CELPIP Reading Part 4 Practice Test: Boat Speed Limits on Tamarack Lake Debate

On a calm July weekend, Tamarack Lake can accommodate a hundred vessels, from canoes to powerful wake boats engineered to generate waves big enough to surf. The Tamarack Lake Association now wants the Township of Alder Ridge to pursue two restrictions: a 10 km/h limit across the entire lake and a prohibition on boats built to create large wakes. Because most Canadian boating restrictions require federal approval, either measure would entail an application to Ottawa, a process often exceeding a year.

“Ask any waterfront owner,” says association president Diane Kowalski. Since wake boats spread about five years ago, members have reported docks torn loose, eroding shorelines and loon nests swamped in June, on a narrow lake barely three kilometres long. A membership survey recorded seven in ten favouring both measures.

Grant McAllister, proprietor of the marina at the south end, stopped renting wake boats two summers ago, partly because of complaints and partly because of damage to his own docks. A lakewide speed limit is another matter: “It would abolish waterskiing and tubing, the very attractions that bring families to my counter.” He could accept restrictions in the narrow channel and shallow bays frequented by paddlers, but not on open water.

Ecologist Anika Sorensen, who has sampled the lake for over a decade, confirms that large wakes disturb sediment in shallow water and can erode shorelines faster than natural waves. Yet the debate, she suspects, is misdirected. The algae blooms that have twice closed the public beach are far likelier to originate in leaking septic systems at older cottages than in boats. “Regulating boats is visible and satisfying,” she observes. Septic inspections, expensive and unpopular, would accomplish more for the water.

Luc Bergeron, whose family has fished the lake for three generations and who lives there year-round, has little patience for either restriction. Existing rules, including a speed limit near shore, are seldom enforced, he complains. “Seasonal visitors presume to legislate for those of us who remain in January.” He would sooner see a patrol on busy weekends than another application to Ottawa.

Council has asked the association to gather further evidence over the coming summer.

I have rented the same Tamarack Lake cottage every August for twelve years, and I can confirm that 6. Choose…the beach has never closedthe water has grown rougherwaterskiing has all but vanishedcanoes outnumber other boats. My children no longer paddle past the dock on weekends. So I welcome the wake-boat ban, and I was reassured that even 7. Choose…the township councilthe year-round fishermanthe marina ownerthe ecologist sampling the lake has no quarrel with it.

Still, Mr. Bergeron has a point: if the limit near shore is 8. Choose…a paper tigertoo costly to policewidely resented by fishersa matter for federal authorities, why expect a better fate for the next one? And a patrol costs far less than a year’s wait for 9. Choose…the association’s new evidencea ruling from the marina ownerthe septic inspection resultsthe federal go-ahead.

Finally, Dr. Sorensen deserves a wider hearing. If the beach keeps closing because of 10. Choose…sediment churned up by wakesleaking cottage systemsswimmers crowding in Julyfuel spilled at the marina, cottage owners like my landlord should look closer to home before blaming boats.