Crunch crunch. Squish squish. That will be the sound of walking around Lake Nighthorse, if motorized use is allowed.

It’s guaranteed because quagga mussels can cover any surface – beach, docks, boats – at 55,000 mussels per square meter as at Lake Mead.

City council says “compromise” on the hours of motorized use, as if mussels take lunch breaks. There is no compromise. These teeny critters love the motorized lakes and reservoirs. Look around: California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado are affected, and it’s expensive to attempt control of critters that can’t be eradicated if introduced.

Too bad city council and the planning and recreational departments didn’t mandatorily read the tome Bioeconomics of Invasive Species before making decision to manage the reservoir. Poor planning in hope of profits? For whom?

Motorized use was never mandatory in the reservoir simply because of a boat ramp. The public was misinformed and it’s naïve to think misinformation was accidental. Mussels will kill aquatic systems and create horrendous blue-green algal blooms. Who pays, when the city was so generous after state and feds refused management? We do!

Our taxes will go up in perpetuity long after Ms. Metz and the current council are gone. We’ll pay to unclog drinking water and intake systems and correct other aquatic damages. City residents should vote on this, if council hedges saying no to motors.

Shall we ruin this lake, too, to satisfy the vroom-vroom crowd that can go other, close-by, already infected waters?

Nancy Jacques

Durango