Jet skis face ban in Westborough

Janet Anderson said she won't miss her chance to vote "yes" to ban jet skis on Lake Chauncy at Westborough's upcoming Special Town Meeting.

The Chauncy Street resident and others who live on the 86-acre lake sought a ban years ago, she said, but their effort fizzled. Since then, during the height of summer, when the lake is mobbed with personal watercraft, she's taken to calling the police to deal with overzealous riders.

"Sometimes it's unbearable," she said. "Sometimes we go somewhere for the day to get away from them. It gets on your nerves. It drives you nuts."

Jet-ski riders often flout rules that prohibit the use of alcohol, mandate they slow to 6 miles per hour within 150 feet of the beach line, and bar them from towing inner tubes in their wake, Anderson said. She and her neighbors filled seven garbage bags at a recent community cleanup along the lake's shores, she said.

"As a person who lives on the lake, I feel used," she said. "They come here and they drink and they're loud and they leave trash behind."

The jet-ski ban is one of 15 articles on the warrant for the Oct. 22 Special Town Meeting, which town officials say has been called to ratify various housekeeping measures, including new contracts for Department of Public Works employees and other municipal staff. The meeting will be held at 7 p.m. at the high school.

The Board of Selectmen approved the warrant during its meeting Tuesday. Town Coordinator Henry Danis said he expected the warrant to be officially closed tomorrow, when it probably would be posted in public.

The jet-ski ban is especially important, said Selectwoman Leigh Emery, because of a flood of news stories this summer about accidents involving personal watercraft.

In May, a 9-year-old girl was injured in an accident involving personal watercraft on Indian Lake in Worcester. That same month, New England Patriots defensive end Marquise Hill died in a jet-ski accident in Louisiana. In June, a collision of jet skis on Lake Quinsigamond in Worcester sent one rider to the hospital with injuries.

"They've become an increased nuisance and quite dangerous," Emery said. "Lake Chauncy is just not suitable in our estimation for the use of jet skis."

A visitor using a jet ski on a quiet day on Lake Chauncy recently, Jim Kemp of Natick, said he rides on the lake because personal watercraft are already banned on Lake Cochituate in his hometown.

Most problems related to jet skis occur near the lake's boat ramp, he said. The state environmental police, who monitor the ramp, need to do a better job of clamping down on drinking and irresponsible riding, he said. Often he comes to the lake when only a handful of people are around. He said it was wrong to punish all riders for the transgressions of a few.

"I've seen awesome weekends when there's only me and two other people on the lake," Kemp said.

Other articles on the Special Town Meeting warrant would switch retired Westborough employees from the town's conventional healthcare plan to Medicare; appropriate $15,000 to fund a committee to examine future uses for the Lee property, a 27-acre parcel of open space the town acquired at Town Meeting in May; purchase a $94,000 vehicle that removes snow from sidewalks; and spend $20,000 to buy security cameras for the town's water treatment plant.

Selectwoman Lydia Goldblatt said the cameras would help catch or deter vandals who have been tampering with the water treatment plant's fence and dumping lawn clippings and other landscaping debris in the area.

"Someone is getting near the facility," she said, "and we need to have cameras."