The unofficial end of summer came with last weekend’s Labor Day
holiday, and scores of boats, anglers and water skiers crowding
Morgan Hill’s Anderson Lake where Santa Clara County sheriff’s
deputies and park rangers have been able to double up their
enforcement of waterway safety with the assistance of a state grant
this summer.
The unofficial end of summer came with last weekend’s Labor Day holiday, and scores of boats, anglers and water skiers crowding Morgan Hill’s Anderson Lake where Santa Clara County sheriff’s deputies and park rangers have been able to double up their enforcement of waterway safety with the assistance of a state grant this summer.
The grant from the California Department of Boating and Waterways allowed the Sheriff’s Office to purchase a patrol boat to augment the existing enforcement vessel owned and operated by park rangers. This summer, for the first time since the county began patrolling Anderson Lake decades ago, the sheriff’s office had direct access to the lake, improving the level of service to boaters at the reservoir, according to Sheriff’s Sgt. Eric Bourassa.
“We are able to go out and do a little more enforcement,” Bourassa said. “The rangers were working alone (until earlier this year), and now we’re working more in tandem with them. It doubled the number of people we were able to get out on the water.”
For the summer season, which started on Memorial Day and ended Monday, deputies running the sheriff’s boat contacted 403 recreational vessels and wrote 31 citations on Anderson Lake, Bourassa said. Six of the citations were for boating under the influence of alcohol or drugs, six were for “other” violations and the rest were warnings.
Park rangers operating the county parks and recreation boat wrote 12 citations during the same time, according to parks and recreation department spokeswoman Tamara Clark-Shear.
By contrast last summer, when only one boat was on patrol on Anderson Lake, the rangers wrote a total of 42 citations.
“County park rangers have made hundreds of contacts through the years and strive to educate the public on the many rules and regulations to keep them safe,” Clark-Shear said. “The Sheriff’s boat patrol program helps to supplement the already outstanding job our park rangers are doing.”
Boating was down from last year due to cooler weather this summer, but no major accidents were reported on the lake, which is owned by the Santa Clara Valley Water District. A daily limit of 170 boats are allowed on the lake during the summer, due to environmental and crowding concerns, and parking constraints at the Anderson Dam boat launch site off Cochrane Road.
Local waterway authorities would rather educate than arrest. Santa Clara County Park Ranger Phil Hearin said on a recent Sunday afternoon boat patrol shift that the officers are “education oriented,” and when they contact boaters suspected of minor violations they prefer to inform them of the rules rather than write tickets.
In about two hours, Hearin and Sheriff’s Deputy Nate Davis contacted nine different vessels, including personal watercraft such as jet-skis, and larger boats full of families, skiers and sunbathers. When on patrol, authorities are looking for potential alcohol violations (drinking while boating is allowed, but not when the driver’s alcohol content exceeds the legal limit), speeding in the no-wake zone, swimming in the lake which is prohibited, boating against the mandated one-way traffic and underage operation of boats.
Of those nine stops, no citations were issued but all were citable, Hearin said. The operators of two of those boats had been consuming alcohol, but Davis and Hearin, who are trained to deduce higher-than-normal intoxication levels, were satisfied they did not seem to be over the legal limit.
Longtime boater Chris Yacenda of Gilroy, a regular patron of Anderson Lake, said in his observation the boat patrol officers can tell which boaters are more experienced and respectful of the lake, and which ones are flouting the law or “acting like idiots.”
“They’re just there to do their job and make sure everybody’s safe and makes it home, and make sure nobody gets hurt,” said Yacenda, who added that he agrees that education is important when it comes to recreational boating – especially because not all participants have the same boating practices.
When boaters are contacted, the authorities also make sure the boats contain required safety gear, including life vests, a fire extinguisher and throwable flotation devices.
Working as a team that day with Davis driving and Hearin watching through binoculars for possible violations or boaters who needed help, they also kept an eye on the “Woodchopper’s” picnic area, a popular site for landlubbers accessed by East Dunne Avenue, where patrons sometimes try to sneak jet-skis or small boats into the lake without having been inspected for Quagga mussels. The mussels can shut down reservoirs for recreation, and even complicate the intake and removal of water, Davis explained.
Overall, the boat patrol program – operated jointly by the sheriff’s office, parks department and the state boating department – is intended to promote “health and safety” on local lakes, Hearin said.
“The partnership with (the department of) Boating and Waterways helps improve customer service and provide safety on the waterways,” Hearin said.
