Blue Mesa is “mussel free” even during peak season

It helps to arrive clean, drained and dry

Fourth of July weekend is hands-down the biggest, busiest time of the year at Blue Mesa Reservoir. Curecanti National Recreation Area superintendent Connie Rudd is expecting hundreds of thousands of people from around the state and country to pass through the park over the next few weeks. But not everyone is invited to the party: zebra and quagga mussels top the black list.

The threat of invasive zebra and quagga mussels isn’t gone from Western Slope watersheds, even though none have been found in the region this year. And local agencies like the Colorado Division of Wildlife and National Park Service are continuing work this summer to keep the mussels at bay.
Gunnison County’s Blue Mesa Reservoir, Colorado’s largest body of water, is ground zero for the DOW’s containment effort. Superintendent Rudd says, “We’re doing a grid sampling across the lake twice a month. That takes us a couple of weeks to get to all of those spots. And we’ll be continuing with double time sampling. As of now we’re still mussel free and this is good news.”
Motor boaters on the lake this summer can expect an inspection before entering the water and after taking their boats out.
To speed the process Blue Mesa has installed a second large decontamination station for big boats, or those that need a thorough cleaning.
“It seems that people are being pretty responsive to our asking folks to dry and clean their boats when they come to the launch sites,” DOW spokesman Joe Lewandowski says. “I think that’s a big part of the reason we haven’t had [any new populations of mussels] in Colorado this year.”
Throughout Colorado, from Grand County to Pueblo, reservoirs and lakes are becoming infected with the miniature mollusks. And although the largest of the species measures no more than two inches in length, they have multiplied in waters of the Great Lakes and Midwest and had enormous ecological and economic impacts.
Zebra and quagga mussels both originated in European waters and made their way to the United States in the late 1980s, where they began wreaking havoc on fisheries, industries and municipal water systems.
Their arrival in Colorado was first noted in Lake Pueblo in 2008, and in several other reservoirs since. Several of the reservoirs of Grand County, near Rocky Mountain National Park, are also infected with the mussels.
“One of the major issues is that we’ve got people coming to the state from all around the country. Colorado is a destination and people come from all over the country and alternately, people from Colorado travel all over the country,” Lewandowski says.
With problem areas popping up around the state and established problem populations scattered throughout the country, Lewandowski says federal and state agencies are keeping a close eye on boats moving into uninfected waters.
The possibility that quagga mussels have already invaded the reservoir became greater for Rudd and her staff in March when an analysis of water samples came back from two separate laboratories indicating that there was genetic material from a mussel in one of the samples.
Although that could mean just about anything to Rudd, she knows only that no adult mussels have been found yet. That means the reservoir will stay in “containment mode” while continuing to focus on preventing the spread of either species.
Last summer, the Park Service turned mussel inspections on all motorized watercraft from a voluntary exercise into a requirement.
Shortly after the discovery of the genetic material, the National Park Service took steps to close all but three of the reservoir’s launch areas to motorized boats, allowing only human- or wind-powered craft to enter the water without first being inspected.
“There is only so much we can do. Non-motorized boats, like kayaks, tend not to sit in the water, when they could collect mussels. They also don’t have the space to store standing water that could transport larvae,” the park’s chief of resource stewardship Ken Stahlnecker says, “so we’re focusing our resources on the boats that pose the greatest risk.”
Rudd told the commissioners that there had been only a few cases of people trying to slip past the checkpoints and that for the most part, the thousands of boaters who passed through the park were patient and courteous with inspectors.
“Local boaters who come frequently to the lake arrive ‘clean, drained and dry,’ which speeds up the inspection process immensely. Visitors tell us over and over that they are supportive of the program, because they know the consequences of not complying,” Rudd says.
Blue Mesa’s mandatory boat inspections will take place before boats put-in and after take-out at one of the Park Service’s inspection sites at Iola, Stevens Creek, Elk Creek and Lake Fork between 5:30 a.m. and 9:30 p.m. Ponderosa also has inspectors posted from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through August 22.
Inspectors will also be posted at Taylor Reservoir every day from 5:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. through Labor Day.
For more information on the changes in rules and access points at Blue Mesa Reservoir, visit www.nps.gov/cure or call (970) 641-2337 or the Colorado Division of Wildlife at (970) 641-7060.