Would You Support This Legislation?

[Al Agnew]

Al, I love the resources as a whole besides buying lifetime license in the 4 states I have lived and being a member of conservation groups I also pay my taxes my boat fee’s ACE entry fees and so on. Why should I be asked to do anymore or any of us on here to do anymore in the way of fees?

Look how many people here don’t like the idea and you think when people who do love the resource are against it you will get the ones who are trashing it to agree to it? That pig don’t fly!

Yes our waters need to be taken care of yes I agree it needs to be preemptive instead of reactive, but a tax or user fee is not the answer, not to mention as I said before the enforcement issues. People who live on the river and own the bottom of it at least would be impossible to force on them on their own land a new tax or fee. This thing if not dead from the start would die as soon as the media got hold of it and those people who trash the waters raise all heck!

We already have the clean water act, we have laws against drunken in public and nudity in public and littering, I hear stories about 30 and 40 years ago and how nice it was back then. So what has changed in those years? Find what’s changed and we might be able to come up with common sense solutions.

It is not about just the floats but our lakes as well, all the waters need to be protected! And the problem is present on all of them look at the post about all of them on here. I can tell you most of the problems I see are lack of respect for others and common decency to others.

You can place any tax or user fee on it all you want but until people learn to be decent to others and respectful to others it won’t matter what you do it will still come down to someone enforcing the law! And as I have pointed out before, we already have them on the payroll and we already pay for them! Why should I pay another tax/fee for a service I am already paying for?

Because, quite simply, only a pittance of what you're paying is going for that "service", and there aren't enough of them on the payroll to do the job well. You act as if all the money you're paying in license fees and taxes is already going toward river protection, when in reality a very tiny percentage of it is. However, I will agree that the existing enforcement people could be doing a better job. I just don't think it's realistic to expect existing county law enforcement who may have little knowledge of the rivers and who may lack equipment and interest to do a whole lot more than they are now. And it's obvious that there aren't enough state pollution enforcers to go around, and the legislature has no intention of appropriating more money to hire more of THEM. And while MDC agents theoretically have the power to arrest people for a lot of the illegal activities going on, that is not their primary job, nor should it be.

I agree that part of the problem seems to be a fundamental change in the nature of river users and a growing lack of respect for other people or the resource itself. But I don't think anybody has ever figured out how to change people's attitudes in fundamental ways in short time frames, so saying that we just need to figure out how to change the people back to what they were a few decades ago is unrealistic. And I also think part of the problem is the sheer volume of river users now compared to back then, not just the change in attitude. The more people you have doing anything, the more you need rules and enforcement.

And by the way, I'm a river landowner myself, both in Missouri and in Montana. I would have no problem with being subject to the same user fee as everybody else, but maybe I'd be in the minority. But you could get around that by something like reduced rate or free landowner tags, seems to me.

Finally, I suspect this is just all pie in the sky, anyway. Given what I still consider is a knee jerk "no taxes" reaction to any kind of proposal like this, I don't expect it to happen in the foreseeable future. But I think it's worth discussing.

[Chief Grey Bear]

And by the way, I'm a river landowner myself, both in Missouri and in Montana. I would have no problem with being subject to the same user fee as everybody else, but maybe I'd be in the minority. But you could get around that by something like reduced rate or free landowner tags, seems to me.

I don't think so Homey. If your craft touches any water outside of your property, you need to pay the full amount! That will only get abused just like free landowner permits for deer hunting. What a joke that is!!!!

[Feathers and Fins]

Al, your arguements might hold water with me if it isnt for what I see very often, I will give you two examples,

1. little sugar creek, people partying on it playing in the water and drinking, yet within eye sight on US71 there are two State troopers and a couple Bella Vista police officers running speed traps. 4 officers running a speed trap while within eyesight is tata's flopping where you can see them from the road and beer flowing.

2. Hwy Patrol and Sherriff running again speed traps on US71 near titpon ford access and yet again on the river the same thing going on as above.

It makes it very difficult for me to want to pay for more officers and have another fee placed on my life when I see crap like that. I would bet other people see that going on as well. And ya kinda got to agree with Chief about the landowner stuff too. If its going to be a tax or user fee it would have to apply to everyone the same.

[gotmuddy]

I could get behind a small fee IF the money could be guaranteed to go to the rivers. Of course that will never happen.

[Wayne SW/MO]

We have to stop taxing at some point and make better use of what the people can afford. If we need more law enforcement then we might need to fore go some other convenience.

Whether you like people saying that the government waste money or not Al, they do and people are going to be skeptical of one more tax. 100% is finite.

[Al Agnew]

Good point on the landowner thing.

