The federal government finally announced last Friday regulations intended to address the threat posed by aquatic invasive species.

For the Okanagan region, which relies on the quality of its lake water for agriculture, tourism, fishing and drinking, this issue is vitally important.

In many parts of North America, zebra and quagga mussels have infested lakes, rivers and other waterways causing incalculable damage.

They encrust themselves onto docks, water intakes, boats and just about anything in the water.

They leave razor sharp shells on beaches, making it dangerous for bathers to go barefoot.

They suck oxygen out of the water, killing off native species such as salmon.

The Okanagan Basin Water Board (OBWB) estimates that the cost just to mitigate a mussel invasion would be around $43 million a year.

But this doesn’t take into account all the financial and environmental devastation these little creatures would leave on this region.

Usually they are spread by recreational boaters who fail to clean, drain and dry their boats properly after using them in infected waters.

In the larva stage, these mussels aren’t clearly visible.

The urgent need for federal regulations was highlighted earlier this year when a boat encrusted in quagga mussels was stopped at the Canadian border near Osoyoos.

Officials of the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) lacked the regulations they needed to detain the boat and they had to rely on provincial conservation officials to take action.

Thankfully the driver was co-operative, the mussels were dead and no lakes were infected.

But it was a wake-up call.

To say that the federal government has been slow to act is a gross understatement.

International leaders officially recognized the threat posed by invasive species in 1992 with the UN Convention on Biodiversity.

In 2001, federal, provincial and territorial ministers agreed to develop an action plan that was eventually released in 2004.

In 2003, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans called for the former Liberal federal government to take action “consolidating and streamlining regulations applicable to aquatic invasive species within a comprehensive set of federal regulations.”

They repeated this recommendation in 2005.

When the Stephen Harper Conservative government came to power early in 2006, it had other priorities.

Meanwhile, these menacing mussels continued to wreak havoc and destroy rivers, lakes and streams in many provinces.

It took until 2012 for them to make changes to the Fisheries Act through a budget omnibus bill allowing these regulations to move forward.

The regulations announced on Friday won’t be enacted until sometime after a 30-day public consultation period and any necessary revisions. Hopefully though, they will be in place well before the 2015 boating season.

The regulations alone won’t prevent the spread of these species.

As Anna Warwick Sears, executive director of the OBWB points out, there must be a corresponding financial commitment to give teeth to the regulations. On that, the government was vague.

There will also need to be action at the provincial level to establish inspection stations at places other than international borders, whether as part of a provincial strategy or a perimeter strategy involving other states and provinces.

As of yet, invasive mussels haven’t entered B.C. waterways. For that we can be thankful.

In that sense, these long-awaited regulations are better late than never.