Charges mulled for owner of boat laden with mussels

SANDPOINT — Washington state resource officials are contemplating whether a Spokane man should face criminal charges for allowing a boat encrusted with invasive mussels to be transported across state lines.

The boat owner, whose name was not released, could be charged with a gross misdemeanor, but a charging decision is pending.

“Right now, the boat owner is being very cooperative with us,” Sgt. Eric Anderson of the Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife in Olympia said on Wednesday.

Authorities in Idaho and Washington were on high alert earlier this week after receiving a report from Utah that a boat being towed northbound on Interstate 84 was infested with the invasive mollusks.

The boat was found in parked on a street in Spokane on Tuesday and detained for decontamination.

Boater owners who knowingly launch vessels tainted with zebra or quagga mussels can be charged with a felony and risk forfeiture of their boat, although Anderson said such action is not anticipated in this case.

Anderson said the boat owner was in the process of repossessing the Hello, a 24-foot pleasure craft, after a prospective buyer in Las Vegas defaulted on a loan payment. It’s thought that the boat was carrying quagga mussels.

“We believe that they’re quagga mussels because the boat originated from Lake Mead, and that’s what’s infecting Lake Mead,” Anderson said.

An eagle-eyed motorist saw the boat heading north and alerted authorities in Utah, who passed tip along to officials in Idaho and Washington.

“This citizen report set into motion a series of contacts to authorities and marina owners in the tri-state area, which resulted in the successful interception of the boat in Spokane,” Idaho State Department of Agriculture Director Celia Gould said in a statement issued on Wednesday.

A woman who lives in Washington but works at a Priest Lake marina spotted the advisory about the Hello on the Web and recalled seeing the vessel in Spokane, according to ISDA spokeswoman Pamela Juker.

The boat is slated for decontamination today, said Madonna Luers, a spokeswoman for Washington Fish & Wildlife in Spokane. Decontamination essentially consists of a high-pressure wash down with water hot enough to kill the mussels.

The discovery of the Hello coincides with increasing efforts in Washington and Idaho to keep mussels from gaining a toe hold in the Northwest. The prolific mussels have a lengthy history of coating submerged surfaces and disturbing aquatic habitat in the Southeast, Southwest and Midwest.

It’s widely believed the mussels originated in Europe and made it to Great Lakes in the ballast water of oceangoing freighters.