Kim Newman, owner of Smoky Mountains Lakes, has been watching dilapidated houseboats slowly crumble into Lake Fontana for years.

Some are scrapped together with lumber and a Styrofoam platform. Others are merely campers bolted to floating pontoons. People get tired of them, drag them into a cove of the lake and leave them to rot into the water.

The issue of abandoned, broken-down houseboats is a leading pet peeve among Newman’s family and a frequent topic of conversation among customers loitering in the family-owned shop outside Bryson City.

Bureaucratic confusion over who is responsible for patrolling the lake and tracking down the owners of these ramshackle houseboats means little has been done to rid the lake of the eyesores. Further compounding the problem, loopholes in houseboat regulations have created a lake atmosphere largely devoid of standards.

Meanwhile, the number of houseboats has more than doubled since 1985 when Newman’s family opened its boat store.

Ironically, many of these abandoned boats have current state license tags, making them legal “navigable” vessels. It’s cheaper for the houseboat owners to pay $25 every three years to keep their tags renewed than to haul the boats out of the lake and dispose of them.

“Twenty-five dollars for 3 years? That’s nothing,” said Newman, an authorized vessel registration agent.

Boat owners come to Newman’s store to get a license tag for their boat — a surprisingly easy process. The boat owner fills out a form describing their boat. Newman transmits the information to the Raleigh headquarters of the N.C. Wildlife Commission. The computer instantly issues a license number for the boat. Newman prints out a registration sticker, gives it to the boat owner to slap on the side of their boat, and they walk out.

“No one inspects the boat. All they bring me are papers,” Newman said. Boat owners can save a trip to Newman’s store and simply mail in a form describing their boat. The state mails back a license tag in a couple of weeks.

“No one is following up to say ‘Are these legal?’” Newman said. “That’s the issue. Who’s in charge of this?”

The state has no idea whether the houseboats it licenses are lake-worthy or whether the descriptions are accurate.

Of the new houseboat owners coming through Newman’s door for a license tag, she estimates between 80 and 90 percent have “homemade” boats.

“It’s way up there. Hardly any of them out there are factory made,” Newman said. A nice factory made houseboat can cost $150,000. Homemade boats are a fraction of that.

Lake-sized loopholes

Absentee oversight by the state is a major hurdle for those who would like to see houseboats on Lake Fontana limited.

“There’s already too many,” Newman said. “People aren’t going to like it anymore. They come out here to get away from their neighbors.”

Others in the lake business agree.

“I think it ought to be limited,” Alarka Marina owner Tony Sherrill said of houseboats. “This year alone, I probably already turned down 40 applicants. You explain to them there’s just no room.”

Sherrill said the number of houseboats in his harbor limits have tripled since he opened Alarka Marina in 1977.

Bill Schutters, director of the Partnership for the Future of Swain County, said houseboat numbers on Fontana can’t continue rising indefinitely.

“In the future, we hope to do a capacity study to figure out what is a reasonable number of house boats for the lake,” Schutters said.

Schutters estimates there are approximately 383 houseboats on the lake, but no one knows for sure.

When dishing out license tags, the state doesn’t track what lake a houseboat is destined for. In fact, the state makes no distinction between motorboats and houseboats. Houseboats are lumped in with all “navigable” vessels, and the state has no idea how many there are.

To qualify as a navigable vessel, the houseboats must have a bow that cuts water and a steering column with a 180-degree range of vision.

“These so-called navigable house boats are supposed to be built exactly like a pontoon, but you can take any structure and make it navigable,” said Tony Sherrill of Alarka boat dock.

To make a houseboat navigable, the front porch is sliced off at a 5-degree angle, technically angled to cut water. A steering column, most likely non-operational, is mounted on the front porch as well, meeting the 180-degree view field.

The third “navigable” requirement is a motor. Unattended houseboats are floating ducks for motor theft, however, so the Wildlife Commission makes an exception. Houseboat owners instead must be able to mount a motor on demand to prove the boat can move under its own propulsion.

Of course, no one is inspecting the boats to see they meet even these most basic requirements. Game wardens occasionally board boats on the lake to check for proper safety equipment, namely fire extinguishers and life jackets. The primary duties of game wardens, however, is enforcing hunting and fishing regulations, with one warden charged with patrolling tens of thousands of acres of wilderness.

Limiting houseboats in the future will likely require the state to alter its license process, creating a separate category of vessels for houseboats. Houseboat licenses would have to be lake specific, and could only be issued if a given lake has space.

Newman recommends increasing license registration and renewal fees — currently $25 every three years — and using the money to pay the salary of a lake inspector. One lake inspector for the seven western counties would be sufficient. They could at least board boats and ensure they are lake-worthy, she said.

Counting Kindergartners

There is a second-breed of houseboats on the lake — those licensed through Tennessee Valley Authority. TVA, which created the lake in the 1940s for hydropower, historically registered all houseboats.

In 1978, TVA stopped issuing new houseboat permits. Existing houseboats could remain on the lake, but in theory, as the houseboats aged and fell apart, they would cease to exist. Instead, the number of houseboats has tripled.

New houseboat owners figured out how to qualify as a navigable vessel and get a state license. TVA houseboats, which have no navigability requirements, figured out ways to stay afloat over the years by stretching the definition of maintenance and repair.

Steve Akers with Tennessee Valley Authority has witnessed houseboat owners build a brand-new boat by performing regular “maintenance.” A new roof one year, a new buoy system the next, followed by a new plumbing system.

“Then they say they need a new door, that their door is squeaking. But the wall won’t hold up the new door, so they need new walls. Then they put on a fresh coat of paint and put their old number on it,” Akers said.

That’s better than not performing repairs, however. TVA’s records show 179 houseboat permits. But TVA has lost track of who owns them, Akers said. TVA never had a good list of names and addresses to start with. Some houseboats have fallen out of commission, and others have changed hands without the owners notifying TVA, Akers said.

“We don’t have an exact count to be honest with you,” Akers said. Akers compared a head count of houseboats to “counting kindergarten kids.”

“They keep moving around all the time,” he said.