Let's get all of our lakes opened.

Great article on May 15 in the sd union tribune by Bryce Miller about the general mismanagement of the lakes and reservoirs. But the good news is your voice is being heard, keep the pressure up with emails etc.

 

They would need way more staff. They are already pulling almost all the staff from the closed lakes to help cover the 3 that opened.

 

Do you know why the concessionaire at each lake doesn’t accept or be delegated more responsibility? MWD sets the rules and takes a cut from the profits of the concessionaire but has no involvement in day to day operations of recreation at DVL. I’m not familiar with the lease agreement for SD lakes but it seems it could be renegotiated or revised.

 

It's mostly the restrictions put out i.e restricting parking to 50 percent requires a staff person at the gate and in the lot, requiring bathrooms cleaned every 2 hours has a staff member pretty much doing potty patrol all day (because of the toilets out on the road). Murray and Miramar's typical staff is 1-2 people per shift, from a staff of 4 people covering 14 shifts. It's not possible to cover everything required by the restrictions in place with the current staff so they have had to pull staff from the closed reservoirs. Most other reservoirs only have 2-3 staff and some of those are hourly AND that's when they are fully staffed (which is rare between the turn over rate and the City's off again on again hiring freeze). Add on top huge budget cuts meaning no vacancies will be filled anytime soon and here we are.

 

Not to butt in on a post , It would not do any harm to add opening the beaches and bays to shore fishing . Just saying . I think quite a few of us use all the waters . Thanks to all for your efforts . WR

 

To RKMM (aka Lori), thanks for your insight!
Given the situation as you mentioned, you think Barrett will be left out of this picture for the year?

Barrett has an already limitation on the boat rentals, restrooms (outhouses) don't need monitoring, known fact over the years that non-boaters (tubers and yakkers) are a behaved group, the lake is wide open even with all boats taken out.

Given the hotter season coming up, most occupants will depart from the lake during the lunch time or thereafter. There's not a big staffing requirements in my mind.

 

Since it is not the staff putting the restrictions in place but rather following restrictions put on them...no idea. The budget too is a big deal and cuts are going to happen everywhere (libraries, lakes, parks and rec, etc.) in the foreseeable future. No matter what the lakes section determines to cut there are going to be unhappy people.