In-Depth: Aquademic

MINNEAPOLIS - The state is spending nearly four million dollars of your tax money on a program to protect our lakes from a really nasty kind of pollution. It sounds like a noble cause, but is the effort paying off? Maybe you've heard the radio commercials or seen the inspectors by the water. It's all part of an effort to educate us about a big time threat to Minnesota's lakes.

The question is: are enough people paying attention to make a difference?

FOX 9 went along to see an underwater wasteland, where a look below the surface reveals a weird kind of rubbish. It wrecks swimming, boating and fishing as we know it. It’s a pollution that critics say replicates itself, that's increasing exponentially and is nearly impossible to get rid of. They call it an aquademic.

We’re talking about zebra mussels. Their reproductive talents can make a rabbit blush. One female will produce two hundred thousand offspring in a summer. And the DNR says, those offspring will stick to anything hard in the water.

Before you know it, they’re growing on rocks, docks, boats, even other creatures as Anna Ness from the DNR explains. She tells a boater, "This is what happens to the freshwater clams, basically they attach to them and when they’re closed they suffocate, they can’t open."

Zebra Mussels aren’t from around these parts. But they’ve turned up in the St. Croix and Mississippi rivers as well as some 20 Minnesota lakes including Mille Lacs and most recently, Le Homme Dieu near Alexandria.

That’s where FOX 9 watched a DNR intern in action. Nichole Schaeffer approached a boater looking to launch and said, “I’m a water craft inspector with the DNR. Are you familiar with laws regarding invasive species? This water is infested with zebra mussels and it’s illegal to transport any water from this body of water."

She does her part because it is humans that help the mussels travel hundreds of miles. Baby zebra mussels are invisible to the naked eye. You don’t know if your live well or bait bucket has just some water in it or if you’re carrying a nursery of zebra mussels. If a boater or fisherman leaves an infested lake with some water on board or in a bait bucket some young zebra mussels might be hitching a ride to the next lake they visit.

Ness says the DNR is, "trying to get the people in the habit of inspecting their boats, draining their live wells, draining their bait buckets."

The DNR is spending about four million dollars a year trying to stop the spread of invasive species. Inspectors are at select boat launches reminding folks to be careful.

A ticket for transporting infested water will cost you at least 50 dollars. But tickets have been rare, less than 50 issued statewide last year. The DNR says it's stepping up enforcement this summer.

Dick Osgood with the Minnetonka lake association says it’s not enough.

"Its going to change our lakes forever and we're basically standing by watching."

Osgood says Minnesota needs to get tougher before it's too late.

“When there are enforcement officers here at the landing they're on it, boaters are on it." But enforcement officers can't be everywhere.

Lake Minnetonka doesn't have zebra mussels yet. At Gray’s Bay a camera watches and records boaters entering and leaving the lake to see if they're spreading anything into the water. Surveillance video shows one boater has some weeds stuck to his trailer. That's illegal and an example of the ignorance that's still out there despite efforts to educate boaters.

We talked with a frequent visitor to Prior Lake. He said, “You can see boaters just heading right out."

At a very busy Prior Lake boat launch we saw boaters leaving without appearing to thoroughly inspect their boats.

Jon Bautista says he sees it all the time. “Last thing I saw him do was plug his lights in and go. He didn't dump any water, didn't check his boat for water or weeds or any debris."

Who knows if that boat left with some zebra mussel hitch hikers? Who knows if they'll find a new lake to call home?

A place where they'll take over where swimmers will cut their feet on the tiny shells or fish will die because there's no food or boat engines will clog.

Like Osgood says, “Everything about them is bad."

Osgood wants the state to take a more radical approach towards stopping the zebra mussel invasion. He favors stiffer fines and penalties and a massive inspection effort that targets boats coming out of infested lakes like Mille Lacs. His organization will take it's case to the legislature.