AUGUSTA – With the threat of West Nile virus and milfoil increasing in Maine, some people are apt to dump pesticides into lakes to kill bugs and weeds even though such action is illegal.

The problem is that some members of the public don’t know this, so the Board of Pesticides Control on Friday grappled for the second time this summer with how to correct the situation.

It is illegal to dump pesticides into nearly all water bodies in Maine without first obtaining a permit from the state Department of Environmental Protection. Still, average people routinely buy them at hardware and discount stores with no knowledge that a permit is needed.

The board’s staff had proposed that no new rules be adopted and that increased enforcement of existing laws is all that is practical.

This rankled many people, including Phil Garwood of the DEP’s water enforcement division.

Enforcement can only happen after the fact, after the damage is done, he wrote in an e-mail to members of the pesticide board’s staff. He was unable to attend Friday’s meeting due to a scheduling conflict.

“This ‘do nothing’ option may seem, from a narrow viewpoint, to be practical, but if you consider the whole picture, it is not workable, and certainly not protective of [the] environment or human health,” Garwood wrote.

Garwood also found it sad that staff members of the Board of Pesticides Control apparently have more concern over business complaints about making less money than for the effects that illegal uses of pesticides have on the environment.

“These businesses are making money by giving other people the means to violate the law without any requirement that the customers get told what the law is,” he added.

Lebelle Hicks, the pesticide board’s toxicologist, said Friday that regulating the chemicals would be difficult because at least 120 products registered in Maine have aquatic uses. However, only eight are sold solely for aquatic uses.

This prompted Tracey Walls, the biologist who first brought the matter to the board’s attention in July, to suggest that the sale of those eight compounds be better regulated.

Henry Jennings, the board’s chief of compliance, agreed. He said the board had an obligation to make the most offensive chemicals more difficult to obtain. He said the three people who are being fined for putting pesticide pellets into Gronden Pond in Scarborough said they certainly would not have done it if they had known it was illegal.

The board tossed around the idea of putting up signs detailing the DEP permit requirement where the pesticides are sold or of requiring salespeople to notify the purchasers of the law.

However, others warned that such pesticides can be ordered from out of state via mail or over the Internet. The chemicals used in Scarborough were obtained from a company in Minnesota.

It is illegal for out-of-state companies to sell pesticides in Maine if they have not registered with the state to do so.

Roger Beaulieu, a state pesticide inspector, said any new rules would be impossible to enforce. He works out of Presque Isle and is responsible for an area that covers 4 million acres.

“We can’t cover everything,” he told the board.

The board agreed to study the matter some more and to discuss the issue again at its next meeting.