Vermont recently banned wake boats on all but 18 inland lakes, including Fairlee, following a years-long, often acrimonious debate that pitted one group of recreationists against another — and raised questions about how best to protect and enjoy the state’s natural environment.
“It got nasty,” said Doe, who lives on the seacoast of New Hampshire but has summered on Lake Fairlee most of her life. “It’s just become us against them, and it’s disappointing.”
Wake sports are a popular, if niche, form of recreation involving boats with ballast tanks that can produce waves two to three times the size of those produced by a conventional motorboat. This enables people to surf or wakeboard behind a boat at slower speeds, making it safer and more accessible than, say, traditional water-skiing or tubing, which can fling a rider across the water.
But opponents say the more powerful waves endanger other boaters and swimmers — and cause a variety of ecological harms, such as eroded shorelines, imperiled loon nests, and stirred-up sediment.
And because the ballast tanks are difficult to clean, they can also facilitate the inadvertent transfer of invasive species from one lake to the next.
Like Doe, Tom Ward has also spent decades at his family’s cabin on Lake Fairlee. He remembers the first time he noticed a wake boat on the water.
“When I saw the waves smashing up against our shoreline, I said this is going to cause massive erosion,” he said.
This summer’s ban is the second effort by the state to limit where wake boats can be used. The first occurred in 2024, after Ward and other like-minded advocates organized under the banner of Responsible Wakes for Vermont Lakes and petitioned the state’s Agency of Natural Resources. (The author of this story is a member of the board of the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, and recused himself when the organization voted to support that earlier petition.)
The agency largely agreed with Responsible Wakes and issued the nation’s most restrictive statewide rules, citing research showing that it takes more than 500 feet for a wave from a wake boat to subside. The rules said boats could only operate in wake-sports mode in designated zones of at least 50 acres, over 20 feet deep, at least 200 feet wide, and at least 500 feet from shore.
The 2024 rules effectively limited wake sports to just 30 inland lakes, plus those on state and national borders, such as Lake Champlain, Lake Memphremagog, and the reservoirs of the Connecticut River.
Of the more than 800 lakes and ponds in Vermont, around 80 allow traditional motorboats; jet skis have long been prohibited from many of those.
Even before the ink was dry on the 2024 rules, residents of nine lakes where wake boats were still allowed, including Fairlee, asked for their water bodies to be included in the ban. Rather than address each petition individually, the state decided to reconsider its entire rule, according to Jenny Austin, the agency’s lakes and ponds program manager. That led to another hot debate within the boating and lakes communities, garnering some 1,500 comments to the agency.
“The issue became very politicized, very polarized,” she said.
While the 2024 rules focused on how wake sports affected shorelines, Austin said, the latest round also considered how they affected other lake users, requiring such boats to stay 500 feet from other vessels and swimmers. The final rules, which took effect in June, limit wake sports to lakes with at least 100 acres that are more than 500 feet from shore.
That struck another dozen waterways off the list, including Lake Fairlee, Waterbury Reservoir, Joe’s Pond, and Lake Iroquois.
Those who manufacture and sell the boats were displeased.
“These new rules are an activist-driven solution in search of a problem,” said John Elizandro, a lobbyist for the Water Sports Industry Association, arguing that the alleged downsides of the boats have no basis in science.
“Vermont’s approach sets a dangerous precedent for access to public waters around the country,” said Lauren Hyland, a lobbyist for the National Marine Manufacturers Association.
Indeed, similar battles have played out in many states, including Maine, where wake sports cannot come within 300 feet of shore, and New Hampshire, where efforts to regulate the practice have so far failed. The wake sports industry has successfully pushed for legislation adopting 200-foot setbacks in Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere.
Ward said Vermonters should be proud to be ahead of the pack in protecting their lakes. He compared the rules to the state’s 1968 ban on roadside billboards.
“I think we showed leadership back then,” he said. “And Vermont is leading again now.”
Though the rules are strict, they apply to a limited number of vessels. The state does not track how many wake boats ply its lakes, but all sides generally agree they account for just 1 to 2 percent of registered motorboats in the state.
Still, opponents say they have an outsized impact on the lakes they travel through.
“It’s kind of like smoking in a restaurant,” said Diane Lehder, a member of Responsible Wakes who summers on Lake Willoughby in the Northeast Kingdom. “You have one person who wants to smoke in a restaurant with 99 other guests. And while they feel they have a right to do that, they’re having an impact on everyone else within those walls.”
Proponents say that there are no documented safety issues with wake boats in Vermont, and that jet skis and poorly driven motorboats are just as likely to cause problems.
Wake boats can still be found on the state’s largest lakes. Basin Harbor, a 140-year-old resort on Lake Champlain, owns three MasterCraft boats designed for wake sports and more traditional activities, such as water-skiing. They’re the most popular vessels in the fleet, according to Dan Beach, a fifth-generation owner of the resort.
Because Champlain is so vast, Beach said, the boats can easily avoid the shoreline and other boaters.
“You can surf endlessly down the lake,” he said. “It’s a perfect wave every single time. Once you get a feel for it, it’s just addictive.”
Eric Splatt, general manager of Woodard Marine in Castleton, has sold wake boats for years. Since the first rules went into effect in 2024, he said sales have declined by 75 percent.
“People were like, ‘Am I gonna buy this boat and not be able to use it?’ ” he said.
Though wake sports enthusiasts may be in the minority, he said they ought to be able to recreate responsibly. He thinks advocacy groups have “bullied” the state into a prescriptive approach that’s not in keeping with its live-and-let-live culture.
“The Vermont way is to work with your neighbor and educate each other, rather than put out rules,” he said.
Amy McLaughlin, Doe’s sister, agrees. She warned the wake sports rules could be a precursor to other regulations limiting public access to a public resource. Communities, she said, “need to keep a close eye on these small lobbying groups” because they could next target other boats and anglers.
Austin, the state official who’s had to wrangle the rules, said she wishes those on either side could see how much they agree.
“What’s common among everyone is that they do all value lakes. They do all value being good neighbors. They value ecology, the health of the lakes. They appreciate the recreational uses,” she said. “So I feel there’s a lot more in common than they’d like to admit.”
Paul Heintz can be reached at paul.heintz@globe.com. Follow him on X @paulheintz.
