake.

By Cathy Locke, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Feb. 15–El Dorado Irrigation District board members followed up a call for banning personal watercraft on Silver Lake with a request to limit boat speeds, a move that would effectively eliminate water skiing as well.

During Monday’s meeting, opponents of the restrictions accused the board of using potential liability and ill-founded safety concerns as an excuse to scuttle activities that some lake users find objectionable.

“Many of the findings are faulty or irrelevant,” Bay Area resident Tom Horton said of the staff report that board members cited in justifying their call for a 10-mph speed limit. Horton said diverse uses have coexisted for decades on the lake, located off Highway 88, just east of the El Dorado County line.

The board in November agreed to ask the Amador County Board of Supervisors to prohibit use of personal watercraft on the lake. The action came after El Dorado County resident and fly-fisherman William “Dub” Kramer reported an encounter with two individuals on personal watercraft who came by as he was fishing and said, “Let’s see if we can dump the old guy in the float tube.”

Several people at the November meeting complained that personal watercraft and fast boats create safety hazards and disrupt the mountain tranquility for those who prefer more placid pursuits such as fishing, canoeing and kayaking.

The board agreed to form a task force of lake users, lakeside property owners, U.S Forest Service representatives and Amador County officials to discuss alternatives to speed restrictions.

Director George Osborne said Monday that a Jan. 17 task force meeting included participants from as far away as Carmel who offered constructive suggestions.

“I don’t think we arrived at a resolution that’s anything different than we started out with,” he said. “We still end up with this liability problem.”

Neither the district nor the Amador County Sheriff’s Department, which has law enforcement jurisdiction at the lake, has received reports of accidents or injuries from boating activities at Silver Lake, district staff members said. But board members said they cannot ignore hazards that the public has brought to their attention.

In addition to problems arising from incompatible recreational uses, they cited dangers to fast boats and watercraft created by submerged rocks and fluctuating water levels.

Boaters suggested using buoys to mark the most significant physical hazards on the lake, as well as posting signs and distributing brochures advising lake users to act safely and responsibly.

But director George Wheeldon said that with fluctuating water levels, it was “ludicrous” to think the district could adequately alert boaters to all the potential hazards.

District counsel Tom Cumpston said marking hazards and posting warnings might help, but it is not a cure-all.

If an accident or injury on the lake resulted in litigation, he said, “I wouldn’t want to rely on putting up signs or handing out brochures as a full defense.”

Ted Breck, a Bay Area resident, said he and his family have used the lake for years. Though Breck termed the incident between fisherman Kramer and the personal watercraft users “wrong and illegal,” he said it had nothing to do with water skiers.

“Why should water skiing be restricted because of an irrelevant incident?” he asked. “We believe you are hiding behind the liability issue.”

Though the district owns much of the land beneath Silver Lake, staff members said it lacks authority to impose or enforce the speed restrictions and personal watercraft ban. Both measures require action by the Amador County Board of Supervisors.

District directors sent a letter to the supervisors in November requesting the ban on personal watercraft, but director Osborne said Amador officials were waiting for the a recommendation on the speed limit so the two issues could be considered together.

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Copyright (c) 2007, The Sacramento Bee, Calif.

Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Business News.

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