Weighing whims of the few against rights of the many, time goes by and the public still waits for the Agency of Natural Resources to publish its final rule. While acknowledging everyone’s frustration with the delay, we breathe hope into the fact this process is taking so long. After all, so many public comments were made in response to ANR’s draft rule that now the staff at the Department of Environmental Conservation finds itself struggling to make headway on its duty to respond. More than 82% of the 759 written comments submitted to ANR requested a distance from shore of 1,000 feet or more. Surely such strong support from members of the public must factor into finalization of the rule.
We are approaching four months since the final ANR public comment period closed on Aug. 10; and yet, we continue to wait for ANR to finalize its responsiveness summary and complete the paperwork necessary for submitting this rule to the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules. ANR Secretary Julie Moore’s decision to support (or not) the 1,000-foot rule sets the stage for LCAR’s critical review. The committee, made up of four senators and four House members, can challenge ANR’s proposal, thus helping to determine whether ANR yields to pressure from wake boat owners — a tiny minority — or responds to the overwhelming support demonstrated by a vast majority of lake users for a 1,000-foot rule, or outright wake boat ban, on Vermont’s inland lakes.
Meanwhile, we would like to remind everyone why our group continues to dedicate so much time and energy to wake boat regulation. Wake sports are a tiny niche interest. Why is this issue still relevant? Why do we press forward with such focus and determination when so many other environmental issues challenge our state? We can only respond with another question: Why does Vermont, with its national reputation for environmental excellence, allow tiny niche interests to flourish at the expense of our wider communities, human and natural?
Unfortunately, Vermont’s willingness to indulge a few people in their desire to engage in wake sports will result in the degradation of broader public rights to clean water, healthy shorelines, personal safety and more. One person’s desire to create ocean waves to surf on, far from the ocean, erodes the rights of everyone else — boaters, swimmers, paddlers, sailors, plants, animals, shorelines — impacting the very quality of the water itself.
Vermont is grappling with overwhelming water quality challenges that are complicated and massively expensive to fix. Climate change and environmental degradation are real. Opportunities for meaningful improvement are rare. Strong, proactive rules remain a difficult sell in a world predisposed to reaction rather than prevention.
This wake boat management rule provides a simple path forward. Focused on prevention, it gives Vermont the opportunity to take meaningful action while demonstrating leadership to the rest of the country. By acting now — at negligible government expense — Vermont chooses to prioritize health and safety, protecting inland lakes for future generations. Public testimony from other states warns of the consequences of unchecked wake boat activity. Vermont now has the chance to remedy this problem proactively before it becomes too overwhelming to fix.
This is what fuels our determination to persist. Many of us have been working at this for nearly three years. We know the effort — while hard to appreciate now, with so few wake boats operating in Vermont — is certain to pay off in the future. As it stands, with the distance from shore set at 500 feet, the state’s rule continues to favor a few individuals over the public good. We hope Secretary Moore will be moved by the onslaught of public comments to remedy this imbalance by enacting an effective rule that truly safeguards our lakes and ponds.
We continue to maintain that such a rule requires a distance from shore of 1,000 feet.
Meg Handler lives in Hinesburg.
