FWP rules on Mitchell Slough motorboats, Swan Lake wake zone
Laura Lundquist
(Missoula Current) The Fish and Wildlife Commission decided to limit motorboat access near private property in the Bitterroot River drainage but balked at doing the same on Swan Lake.
On Wednesday, the Fish and Wildlife Commission heard two petitions to limit boat use. One would have increased the no-wake zone on Swan Lake and one would ban motor boats on the Mitchell Slough, a tributary of the Bitterroot River. Only the latter passed but not without some controversy.
For more than 40 years, landowners Monte Eliason and Doug Harwood have lived on the north end of Swan Lake. During that time, they’ve seen wake and surf boats increase in size over the years to the point where they’re seeing larger waves causing shore erosion and dock damage.
No longer is the lake populated with canoes, small fishing boats with outboard motors and the occasional jetski. Over the past few years, wake sports have become increasingly popular, and surf boats are built to create large waves by lowering the boat’s stern and installing large ballast tanks. Elison said that, when fully loaded with ballast and people, the new surf boats can approach 5 tons and generate waves up to 3 feet high. It’s a particular problem in the narrow northern section of the lake
“I live on the narrow part of the lake, which seems to be where everybody wants to surf. But when surf boats are on the lake and they are surfing, I get off the lake. I got a little tiny pontoon boat, and it scares me to death to be on the lake when they’re out there. Kids can’t go swimming,” Harwood said. “We’re not the only ones that are having problems. Everybody knows this problem not only extends on Swan Lake but goes to Seeley, south side of Flathead, goes to Whitefish, to (Lake) Inez and actually nationwide.”
This is the second time the landowners petitioned the commission to extend the wake zone on Swan Lake. They tried last year, but their proposal requesting a ban would have required a statute change. So Fish, Wildlife & Parks staff worked with them to rewrite the petition. Now, it asks the department to begin rule-making to augment the 200-foot no-wake zone, maybe extending it by another 300 feet from the shore or docks or developing some similar fix.
“No responsible boat operator wants to inflict on fellow recreationists and landowners a negative impact. So we’re between a rock and a hard place. We do not want to force all surfboards off the lake, but by the same token, we need to have the people’s safety in mind everywhere else on the lake,” Elison said. “If we had a collaboration of users on the lake, we could probably come up with a better idea for what could mitigate the actions that we are now discussing.”
Chair Lesley Robinson said she has listened for almost six years to several citizen petitions from landowners asking for larger wake zones for wake and surf boats to prevent damage and ease safety concerns. Those include Lake Five, Church Slough and Halfmoon Slough. But the commission has always denied the requests, even after working groups submitted reports on the issue. Each time, the watersports industry has pushed back on any limitations.
Saying he didn’t want to spend sportsmen’s dollars on enforcing the larger wake zone, Commissioner Ian Wargo made a motion to deny this petition. It was later pointed out that no more effort is needed to enforce a 500-foot zone as opposed to a 200-foot zone. Wargo added that the commission or the Legislature should write a rule or law to address surf and wake boats in all of western Montana, instead of just Swan Lake.
“I don’t see anything unique about Swan Lake versus any other lakes. Yes, it’s long, it’s skinny, so maybe you get a little shoreline activity, but it’s fairly deep overall,” Wargo said.
Commissioner Susan Kirby Brooke said the commission should allow rulemaking to move ahead because more petitions keep appearing. She added that the commission should do it and not the Legislature, because the rulemaking process allows more opportunity for citizens to reach consensus on rules for individual lakes.
“If there is ever a time for the commission to move forward and let this process move forward, it’s probably about now. Because all of these are new uses, we’ve had a lot of very frustrated people on both sides of the argument, so now is the time to put this into the (rulemaking) process and see what comes out of it,” Brooke said.
During public comment, three representatives of the watersports industry supported Wargo’s motion, saying the landowners’ claims of erosion and damage were questionable and the wider wake zone would limit access to parts of the lake. The Montana Wildlife Federation supported the petition, saying a 200-foot wake zone might not be sufficient anymore due to heavier boats. Petitioner Don Smith said shunting it to the Legislature or allowing the boating industry to lead a working group wasn’t wise or fair to the affected landowners.
After discussing the possibility of making the Swan Lake petition more of a western Montana effort and the administrative difficulties of doing that, the commission voted 4-1 to deny the petition, with one vote uncertain. Having watched yet another wake petition go down, Robinson didn’t want to leave it at that.
“I’m not asking for an action, but I’m asking for a commitment for what we need to do to move forward to have something that’s a wider net,” Robinson told the department.
While the Swan Lake petition might have started the rulemaking process, another proposal in the Bitterroot Valley was at the end of the process that started in March.
Numerous landowners along the Mitchell Slough asked FWP to ban motorized boats on the slough. The department expanded that to closing all Bitterroot tributaries to motorized boats due to concerns about boating safety and possible harm to fisheries. But subsequent public comment said the rule was overly broad and unenforceable so the department pulled it back to just the Mitchell Slough.
The Mitchell Slough is controversial because, for the past 20 years, the surrounding landowners, most of whom are millionaires, have taken numerous steps to try to prevent the public from accessing the slough. So banning motorized boats only on the Slough raised some eyebrows.
Those eyebrows shot a little higher when FWP fisheries manager Pat Saffel said he had no evidence showing that motorboats had a negative effect on the fisheries or habitat in the slough.
“It’s the potential risk to those resources. We don’t have a lot of information about fish use of Mitchell Slough. Haven’t had the opportunity to collect that information. So right now, it’s the potential risk to those resources,” Saffel said.
Brooke said the commission had just shot down a petition, partly because they had no evidence of damage caused by waves, but they were accepting another petition that also had no evidence.
“We have potential risks and we have maybe some resource damage, we don’t know. This seems like it’s one more way to keep the public out of the Mitchell Slough and protect the people who are in there who don’t want the public in there,” Brooke said. “It seems like we came up with some reasons to justify removing a certain kind of access for people on this one piece of property. And we just told people on Swan Lake we weren’t going to do this and here we are - we’re going to do it. We’re going to restrict the use of public waters to the public because of unknown potentials.”
Robinson agreed that it wasn’t good to make decisions based on potential impacts. Walsh said Saffel could have had better information if the Mitchell Slough landowners would have allowed FWP technicians on their property.
No commenters denied that using motorboats on the narrow Mitchell Slough poses a safety risk. But Kevin Farron of the Montana Wildlife Federation said the safety risks and the risks motorboats pose to fisheries and habitat can apply to all the tributaries of the Bitterroot, not just the Mitchell Slough.
Commissioner KC Walsh made a motion to approve the Mitchell Slough ban and the motion passed 3-2, with one uncertain.
Contact reporter Laura Lundquist at lundquist@missoulacurrent.com.