Many lakes and bays are overgrown with Myriophyllum spicatum and Potamogeton crispus. Here is an article about what one private group is doing about it.

Syracuse.com

In summary, Skaneateles Lake is one of the finger lakes in upstate New York. One of the wealthy people who live on that lake has offered $100,000 to an organization that is attempting to remove the dense growth of M. spicatum manually. Supposedly they are making process.

One might say that this is a grassroots (or water weed roots) way approach to the problem.

Bill

Those plants both fragment and take over.
If you do any manual removal, it'll never get rid of it all.

Pondweed has tubers, no manual removal will ever get all of those.
Dredging is good but causes other issues.
I like it personally, but might not be cost effective.

Diver methods work somewhat well, we used it in Hydrilla eradication, cost a lot, risk issues, labor intensive etc.

I'd just use herbicides and be done with.

Slow release species and some manual removal can and does work.

We have both species in Lake Tahoe and it's making a mess.

You can blame pond owners and boaters for spreading the weeds BTW from lake to lake.

Regards,
Tom Barr
Regards,
Tom barr

I think that their intent is to get enough of it so that local towns can handle the rest on an annual maintenance basis.
I wonder.

It is neat to see individuals banding together to address this pest.

It was first found in Washington, DC, in 1942 or, maybe, in Chesapeake bay in the late 1800's.

It is distributed by boats, on the feathers of water fowl, by aquatic plant growers, and, maybe, via spontaneous generation.

Can you give me the name of a herbicide that works against it and does not have many negatives? Maybe i can interest somebody.

Bill

The issue is people's perceptions about Aquatic herbicides.

Not that they are dangerous.

I'll freely admit I was one who's perception biased my own view towards them.
It tooks some convincing. But.......I am good at toxicity testing, predictive analysis, and organic chemistry, I've studied with the top folks in the USA on the subject.

I have a far more pragmatic view.

I get pretty irritated with hippycrites and zealot environmentalist too bias to use a simple effective inexpensive safe tool.

"You want to put poison's into our water!"

Hell, I've heard it all.

I give them a shovel and say go right ahead, see if you clowns think you can keep up with these weeds on your own.

Took 4 hours for the Town of La Honda to give up on that idea, they said treat, this is the same hippy town that Timothy Leary did the Acid test back in the 1960's, this as hippy as it gets.

I'm all for biocontrol, grass carp are very effective little(large actually) beast.
But no weeds= pea soup, they are triploid so they will never bred and get loose etc.

Popular use in Florida.
Better them than us.

But many like clear water, they just do not want the weeds, and managing weeds is well....really really labor and cost intensive.

These weeds in this lake will grow back fiercely inside 1-2 years.
A lot faster than they think.

There are quite a few herbicides to use on this, using 2-3 are better than just one.
You kill what's there and then use low doses to keep the regrowth suppressed till their reserves run out.

Fluidone is popular for that. it's 4000X less toxic than caffine, but folks gulp that down religiously, however, if you add Fluidone to the water, they scream bloody murder.



There are quite a few that work well for beating the initial amount down.
The other issue, what are you going to do with at the sludge waste?

That's wet, heavier than heck. It's also considered wastewater/sewage by many states.

That means more permitting issues and disposal considerations/added cost.
The initial herbicide works well but you have to monitor the O2 levels. As they weeds die, that reduces of O2 levels, that is what kills the fish potentially, not the herbicides.

There are permitting issues with herbicides as well, but they are generally less promblematic and the state of NY has protocols for it.

They will not allow either of these 3 options for lake tahoe
It's okay to allow 1000's of homes, septic systems etc, boats that leak oil(they all leak oil), urban runoff, endocrine disruptors(The pill oddly ends up in many wastewaters and causes reproductive havoc on many species.)

It's a mess

BTW, the two main herbicides I've bene workign with use parts per billion, very very small amounts, and they only target plant enzymes at one key point.

so they do not cause issues for other critters or us etc.
Insecticides are the stuff we/you should really be fearful of.



Regards,
Tom Barr