DEP Gets Early Start on Controlling
Eurasian Water Milfoil in Salmon Lake, Belgrade

Ever since the chance discovery of Eurasian Water Milfoil in Salmon Lake last summer, DEP’s rapid response team, led by John McPhedran, has pulled out all the stops to nip this infestation in the bud.

Immediate lakewide boat surveys and checks by underwater divers suggested that the infestation hadn’t spread beyond its point of origin in the lake’s small outlet cove. Of course, no one can say for certain that the rest of the lake is free of the invader because it’s impossible to survey every possible plant habitat in the lake. Nevertheless, it made the most sense to focus control efforts on the outlet cove where the plant was found.

Photo: John McPhedran takes a break while Hannah Wilhelm looks at the rootball.

Acting collaboratively and with unprecedented speed, State agencies limited boat access to the infested area and buoyed it off to general boat traffic. Then the DEP initiated a series of hand-removal sessions conducted by professionally trained scuba divers that continued on into fall, 2008. At the end of the season, DEP estimated that only a few scattered stems remained.

This year, McPhedran’s team set out markers and buoys in April and was on the lake by early May. Then, on May 19, a team of five divers, three from the DEP and two from the United States Geological Survey, searched the cove for Eurasian Water Milfoil and hand-removed the plants. They found approximately 60 plants scattered across the area between the barrier nets at the mouth of the cove (see photos) and the nets in place just before the outlet dam.

Photo: The Team at work on May 17, Betsy Enright (foreground), Paul Gregory, Hannah Wilhelm in the bow of the canoe, Karen Hahnel, and Roy Bouchard, sternman.

As Betsy Enright, one of the McGrath Pond-Salmon Lake Association’s stalwarts said, “We were amazed at the size and tenacity of the root ball on the plant. It certainly shows why just plucking a plant in front of your cabin/house is not going to do the job, and why trained personnel (divers) are needed to extract the whole plant and root system.”

The DEP will conduct more hand-pulling throughout the open water season, 2009, and plans to survey again theremainder of Salmon lake with help from lake association volunteers. The Belgrade Regional Conservation Alliance in partnership with the Belgrade Lakes Association will survey Great Pond, which lies directly downstream from Salmon Lake.

Photo: Judy Potvin and Leslie Latt exhibit the invader.

McPhedran expressed some concern about recent reports that boaters seem to be ignoring the markers and buoys warning boaters to stay out of the infested area, and said the department will improve signage at the public launch and work with local Courtesy Boat Inspectors to make certain they inform boaters of the restriction.