Committee Will Tackle Lake Conflicts County Commissioners Want Users To Find Solutions

User vs. user is the game on some Spokane County lakes.

But county commissioners are taking a step they hope will ease the tension - or at least place the onus on the users to find solutions. They’re forming a committee.

Some residents of at least three lakes have asked commissioners to make their lives quieter by eliminating the use of powerboats at Meadow Lake, personal watercraft at Williams Lake and early-morning boaters at Liberty Lake.

But talk of restrictions always offends users whose fun would be limited. And commissioners worry that dealing with problems at individual lakes could lead to a flood of such requests, and a tangle of unenforceable laws.

So far, commissioners have only taken action at Meadow Lake and only because a solution couldn’t wait, said Commissioner Phil Harris. Commissioners voted in June to ban powerboats on the tiny West Plains lake, which has no public access.

“It was kind of an impending disaster if you went out there and watched (water-skiers) try to navigate around that little lake,” said Harris.

Harris hopes the yet-to-be-created committee will eventually recommend to commissioners uniform regulations based on lake size. The rules might include banning all powerboats on the smallest waters, horsepower restrictions on mid-sized lakes and an all-users-welcome policy at the biggest lakes.

Commissioners aren’t taking applications for the committee yet, and won’t until they decide its exact makeup, probably in September. Most likely, the group will include personal watercraft users and dealers, canoeists, lake residents, waterskiers, anglers and a sheriff’s deputy, said county Administrator Fran Boxer.

Conflicts on lakes are growing more common, said Deputy Tom Mattern of the sheriff’s Marine Patrol Unit.

“Our bodies of water are getting more and more populated and there’s a huge increase of registered vessels,” said Mattern. “A great share of that increase is personal watercraft,” like Jet Skis and Wave Runners.

About 100 anglers and property owners recently signed a petition asking commissioners to ban personal watercraft at Williams Lake.

Barry Roach, who started the petition, objects to the noise and pollution of the waterborne version of snowmobiles.

“It’s not in keeping with other uses,” like canoeing, fishing and water-skiing, Roach said.

At Liberty Lake, some residents have asked commissioners to restrict the hours powerboats can be used. They complain about neighbors and visitors who crank up their boats at dawn.

While they’ve shied from placing limits on lakes, commissioners in 1997 banned powerboats from one stretch of the Spokane River and limited their use on another.

The river rules were aimed primarily at personal watercraft, whose owners predicted that once they were banned from one body of water, they’d be kicked off others.

Sue Potter, secretary of the Inland Northwest Personal Watercraft Association, said talk of uniform regulations strikes her as unfair to boaters and lake residents alike.

“Maybe they purchased land on a lake so they could use their (personal watercraft),” said Potter, whose organization has 102 members. “That right shouldn’t disappear just because the lake’s a certain size.”