Good news. On Friday, March 13, the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee tabled further discussion of Senate Bill S.224 (“An act relating to the management of the State’s lakes”) for the remainder of this legislative session.
Although we sought only the removal of the bill sections ANR Secretary Moore claimed conflicted with the current 2024 Rule, this tabling meets our goal of allowing the ANR/DEC amended Use of Public Waters (UPW) Wakesports Rule, submitted last June, to move forward again, in time for this summer’s boating season.
What the Proposed DEC Rule Would Do
If enacted as currently written, the amended rule would provide stronger protections for Vermont’s lakes by:
- Prohibiting wakesports on 12–13 inland lakes that currently allow them.
- Improving safety on 17–18 remaining lakes by increasing the required distance between wakesports and other lake users—from 200 feet to 500 feet (for swimmers, water-skiers, canoeists, anglers, and others).
We await possible modifications DEC may make to the rule and then approval in April of the final rule by the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules (LCAR).
Addressing Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS)
Both the DEC rule and S.224 were intended to address the removal of the 2024 UPW Rules “Home Lake” provision, which had aimed to reduce the costly spread of aquatic invasive species between lakes but proved impractical to implement.
While the rule and the bill propose different approaches to inspection and decontamination of wake boats, they share the same goal: establishing effective, rigorous, evidence-based standards to prevent the spread of AIS.
RWVL believes stronger AIS protections will still be required after the amended rules are in place. However, we feel the amended rules must be implemented first. We will continue to support efforts for stronger AIS and decontamination regulations.
Thank You — Your Advocacy Made the Difference
Thank you to our dedicated RWVL supporters. At the last moment, many of you called and wrote members of the Senate Natural Resources and Energy Committee, urging them to remove the wakesports provisions from S.224.
Your voices were heard — and it worked!