Ban lifted: Deal puts watercraft back on Lake Powell — with a few restrictions

At sunrise Saturday, owners of personal watercraft can launch their crafts, start the engines and begin skimming over the blue waters of Lake Powell — legally.

Under a settlement agreement reached midday Wednesday, the ban on PWCs has been temporarily lifted and, in all likelihood, will remain that way.

The ban on the small craft went into effect last November and was to have remained in place until the National Park Service completed an environmental impact study and issued its PWC use recommendations. The final decision was not scheduled to be released until late July or August.

This would have resulted in the loss of most of the prime boating months, "and we would not have been able to survive this year with a complete closure at Lake Powell," said Tim McDaniels, owner of Doo-Powell, a PWC business in nearby Page, Ariz.

As it stands now, PWCs will be allowed on the lake through the summer months but with some restrictions.

• They cannot be ridden from the mouth of the San Juan River, East to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area boundary.

• PWCs are not allowed north of mile marker 108, which is just south of Knowles Canyon, to the Colorado River.

• And, they are not allowed on the segment of the Colorado River below the Glen Canyon Dam.

• Also, PWCs must be driven at wakeless speed on the Escalante River from Cow Canyon to Coyote Gulch. The section of river from Coyote Gulch to the Glen Canyon NRA boundary is closed to personal watercraft.

Settlement talks began two weeks ago when the BlueWater Network, a San Francisco-based environmental group that brought about the ban, responded to a lawsuit filed in Utah on behalf of individual users, groups and PWC businesses in Utah and Arizona.

ALIGN="RIGHT">

SRC="/img/xclear.gif" WIDTH="7" HEIGHT="1">

SRC="/img/xclear.gif" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" VSPACE="7"> FACE="Geneva,MS Sans Serif,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial">Deseret News graphic HEIGHT="1" VSPACE="2"> HREF="/photos/lakepowellski.pdf"> SRC="/photos/lakepowellski.jpg" WIDTH="125" HEIGHT="133" BORDER="1" ALT="DNews graphic"> WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" VSPACE="2">Lake Powell ski areas SRC="/img/xclear.gif" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" VSPACE="2"> FACE="Geneva,MS Sans Serif,Verdana,Helvetica,Arial">Requires HREF="http://www.adobe.com/prodindex/acrobat/readstep.html" TARGET="BLANK">Adobe Acrobat. SRC="/img/xclear.gif" WIDTH="1" HEIGHT="1" VSPACE="5">