As spring approaches, the Cazenovia village board is working to finalize a revised plan for boat access through Lakeside Park. At last week’s village board meeting, multiple strategies were discussed in order to protect the lake from invasive species in the upcoming season.
“It stands, in my mind, as head and shoulders above the other issues to be aligned with that cause, and to solve for a 100 percent inspection regime,” said Village Trustee Russ Brownback.
Such inspections help to detect and prevent new invasive species from entering the lake. Brownback offered several suggestions in order to fund 100 percent inspection of boats entering via Lakeside Park, including shortening the season and decreasing hours of operation.
Trustees Kurt Wheeler and Tom Taite offered other possible compromises, including relying on volunteers or self-inspections during non-peak hours.
“What we’re trying to balance is the use and enjoyment of a wonderful resource versus the protection of that wonderful resource,” Wheeler said. “Obviously, if you start taking hours away from early morning, those are the primary hours that people want to go out and fish, and if you take away from the evening, that’s when local residents take their kids out and go boating when they get home from work.”
Rather than limit access to the lake, Wheeler suggested professional inspections during the peak hours and, during non-peak hours, “closing that gap with a combination of volunteer inspectors and self-inspections.” According to Wheeler, an inspection checklist will be provided.
Wheeler compared the inspection process recently established to the unchecked lake access preceding it.
“What we have on the table is already so much more rigorous and so much more thorough than anything that’s ever happened before in the history of our lake. I just want to take that into account before we start taking away and denying access to this resource,” Wheeler said. “For generations, not a single boat was ever inspected in any way before it went on this lake.”
Brownback said that, in order to protect the lake and justify the costly treatment of invasive species, people may be willing to compromise.
“I think this is a crisis time for our lake. The mill foil has gone out of control,” Brownback said. “It stands to reason that we could ask all participants in the process to compromise Perhaps people that enjoy the use of the lake, to protect its great attributes as a resource going forward, will dictate that our launch has to have some more onerous constraints around it.”
Deputy Mayor Paul Brooks moved to table any final decisions until the next village board meeting. He moved that the board attempt “to devise a strategy that would ideally give us one-hundred percent inspection, to the best of our ability, without sacrificing access on the part of the people who have enjoyed this lake for the last hundred years.”
The next village board meeting is 7 p.m. Mar. 2 at the village municipal building. It will be preceded by a public hearing at 6:45 p.m.
