Category: Uncategorized

From our inception in March of 2021, Responsible Wakes for Vermont Lakes (RWVL) has operated as an unincorporated association of Vermonters who share deep concern and commitment regarding the negative impacts of wake boats and wakesports on our inland lakes and ponds.  This informal structure has served us and our hundreds of supporters well up…

Angela Shambaugh is a long-time aquatic biologist who until October 2020 worked for Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) within the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR). After reading Bob Popp’s recent comments to the ANR recommending a total wake boat ban on Vermont’s inland lakes and ponds, Angela was inspired to write her own piece. In it she expresses her opinion as a professional, concluding…

Vermont continues to learn about wake boats from the experience around the country. We need to listen. The stories are chilling. In Vermont, wake sports are just beginning to take hold. But we ignore them at our peril. They are coming. They are gaining in popularity. The boats are getting bigger and heavier and more…

According to Wikipedia, Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen “is widely regarded as the foremost playwright of the nineteenth century.” He also coined the adage “a picture is worth a thousand words.” So, you may ask, why is RWVL talking about Ibsen in this newsletter? Well, we aren’t, at least not directly. But we are talking about…

Time goes by and the public is still waiting for the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) to publish its final rule. While acknowledging that everyone feels frustrated by the delay, perhaps we can breathe hope into the fact that this process is taking so long. After all, there were so many public comments made in…

Bob Popp, a 30-year veteran botanist of Vermont’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, weighs in on the need to manage wake boats — he recommends a ban on Vermont’s lakes and ponds. Read Bob’s comments to the Lakes and Ponds Division of the Agency of Natural Resources (ANR) and send us back your comments.  Bob Popp eating…

The common loon is a favorite species of many Vermonters. It is also “… a species of greatest conservation need in Vermont …”, according to the Vermont Center for Ecostudies (VCE) and Audubon Vermont. This is in part because loons typically nest only two to eight inches above the water level and within two feet…

Last May, paddler Chip Stone spoke out loud and strong in his compelling VT Digger piece, Wake Boats Are a Genuine Threat to Paddlers. In addition to his love of paddling, Chip is a former state legislator, former commissioner of economic development, and a retired banker. Chip knows his stuff. In his VT Digger piece, he noted that, “Vermont…

This is a question we’ve been asking ourselves for the last several weeks as we await the ANR’s final decision on changes to the Use of Public Water Rules regarding wake boats. This is also a question many of you — our supporters — have been asking us for nearly a month. We don’t have insight into where ANR is…

The weak regulation of wakesports proposed by the Agency of Natural Resources — 500-feet from shore instead of RWVL’s 1,000-feet from shore — would allow wakesports on some of Vermont’s small, crowded, and vulnerable lakes. Lakes where wakesports do not belong. We describe in this newsletter some of the 16 lakes that would suffer under…