At the Oregon Marine Board, officials are wondering how they will manage to enforce a new $5 permit fee for the use of canoes, kayaks and drift boats on Oregon waters.

For example, spokeswoman Ashley Massey said, "We don't know how to reach out-of-state boaters."

The 2009 legislature passed the fees - $5 a year on anyone operating a manually propelled craft of 10 feet or longer, and a $5 surcharge on the biennial registration of powerboats - to raise money for efforts to stop invasive water creatures and plants from getting into Oregon.

Out-of-staters using their motorboats in Oregon waters will face a $20 yearly fee.

The new fees will take effect Jan. 1. The measure, House Bill 2220, passed in the last days of the session and was signed by the governor on July 22. Mid-valley Republicans Andy Olson of Albany in the House and Fred Girod and Brian Boquist in the Senate, among others, voted against it.

The fee was not widely publicized before it was enacted. "This is the first I've heard of it," said Doug Camenzind, who builds driftboats in Veneta.

Randy Henry, an analyst with the Marine Board, said the bill started out as a measure requiring border inspections of boats for aquatic invasive species such as certain weeds and mussels.

"However, the cost was high, there was no funding and we discovered in the process that mandatory boat inspections aren't possible in Oregon due to our unique constitution," Henry wrote on the Marine Board's website.

"We simply can't put a gate at the border and require people to stop - it's unconstitutional," he wrote. "Because of that, HB 2220 in February became a water-down voluntary stopping program."

He said California, Idaho and Washington all have stopping authority because of different constitutions. Actually, though, the California and Oregon constitutions read almost identically in regard to search and seizure, and California long operated mandatory inspection stations at the border for agricultural pests.

Ben Unger, a spokesman at the Justice Department, said Oregon court rulings bar random stops when criminal sanctions might result. HB 2220 calls for civil penalties for knowingly bringing in unwanted species and for violations with a $90 fine, not crimes, for not having a boating permit.

As enacted, the bill authorizes the Marine Board and the departments of agriculture and fish and wildlife to operate check stations to inspect recreational and commercial watercraft for the presence of aquatic invasive species.

To pay for this, the law imposes fees of $5 per year for any "manually propelled" boat of 10 feet or longer, $5 every two years for motorboats, annual fees ranging from $30 to $100 for businesses that rent boats, and the $20 annual fee for motorboats operated by nonresidents.

State agencies may contract with stores to sell the permits and charge an additional $2.