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Lake Safety
The Morgan Park boat ramp is a public boat ramp, designated by a Land Management Agreement between the city and state originally signed in 1991. The benefits include state funding for boat ramp repairs and replacement, the latter which is projected as part of the master plan for Morgan Park. The challenges of providing access for all on our relatively small water body are many. And, the pandemic created a huge increase in families taking to the waterways this year. Some of the challenges on the water at Indian Lake are not necessarily new. Yet the number of personal watercraft that were attracted to Indian Lake this year that appeared to have no regard for safe boating laws has renewed the outcry for limiting or banning personal watercraft on the lake.
ENFORCEMENT
The Massachusetts Environmental Police Inland Safety Bureau is responsible for policing inland waterways such as Indian Lake as well as a enforcing a wide variety of laws and regulations including the statutes regarding hunting, fishing, trapping, and off-highway vehicles. As with many departments, their staff is widespread and limited. Recognizing this many years ago, the Worcester Police trained several officers in enforcement on the waterways. We are fortunate in this respect as WPD can run registrations and issue citations as necessary to those violating boating laws. WPD increased their oversight of the boat ramp and waterway this summer and could be seen at Morgan Park nearly every weekend in July and August, sometimes even in a combined effort with the MA Environmental Police. Officers performed safety and registration checks, turning away or removing those not complying from the lake; removed vehicles illegally on Grove Street; issued numerous speed warnings in area of boat ramp as enforcement of no wake zone; and park gates were closed when lot was at capacity during dedicated enforcement times.
WPD has indicated a boat to allow officers better access to the waterway would be extremely beneficial to their enforcement efforts. Please contact your City Councilor if you would like to see this move forward.
We also encourage you to contact your state representative to encourage increased funding for the MA Environmental Police which will allow them to be on site more frequently:
LAW DEPARTMENT ORDER
We appreciate Councilor Rose and Councilor Mero-Carlson filing an order before City Council recently asking the City's law department to determine what the process would be to limit or ban personal watercraft on Indian Lake.
BOATER EDUCATION AND LICENSING
The state of Massachusetts is one of only 14 states that do not require boat or personal watercraft operators to attend boater education or pass a license exam. There is a bill on this topic which is currently in the Committee on House Ways and Means that will require all boaters and personal watercraft operators to pass a license exam. If you are in favor of boater education, please contact your local legislators and ask them to pass H.4229.
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