In 2024, after years of study and public debate, Vermont implemented the nation’s toughest rules on wake boats. The powerful sport boats were allowed on just 30 bodies of water — of the state’s roughly 800 lakes and ponds — and only in special zones no closer than 500 feet from shore. Si nce then, requests to ban the boats from some of those 30 lakes have flooded state regulators. That prompted the Department of Environmental Conservation to announce last year that it would overhaul the rules. Under the revamped guidelines, which could take effect as soon as this summer, the list of lakes large enough for wake sports would be winnowed to just 18. That means people like Rodney Putnam, who lives on Lake Iroquois in Hinesburg, would no longer be able to pursue the sport on their home lake. “We already made major concessions,” Putnam told Seven Days. “So why do we have to stop doing it completely?” Plans to revise the 2024 rules have stoked the feud between the relatively small number of wake boat owners and those who prize the peace and tranquility of Vermont’s lakes. Wake boats are specifically designed to boost the size and power of the wake that trails them. This allows wakeboarders to catch bigger air and wakesurfers to ride the face of the wave behind a boat without a tow rope. The boats can suck hundreds of gallons of water into ballast tanks. Heavier boats displace more water, which means bigger wakes. Some Vermonters consider the vessels a threat to lakes, particularly smaller ones. They say the larger wakes can erode shorelines, harm nesting loons, spread invasive species, swamp unsuspecting kayakers and put swimmers at risk. “These wakes are huge!” said Jack Widness, who lives on Lake Raponda in Wilmington and helped organize Responsible Wakes for Vermont Lakes, which for years has advocated for tighter regulations. Regulators have long struggled to draft rules to keep the peace between the warring factions. The Department of Environmental Conservation received more than 700 public comments on the first round of rulemaking. This time it’s received more than 1,500 — the  vast majority of which were in favor of stricter regulations. . “I think everyone has been surprised by the intensity of the people involved in this,” said Laura Dlugolecki, lakes policy and outreach coordinator at the department. The original rules allow a 50-acre “wake sporting zone” 500 feet from shore if the water is at least 20 feet deep. But they also let property owners petition to have their lake removed from the list based on its “unique characteristics.” I think everyone has been surprised by the intensity of the people involved in this.Laura Dlugolecki People on more than a dozen lakes have done so. Homeowners on 450-acre Lake Fairlee noted that it’s home to five popular summer camps and that the large number of kids using the water makes safety a particular concern. “The original rules didn’t take into consideration the safety issues,” said Tom Ward, whose family owns a home on the lake. “They were focused mostly on the environmental impacts.” Faced with so many requests for lakes to be removed from the list, DEC changed tack. It rejected all the petitions for exemption and instead opted in July 2025 to toughen the rules statewide. The rulemaking is in its final stages, and the debate has been intense. Widness said members of Responsible Wakes were thrilled the state was willing to rewrite the rules so soon after they took effect. “We were blown out of the water,” Widness said. The reason, according to Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources, is that most of the critical feedback the DEC received was not specific to individual lakes. Instead, people pointed out broader issues related to how wake boats operate in the real world. After much consideration, regulators in the DEC’s Lake and Ponds Management and Protection Program have proposed doubling the area required for a wake sports zone from 50 to 100 acres. They also have proposed a requirement that the zones be a minimum of 3,000 feet long, she said. The existing 200-foot buffer zone that motorized watercraft need to maintain around other lake users, including swimmers and paddleboarders, would be increased to 500 feet for wake boats. Some lakes where wake boating was previously allowed, including Lake Iroquois, are too small to allow these criteria to be met and so would be removed from the list of wake boating-approved lakes. Moore acknowledged that rewriting the rules so soon could confuse the public. It has also taken an inordinate amount of staff time and energy. “We have so many rules at the agency that would benefit from this level of review and modernization, so that’s frustrating,” Moore said. It’s also frustrating to see so much time spent on a policy affecting so few vessels, she said. The number of wake boats in Vermont is miniscule compared to other watercraft. Much of the concern about wake boats has centered on the difficulty of properly decontaminating them to prevent the spread of invasive species such as zebra mussels and Eurasian milfoil. It’s one thing to hose off a fishing skiff before moving it from one water body to another. It’s quite another to kill troublesome aquatic species in the interior compartments of boats. That’s why the state has proposed requiring that the entire boat, including ballast tanks, be decontaminated using hot water before launching on another lake. Moore downplayed the threat. Most of the wake boats in Vermont are based at a home lake and aren’t typically towed from lake to lake, she said. And while aquatic invasive species transport is a real and important concern, she said, “the level of intensity and focus on this small universe of boats and the appreciable but not astronomical risk that they present is, I think, a red herring.” Credit: © Aisha Nuraini | Dreamstime The draft rules that are advancing would require wake boat owners to decontaminate their vessels with hot water before moving between lakes. But how that will be enforced remains up in the air. Candy Moot, a longtime lobbyist in Montpelier who has since retired to Seymour Lake in the Northeast Kingdom, said that’s a big problem. If there is no enforcement and no practical way for boaters to comply, people will likely just ignore the decontamination rules, she said. And with fewer lakes to choose from, more wake boaters will be concentrated on a dwindling number of lakes, including Seymour, she said. Unlike the Adirondack Park in New York, Vermont has no free public hot water decontamination stations, and Moot doubts it will anytime soon. “Decontamination stations will not happen in my lifetime because there is no money,” she said. Marinas could provide the service, said Lauren Woodard-Splatt, owner of Woodard Marine on Lake Bomoseen in Castleton. Her concern about the new rules, however, is that they won’t end there. Wake boats aren’t the only ones with internal tanks. Many fishing boats, including those used by state fish and game wardens, have pumps that move water into wells where live fish are kept, she noted. “Are fishing boats next?” Woodard-Splatt asked. Dlugolecki of the DEC said regulators are revising the proposed rules based on voluminous feedback. They hope to tweak and submit them to the Legislative Committee on Administrative Rules by mid-April with a tentative hearing date on May 7. The committee ensures that the specific rules and regulations proposed by state agencies match the intent of the laws passed by the legislature. “This is a very aggressive timeline,” Dlugolecki said. “We’re racing against the clock of the start of boating season.” Any boat with ballast tanks, not just wake boats, likely will be covered by the policy, she said. One alternative to hot water decontamination could be to require owners to leave boats out of the water for 14 days to kill any invasive species. But ballast tanks don’t always drain fully, and there is evidence that organisms might be able to survive in those tanks longer than two weeks, Dlugolecki said. Because of this, the DEC’s latest draft would require all ballasted boats to undergo decontamination before traveling between lakes, she said. A few marinas on Lake Champlain already offer the service, and the DEC is trying to partner with others, she said. It’s also possible, though admittedly a bit difficult, for boaters to use hot water to decontaminate their boats themselves, she said. Wake boats would be barred from Waterbury Reservoir under the new rules. That suits Eric Chittenden, president of Friends of Waterbury Reservoir, just fine. The watercraft would still be allowed on border-hugging bodies of water, such as Lake Champlain and Lake Memphremagog, leaving wake boaters ample space to enjoy their sport, he said. And if the new restrictions help protect the popular reservoir from contamination, it will be well worth it. “These things get into these lakes so easily, and they are virtually impossible to get out,” Chittenden said. ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Wake Boat Shake-Up | Vermont’s strict wake boating rules are about to get even tougher” The post Wake Boating Rules May Get Even Tougher appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less