Quabbin reopens Monday

State will allow washed boats in; mussels not found

By OWEN BOSS
Staff Writer

BELCHERTOWN — Fishermen, start your engines.

Officials with the state Department of Conservation said local boat owners can return to the Quabbin Reservoir Monday morning, a month after the water body was closed to outside boats over concerns about an invasive species of mollusk.

Although all three Quabbin fishing areas will reopen at 6 a.m. Monday, before hitting the water, private boat owners must have their vessels cleaned, free of charge, at one of two decontamination stations set up in Orange and Belchertown, according to DCR Commissioner Richard K. Sullivan.

“People can start calling in this weekend to set up arrangements to have their boats cleaned at one of our approved boat-washing facilities,” Sullivan said. “We don’t just want to make sure they are clean of zebra mussels, but all of the invasives that pose a potential threat to water bodies across the commonwealth.”

Since July 15, the reservoir has been closed to private boats, which are blamed elsewhere for transporting zebra mussels, an invasive species found in a Berkshire County lake in July, from one body of water to another.

State Sen. Stephen Brewer, D-Barre, has criticized the decision to close the reservoir to private boats, but this week stressed the need to look forward.

“I was not pleased with that decision. I thought it was a rush to judgment,” Brewer said of the closing. Media coverage in the Boston area, including “a couple of front page stories in the Boston Globe,” probably influenced the decision, he said.
But this week he said, “I don’t want to dwell on history.”

The important thing now, he said, is to have a reasonable, cost-effective way for boats to again take to the water.

Local fisherman react

The reservoir’s reopening is great news for those who regularly fish the Quabbin, like Ware resident Gary Barnes, who said he was on the water four days a week before it closed.

“I’ve fished there for the last 20 years. To me it is a sacred place, and I didn’t know what I was going to do if they closed it up,” Barnes said. “I’m just glad we are going to be able to get back on the water.”

Although he said he understood that the DCR’s decision to close the reservoir was in the best interest of the millions of people it provides water for, he felt the inquiry should have been handled differently.

“I feel like it was a knee-jerk reaction from Boston, and as it turned out there was no reason to close it,” Barnes said. “They should’ve known that zebra mussels cannot survive in this kind of water, and had they bothered to check that first rather than just close it down, I think things would have gone better.”

Another Ware resident glad to see the Quabbin open again is Tony Swiercz, who said he and his wife have been boating on it regularly for 35 years.

“We are looking forward to its reopening not just as fishermen but as custodians of the water,” Swiercz said. “It is a great asset to have here and it needs to be appreciated and used wisely.”

The temporary closure of the 17.9-mile-long reservoir also translated to a drop in business for local store owners that depend on fishing, like R&R Sport Shop on Federal Street in Belchertown, where employee Dan Coyer said the decrease in sales has been noticeable.

“It wasn’t just the bait, anything to do with fishing was put in the back seat,” he said. “We depend on the Quabbin because it is so close and it being closed really caused a snowball effect.”

Now that local residents know they can get back on the water, Coyer said he hopes their
business will boost the store’s sales before the summer ends.

“Hopefully we’ll see a rush on some of those items next week,” he said.

DCR review

During the month the Quabbin was closed to outside boats, Sullivan said DCR dive teams inspected and tested the water and found no signs of the organism.

“We were confident that because of the water quality at the reservoir, it would not support zebra mussels, and we didn’t expect to find any,” Sullivan said. “The closure and search were just extra precautionary measures because it is such a significant drinking water supply.”

The department’s decision to reopen, Sullivan said, can be linked to the success of last weekend’s Special Olympics fishing derby, which was monitored by area biologists. Boats used in the derby were washed off-site and then sealed to trailers to guarantee that they were not used in waters that might contain the mussels.

“We thought we had good protocols in place, and it was well-timed that we could try them out during the competition,” Sullivan said of the derby’s boat-washing program. “It was very closely monitored by our staff and biologists, very good records were kept of the cleaning operations and afterwards, we were confident that we could take those protocols and offer them to private boaters.”

Created in the 1930s as the municipal water system for the Greater Boston area, the Quabbin Reservoir holds 412 billion gallons of water and provides water to more than 2.5 million people. Each year, about 9,000 boat launches are recorded at the reservoir, according to the DCR.

To schedule an inspection, boat owners should call the Quabbin Visitors Center at 1-888-550-0048, Ext. 102, starting Saturday, between 9 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. Walk-in appointments for cleaning will not be available.

Before arriving, Sullivan said boat owners should be sure to have their boat registrations. Excessively dirty boats with gas or oil leaks or any signs of the presence of an invasive species of any type will not pass inspection.

“The DCR is not only committed to addressing the zebra mussels, but also to looking at the bigger picture including all invasives,” Sullivan said. “There is a 50-year tradition of fishing at the Quabbin, and this is the only way to ensure that the water is pristine and can remain open to the public.”

Every boat that has been washed will be certified and tagged with a wire marker that will offer reservoir employees evidence that the boat was cleaned properly and hadn’t entered any water bodies since the decontamination process.

William Pula, the Quabbin superintendent for the DCR, said he has slots for appointments for 500 to 600 boats to be cleaned over the next two weeks.

The decontamination and inspection process was developed and refined the day they washed the Special Olympics boats for the Aug. 8 derby, Pula said. He said the washing took 20 to 30 minutes per boat.

Owen Boss can be reached at oboss@gazettenet.com