AQUATIC INVASIVES: Idaho program doesn’t work

The recent discovery of Quagga larvae on the Snake River does not surprise me at all. I frequently travel with my boat, and have experienced firsthand the incompetence of Idaho’s aquatic invasive species program. It’s particularly useless in North Idaho.

For some inexplicable reason, there are two check stations located within a few miles of each other near Rose Lake. These are completely redundant, and essentially inspect the same boats twice in a row. Most of the boaters in this area are local, and haven’t even had their boats out of state. If you travel to the Joe from Coeur d’Alene you’ll be inspected four times, twice before launch, twice afterward.

In addition to being wasteful, this gauntlet of inspections violates the Fourth Amendment and Idaho law. Without probable cause, court precedent allows only for minimally disruptive inspections, narrow in scope, with no law enforcement presence. Unfortunately, Sheriff Norris and ISP have highjacked the checkpoints for a dragnet.

Ironically, traveling to the southern end of Lake Coeur d’Alene from Washington, along the popular Highway 20/278 route, you won’t be inspected at all, even though you’re in the much higher risk group of boats that have been in waters outside Idaho. If you enter North Idaho from Montana on I-90, you also won’t be inspected if you head to the Coeur d’Alene, Joe or Clearwater, some of Idaho’s most pristine streams.

It’s clear there isn’t a single functioning brain cell among the bureaucrats responsible for the AIS program. You literally couldn’t design a less effective scheme if you tried. Only government could fail this badly.

TODD HOFFMAN

Coeur d’Alene