AWOL hoping to recover from quagga restrictions

In the middle of June at a Times-News At the Editorial Board meeting, AWOL owner Paul Melni rhetorically asked Idaho Department of Agriculture Director Chanel Tewalt how much longer his business could last.

“It’s gotten to the point where it hurts,” Melni said.

Revenue was down, a big hit came with the shutdown of AWOL’s popular Shoshone Falls kayak tour due to invasive species and “with numbers like that I don’t know where the way out is.”

Fortunately, things have changed since then and Melni sees light at the end of the tunnel.

AWOL was allowed to resume its guided tour of Shoshone Falls on June 29, and more than 700 guests, paying $80 each, made the trip. Tests for quagga mussels – carried out every two weeks – were negative.

Now, Melni hopes more people will take advantage of his kayak and paddleboard rentals at beautiful Centennial Waterfront Park.

The Shoshone Falls tour, although it only runs 12 weeks, accounts for about 20 percent of the company’s revenue and directly employs a dozen people.

AWOL has been offering tours since 2021 after obtaining a state equipment license. Because his employees had training, Melni fought to keep them employed, even though there was not enough work to keep them busy.

“My store looks great,” Melni said in June, although having employees sweep and clean his store hasn’t made money for the company.

“We are more affected by this than any entity, but we are very aware of the alternative,” Melni said in June during the meeting. “We are not blind or ignorant to the terrible things invasive species can do.”

Melni holds no grudge against ISDA for the restrictions on the river, and Tewalt said he felt empathy for his plight.

“I can only imagine how painful things are,” she said.

ISDA officials say quagga mussels, including causing millions of dollars in damage to infrastructure, including underwater pipelines, can harm ecosystems.

Melni said AWOL has developed a strategy with ISDA that ensures its kayak and paddleboard fleet will remain quarantined in the park.

“This allows access that mitigates the risk of further introduction of invasive species into quarantine areas,” said Sydney Kennedy, ISDA public information officer, in a written response to Times-News.

State and county watercraft are also permitted on the stretch of the Snake River from Pillar Falls to Twin Falls Dam, although it remains closed to other members of the public.

“This is a critical stretch of river in assessing the potential purpose of the quagga mussel in the middle of the snake,” Kennedy wrote.

Although, Melni said, there were a number of recreationalists who ignored the closure.

AWOL also ended its sturgeon fishing tour due to fish die-offs as a result of molluscicide released into the river last fall to kill quagga mussels. Fishing tours accounted for about 5% of AWOL business.

Melni said traffic has dropped significantly in Centennial Park and has hurt his rental business. It took a Memorial Day drive to get kayaks and paddleboards out of the area because many of them had to wait two hours to hot wash their craft, he said.

There is confusion about the cleaning stations, Melni said. Some people ask if they have to clean their rental kayaks (they don’t) and others think they have to pay to hot wash their own boat.

But whatever the reasons, “It seems the locals have found other parts of the river to paddle,” Melni said.

“It’s a weird season to have days in the 90-degree range and the park is half empty,” he said.

Melni said many of his rentals are the result of people who own their own watercraft but want to introduce friends and acquaintances to the business and bring them to the park.

Twin Falls County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ken Mencl agrees that people are rowing elsewhere.

While patrolling the waterways, he told them Times-Newshe’s used to seeing a sparsely populated parking lot when he visits Centennial Park in the morning, but he travels to Blue Heart Springs between Buhl and Hagerman and sees “several hundred vessels.”

Many of those people are from the Treasure Valley, Mencl said.

Melni projects that it will take time for the crowds to return.

“Unfortunately, this is our new reality,” he said. Tests must be negative for five consecutive years before the waterway can be declared free of quagga mussels.