BLM tells vendors to move by July 15

A removal date has been set for watercraft vendors on Lake Havasu.

The Bureau of Land Management is requesting vendors be off the lake by July 15.

Letters will be submitted next week to all of the water-based vendors below the 450-foot elevation mark, BLM Public Affairs Officer Diane Williams said.

The removal of the vendors might not be permanent, though.

BLM and the city are in the process of developing a Cooperative Management Agreement that could allow the vendors to return to the shoreline. A CMA would help to establish guidelines for managing the vendors. Williams said the CMA would determine the number of vendors, placement and types of vendors allowed between public lands and city beaches.

A CMA is not expected till early 2010, though. Williams said if the CMA was completed earlier it still would not go into effect until Jan. 1, 2010.

The July 15 date comes after almost two years of uncertainty on the part of both the BLM and city. June 23 the Lake Havasu City Council officially gave city staff notice the vendors should be removed by BLM.

Representatives from BLM had stated in the past they were waiting on a response from the city, as to whether the vendors should be removed.

BLM cited numerous reasons for the removal of the vendors.

Commercial vending is illegal on public lands. Without a permitting process, the vendors could benefit from public lands without paying taxes.

Both BLM and the city claimed they received numerous complaints from lake visitors that vendors obstructed public access to the beaches and water.

One watercraft vendor says he is actually relieved to have finally received a date. Jeff Prieur, owner of Champion Watercraft Rentals, said the July 15 date at least allows him some time to prepare to move.

“I haven’t been notified of anything, and nobody that I know of has received a letter,” Prieur said. “At least we got a date, though. We all just feel like were on death row down there, waiting for the warden to come and take us to the electric chair.”

Prieur said he would move his business to land. He also said he would have to cut his prices in order to compete with numerous other land-based watercraft businesses in the city. Prieur said the pricing issue was ironic, because land-based businesses had accused water vendors of cost cutting, and that was not the case.

“I’m going to do the best I can on-land,” he said. “When the other vendors said we were undercutting pricing, we weren’t. Now we are coming on land, we’re going to have to. There are going to be some good bargains on Jet Ski rentals.”

Prieur said he realized there was a problem with the influx of fly-by-night water vendors on the lake and was an issue that needed to be addressed. It was the methods used to force the vendors off the lake that he didn’t like.

In 13 years of business, he said he always intended to operate the right way. He noted he just moved his business yesterday to another location on the lake, as the BLM requires him to do every 30 days. He says he will come back when a proper permit procedure is developed, but he never intended to operate illegally.

“We weren’t thinking we were down there getting away with anything,” he said. “We were waiting for a permitting process, not pulling the wool over anybody’s eyes.”

You may contact the reporter at twaggoner@havasunews.com.