As for the state patrol sitting at speed traps when there are people doing stuff in the river just below, I don't have an answer for that except to say that the state patrol (other than the water patrol) is ill-equipped to do anything on the rivers. Sure, they could have looked down there, seen what was going on, and gone down to stop it...except that they might just have been giving all their attention to what they were doing and not looking around and down to the river. I would venture to say that if you're depending upon the state patrol to do something, they'd need a much larger force of water patrol officers with more boats and equipment. I've occasionally seen the water patrol on lakes and a couple of times on rivers big enough that they can run their big jet boats, but you won't ever see them on streams that are a little too small to run their boats.

My whole point, I guess, is that the current law enforcement agencies are all ill-equipped to patrol the rivers, or have other duties. What I would like to see is a dedicated force of official "riverkeepers" that can "borrow" people from other agencies when necessary, but themselves have responsibility solely for the rivers. Even one officer per river would be better than what we have now. One officer, who would run or float various sections of rivers at least once a week just to look for problems. If evidence of illegal ATV use is seen, he keeps a closer eye on that area until he catches the people doing it. If he runs into possible pollution or gravel mining problems, he officially reports it to the DNR and makes sure something is done about it. And on weekends he is a visible presence on one or another of the most popular stretches to discourage the worst of the behavior. He would be able to write tickets for everything from fish and game violations to major crimes, and could partner with conservation agents, park rangers, and county sheriffs to attack major problems.

If you have a national park, you have park rangers to enforce rules on it for the benefit of the park and the benefit of park users. If anything gets out of hand in the park, it brings in fewer tourists and the local economy suffers. Same thing with state parks. Same thing with any tourist attraction that brings in lots of people. I would suggest that the Ozark streams are one of the state's greatest tourist attractions, and deserve to have their own "stream rangers".

[Al Agnew]

We have to stop taxing at some point and make better use of what the people can afford. If we need more law enforcement then we might need to fore go some other convenience.

Whether you like people saying that the government waste money or not Al, they do and people are going to be skeptical of one more tax. 100% is finite.

Of course the government wastes money. But using that as your rationale for not wanting to pay taxes is insuring that you have fewer and fewer services. Every "service" has a constituency who will fight tooth and nail to make sure it continues, and existing services are always going to have the upper hand when it comes to allocating tax money. At least, with user fees, you're paying exactly for what you're using. I'd dearly love to be able to say, "Yeah, I'll pay $10 a year to protect rivers if you'll knock $10 a year off my state income tax." But I doubt that will happen. I'd rather pay the $10 extra for something I really care about, rather than beating my head against the wall waiting for the legislature to decide to divert some existing tax money to it.

[Feathers and Fins]

Al, many of the problems we are talking about appear to be people behavior and we already have laws on the books that can be enforced without additional training or officers. Drunk in public, nudity, littering etc are already laws. A officer just as part of his normal patrol duty could easily drive up to the access points and write tickets for those and if a few officers are doing it the word will get out and decrease some of the behavior. Weekends increase the patrols and have one officer actually on the rivers. or a saturation patrol (not broadcast to where and when by the media ) Man that is the most self defeeting thing ever telling people where they will be and when, kinda like sobriety check points they broadcast the day before the checkpoint.

Most of what I see and what I have read about are minor problems but in large numbers become MAJOR problems, if the officers would just make a show up each day word of mouth will spread and the problems will either leave, find a new place or stop. If it is being done at each place then the moving on groups will stop or stop comming.

The pollution problem is another issue but one I beleive anglers could help in reporting things they see to the DNR's.

[Wayne SW/MO]

There's money available, there's money available that hasn't been ask for. There was a discussion on another forum about 100K+ grant to Lebanon to promote tourism. The idea is ridiculous and clearly points out the fact the government waste money that could and should be used for better things. Everything worth stopping for in Lebanon is private enterprise and well promoted.

Every "service" has a constituency who will fight tooth and nail to make sure it continues

Then river lovers who want them usable by all should try that approach first. The problem is we all know that if we yell loud enough, they will add another tax and not redirect moneys they have.

[gotmuddy]

I think trash isnt the issue most promoters of a tax or limiting canoes on the water. It seems that the issue is there being just less(or in some cases, no) people on the river drinking. I used to find it amusing, but its getting old. If you want to do a family float, do it where you know there wont be drunken people, or do it not on a saturday. Sundays on NFoW are very tame compared to saturdays.

The same argument can be made for nascar races, you don't take your kids to talladega and stay in the infield unless you want them to be around drunk and nekkid people.

I feel EVERYONE has a right to use the river, even if they aren't all fishing.