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Interactive: Quagga quandary

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Video: Protecting Casitas
   Lake Casitas officials may close the popular fishing lake to outside boats.
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Fishermen feared that once Lake Casitas put a temporary ban on outside boats, a domino effect of other lakes closing would begin. The first domino, albeit a small one, has fallen.

Managers at Westlake Lake voted Tuesday to temporarily close the 125-acre private body of water to outside boats while they figure out how to keep the invasive quagga mussel at bay.

"We have been tracking what has been happening at Casitas, and we are trying to do the right thing," said John Blindbury, president of the Westlake Lake Management Association. "We don't want our lake to get these quagga mussels."

The decision, which took effect Wednesday, affects only a few dozen people who live in the Westlake Recreation Area and take their kayaks to the lake, and about five people who are permitted to take their fishing boats to the lake.

Those who have boats stored on the lake now are not affected.

A task force is examining how to keep the mussel away and reopen the lake in the future, Blindbury said.

Officials at Westlake and Casitas lakes fear a private boat with some quagga mussels clinging to it could infest the water bodies with the tiny mollusks. They can produce as many as 1 million offspring a year.

The mussels can effectively take over a lake, clogging pipes and damaging infrastructure as well as radically changing its ecological makeup.

There is no known way to get them out of a lake once they are in it.

Lake Casitas officials started looking into how to keep the mussels out after they were discovered last year in Lake Mead. On Tuesday, the Casitas Municipal Water Board voted to close the lake to outside boats for one year and to draw up a game plan for how to protect the lake.

Other lakes may not be far behind.

The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote Tuesday on whether to enact a similar temporary ban at Cachuma Lake.

United Water Conservation District, which manages Lake Piru, is starting to look at ways it can keep the mussel at bay. General Manager Dana Wisehart said thorough boat inspections should start this weekend. She said any ban at Lake Piru would be unlikely if Lake Pyramid didn't enact one, because Piru is downstream.

Ron Cervenka, who organizes fishing tournaments, said even though Westlake Lake is not open to the public, it sets a tone for all lakes to follow.

"I fear the snowball effect," he said. "What occurred at Casitas has got people looking."