The Pond and Lake Connection will treat the lake for the first time this season on May 15. We will be watching for the results.
from David Sachs’ post on truesdalelake.nextdoor.com:
James [Gorman, of Pond & Lake Connection] stopped by yesterday to look at the lake. Based on what he saw, he told us that “as of now, we will treat a 20-foot ring around the edge of the lake (meaning along the shore around the lake – for about 20 feet into the lake itself) and the large part of the south cove for any submerged vegetation. We shall try to leave the center part of the lake alone. If algae begins matting on the curly leaf, we can adjust from there.” James believes that “the more we leave growing in the center, the better we can be at controlling the algae.” The goal is to have some weeds growing; that helps to offset the algae growth.
Excerpted from my post last year around this time, there are several other things to keep in mind, in no particular order:
- Truesdale is a lake, which has natural living things in it. We need to maintain a balance for the health of the lake. It will never be a swimming pool. I think many understand this after having lived here for years, but occasionally new residents are unrealistic in their expectations of water clarity and plant-free water. Learn to co-exist with the plants. If you don’t freak out about the plants, your kids won’t.
- Truesdale is a shallow lake (deepest part overall is 16 feet, with the south end near the TEA beach having a deepest point around 8 feet) and that means the sun is always able to reach the bottom of the lake. This means the entire 83 acres is fertile ground for plant growth. It is going to happen. We can only affect it a certain amount.
- Herbicides and Algaecides are not perfect by any stretch. They are effective in the short term, but they dissipate and dilute by their nature. However, they are the most cost-effective solution we have.
- Solutions other than herbicide treatment can be very expensive (dredging, mechanical harvesting) and would require a steady source of tax-based revenue and a tax district to do on a lake-wide scale. There are some smaller scale (i.e several households size) efforts underway to address specific dredging areas, but the projects are being undertaken financially by individual homeowners or groups of homeowners, not lake-wide.
- Other weed control alternatives like grass carp are essentially undirected biological weapons that give no guarantee that the carp will eat 1.) where your want them eat to and 2.) what you want them to eat. They can end up decimating the native plant life and allowing invasive plants to gain even more of a foothold. The fish can also root around the bottom of our lake, stirring up muck and nutrients and actually causing more problems with water clarity and weed growth. They also cannot be fished out if they become a problem.
- Everything we do is a trade-off between time, money, and effectiveness. In addition to keeping a balance of nature, we are trying to balance the checkbook.
The bottom line is any solutions are management, not complete control. We have a limited number of levers to move to affect weeds and algae, and we (and the professionals we hire) do their best in the environment we are given. It’s all a cycle. Winter will be back before you know it so enjoy the warm weather now!
New ideas and undertakings are always welcome — we are all in this together.
-Rob
I have received a few notes over the last month about the Lake, the weeds, last summer, and the potential of a repeat. I started to respond to each person individually but it grew into a longer note that I’d like to share here instead.