Budget Saves Sheriff’s Boat Patrol : Pyramid Lake: Service was scheduled to be eliminated due to anticipated cuts in state funding.

The Los Angeles County sheriff’s boat patrol on popular Pyramid Lake, scheduled to be beached today by budget cuts, will stay afloat through the Fourth of July weekend and beyond thanks to the new state budget, officials said Wednesday.

Sheriff’s Lt. Tim Peters of the Santa Clarita Valley substation, which operates the two-deputy patrol on the lake in the Angeles National Forest, said the budget, with its six-month extension of a half-cent sales tax, has encouraged Sheriff’s Department managers to suspend the termination of the patrol.

“We will be out there through the Fourth of July, but after that it is day to day,” Peters said. “We intend to staff the lake. As long as the budget money is there, we are there.”

Sheriff’s officials announced last week that the patrol, which carries out about 1,000 rescues each year, would be eliminated because of the anticipated cutbacks in the department’s state funding.

The patrol, which has operated on the lake for 10 years, costs an estimated $170,000 a year in salaries and equipment. Pyramid Lake draws roughly 275,000 visitors annually.

The plan to cut the patrol--right before one of the most popular summer weekends for lake users--brought predictions that boating accidents would increase and emergency response would be delayed.

U.S. Forest Service officials said they might have to consider curtailing some recreational activities on the lake, possibly to the point of closing some boat ramps.

But Sheriff Sherman Block said Wednesday he was optimistic about his department’s prospects under the new state budget--which extends a sales tax that aids law enforcement agencies--and asks voters to permanently extend it in a vote in November. He said he has put all planned layoffs, jail closings and other cutbacks on indefinite hold.

Mike Wickman, ranger for the Saugus District of the Angeles National Forest, said he was happy to have the boat patrol in place for the holiday weekend and hopes it will remain long after.

“It’s a big weekend,” he said. “I’ll take anything I can get out there. It is our hope that afterward we don’t have to reduce opportunities for the public out there.”