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Ive "heard" (check yourself to be sure) that Powell no longer has zebra inspections since Powell now has the mussels. So now all the lakes on the Colorado river (Havasu, Mohave, Mead, Powell) are all pretty easy to go between with a water ballast boat - as they all have the zebra mussel. However.. if you leave one of these lakes and try and go to for example, a fresh water lake in Colorado.. your in for a decontamination. My water ballast boat now will probably be used only in the lakes on the Colorado river mentioned above and Id also like the "sneak" the boat into California for some ocean sailing.

I "think" the water level at Powell was going up this year, dont know about Mead (way down). Lake Havasu only varies by a few feet because of water contracts or something like that related to the California aqueduct which pulls water from the Colorado river at Lake Havasu.

Yeah, it's a real mess, in fact Captain Mike Inmon had to redo the California Vessel Registration on 'boat' this year because of a mussel restriction that bogged up the renewals at the DMV. I have the tags but I do not display them. I never have any trouble because all the patrols here know 'boat' (it's the only M boat in Oceanside) and they all know it's a local boat. I have only heard rumors about decontaminating water ballast - what is it?

The zebra mussel cant live in salt water.. no problem there. The full decontam.. hot spray the boat in all suspect areas (a buddy had this done on his Seaward going into Oregon possibly because he had Arizona plates and the boat came out of Havasu). If water ballast, add filling the ballast tank with 140 F water. Once full.. dump the water out. I know one case in CO where they only partially filled the tank and the person drove away with the water so it would slosh around - then dumped it.

So since mussell can't live in salt I guess you really don't need to "sneak" around when you get to California Coast, right? They are not going to care about that stupid tiger mussel, (or zebras or whatever it is) - it's not a problem here, right?

California is trying to keep the mussels out of the major waterways through inspections and mandatory decontamination. There are places already infested, and those are watched closely, but I am sure it is only a matter of time until the mussels are all over. They are not worried about sea launches; the ballast hitch-hikers from the Black Sea and Asian waters are already colonizing the California coast.