Lake Tahoe Takes Its Water Condition Seriously

Just short of reaching Homewood, California (Lake Tahoe) we visited the boat inspection site to have our boat thoroughly examined before we could launch it into Lake Tahoe. The residents of Lake Tahoe want to keep any destructive, aquatic invaders such as the quagga and zebra mussels, New Zealand mudsnail, and many other damaging species out of their beautiful, blue, mountain lake water. We weren’t quite sure what the inspection involved but we found out fairly quickly, from our responses to their questions, we needed the full procedure.

We were instructed to pull onto the mat laid out by the station and the process began. They hooked up the raw water intakes and flushed the boat and its systems with 140-degree water to destroy any possible remaining invasive species. There is also a fee for this inspection. The whole procedure took about an hour for our boat. It was a little nerve-wracking for us, having only had our new tug a few weeks, the procedure seems a little invasive to our boat, but we understood the reason why. The process was to flush out any organisms hiding in our water intake system. We had our fingers crossed and were hoping the workers knew what they were doing.