Boaters in San Benito County have been cleared to return to
bodies of water in Santa Clara County after the water district
there recently lifted a ban.
Boaters in San Benito County have been cleared to return to bodies of water in Santa Clara County after the water district there recently lifted a ban.
For five months, local boaters had been banned from Santa Clara County waters when a fisherman pulled up a clump of the mussels Jan. 5 and took them to fish and game officials. The California Department of Fish and Game quickly confirmed that they were of the zebra variety and that this was the first known infestation in California. Santa Clara County officials called for a ban to avoid infestation of their own waters, believing there were other bodies of water in this county potentially infested.
“What made it easy,” said Bruce Cabral, water quality unit manager for his county, “was that there hadn’t been any boats in the infested waters in five months, and no stage of zebra mussel can survive five months out of the water, so we lifted the ban.”
Mark Onolso, a local fishing and boating enthusiast, said he had been “frustrated” because he knew San Justo was the only water body here with mussels and that nobody had been on it for months.
“So we couldn’t bring mussels,” he said.
Some other residents put in calls to Water Quality Management in Santa Clara County, but Onolso took the drive to its headquarters and asked to see a manager.
“No appointment, no nothing,” he said. “Next thing I know I’m talking with a supervisor, a great guy who really listened to me.”
That guy was Cabral.
“Initially, when we launched our inspection program, we banned all boats from all mussel-infected counties,” Cabral said.
He went on to say that although officials knew a ban had been in effect for five months on watercraft from the San Justo Reservoir, they hadn’t known whether other water bodies here could have been infested.
“Mark contacted us in June and told us there were no other possibly infected sites,” said Cabral. “By that time, we knew that the San Luis Reservoir, which feeds San Justo, was not infected.”
Phase 2 of Cabral’s plan was to closely inspect San Benito County. Santa Clara Water Management officials contacted bait shops, looked at maps and searched all over the Web before being completely convinced that San Justo water presented the only danger.
“As new information comes up, we can tweak the system. The new information allowed us to lift the outright ban. We are happy to work with people like Mark who inform us on local situations.”
Said Onolso: “Yeah, he worked with me 1,000 percent. He did a 180 and lifted that ban.”
