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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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In a move drastically different from the decision earlier this month to close Lake Casitas to outside boats, the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors voted Tuesday to implement stringent measures to keep quagga mussels out of Cachuma Lake, but without restricting boats.

Fisherman applauded the decision, saying it is the best way to keep the mussel from invading lakes while still giving access to the those who recreate and fish there.

"I was very pleased at the outcome," said Scott Sweet, vice president of the California Bass Federation. "I think it's a 180-degree difference."

The board voted unanimously to begin a series of actions that officials hope will be enough to keep the mussels from entering the lake, where they have the potential to reproduce exponentially, do millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure and alter the ecosystems.

Among the new measures that will take effect Friday and continue indefinitely are these:

n All boats must be inspected to ensure they are clean and dry.

n All drain plugs must be removed before entering the park.

n Boats over 24 feet will be quarantined for 14 days.

n After visual inspections, boats will undergo heated power washes before entering the lake.

n A system of tamper-proof tags will be put on boats that use Cachuma exclusively to allow visitors to come and go with fewer inspections.

n Only commercially purchased bait will be allowed on the lake.

"We have a high probability by following these that the quagga won't be introduced into the lake," said Jeff Stone, deputy director of the Santa Barbara County Parks Department.

Russ Baggerly, a Casitas Municipal Water District board member who voted to close Lake Casitas to outside boats, said the conditions at Cachuma Lake are different. While the Casitas board has ultimate control over the water and the recreation, at Cachuma Lake, three entities have different jurisdiction over the lake, the water use and recreation there.

"Obviously, they think they had a solution, and it was different from ours. I wish them well," he said. "They better be right."

Board members feared the quagga mussel would enter Lake Casitas on the hull of a boat that has been in an infected lake and start to quickly reproduce and cause problems, including clogging infrastructure used to deliver water to Ventura and Ojai.

People can rent boats at Lake Casitas to fish, but the board banned bringing in boats from the outside.

Kate Rees, general manager of the Cachuma Operations and Maintenance Board, which represents numerous water agencies, said she's satisfied with the new protocols, but is still worried an infestation is possible. Earlier this year, Rees wrote a letter to the board asking that the lake be closed for six months while a strategy was developed to keep the mussels out.

"The initiatives are all very important, but they don't guarantee that the waters of our facility are fully protected if the quagga enters the lake," she said Tuesday.

Casitas board member Rich Handley said the district is also looking into some kind of a tagging system that would allow local boaters to exclusively use Lake Casitas. Another option being explored is to increase boat storage capacity so more people can leave their boats at the lake.

For the fishermen who love Cachuma Lake, the news that it will remain open was most welcome, restrictions and all.

"What we have to endure now will be worth it later," said Stan Bettis, of Santa Barbara.

And it might just keep Mike Doering sane.

"That is my church up there," Doering said after the hearing. "It's where I get my sanity fix."