If you have a Lessons Learned submission, please email it to CorpsLakes@usace.army.mil
Insights from Fort Worth District, Don Wiese:
Fort Worth essentially developed their District-wide policy by administratively applying the findings from the extensive Water-Related Recreation Use Study (WRRUS) conducted at Lewisville Lake in the summer of 1998.
A boat count at Canyon Lake on Memorial Day Weekend, 2004 was done in response to pressure we were getting to allow a new boat ramp associated with a large new subdivision (Mystic Shores) at Canyon Lake. The boat counts showed that the boating capacity of Canyon Lake clearly and significantly exceeded the District's target of 22 acres per boat. We eventually allowed the new boat ramp to be constructed without conducting a major WRRUS, but only after requiring actions to compensate for the added capacity.
Once the WRRUS at Lewisville Lake was concluded, and the WRDP for Lewisville subsequently adopted, an extensive Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) was conducted for a wide variety of development proposals at Lewisville including roads, utilities, park facilities, hotels, marinas, etc. At the conclusion of the PEA, we still did not have agreement on marina development. We extracted everything regarding marina development from the PEA and then a year later we conducted a supplemental EA to address marina development.
Absolutely address any marina expansion in an EA. Within the EA, the issue of boating capacity should be addressed in some way. Keep in mind that our "target" District capacity of 22 acres per boat during peak use periods has built-in flexibility. Boating capacity is a measure of both physical space capacity, and social perceptions capacity. Even if a lake is wall-to-wall boats during peak use periods, if the boaters do not feel unsafe and are having a good time, and there is no apparent record of unsafe behavior, the capacity could be adjusted.
Public safety should be the primary driver for most carrying capacity decisions. User enjoyment is secondary and is elusive and hard to measure. At Lewisville we encountered what Geo-Marine described as "the newcomer effect". Many (maybe most) of the folks that were interviewed at boat ramps were on the lake for the first time...they had no clue of the past so could not judge if things were getting better or worse. For them, "it is what it is, who cares!" Maybe the demographics around Lewisville are unique in that regard...no one stays put for very long.
