Summer Weed Management Plan - New Weed Treatment TBA
This year the PLPOA, based on recommendations from our lake management partners, are making changes to how we are managing the weed growth that is impacting our boat lanes. Our focus for weed management is different for invasive weeds than it is for native weeds. Invasive Weeds:
• Milfoil and Curly Leaf pond weeds are the two invasives that we are managing on the lake via treatments with Savin.
• Milfoil has prevented harvesting in recent years as it spreads when cut, but it is now significantly more controlled after 4 years of clearing large beds.
• We still have new “pop ups” of Milfoil and we are able to treat spot treat them as Nuisance Natives
• Generally, native weeds are healthy for our lake and we have many areas of natives that are never treated
• However, when native weeds make up 50% or more of the water column in boat lanes, it creates challenges navigating our lake – hence the term “nuisance natives”
• EGLE closely regulates treating natives and Progressive ensures we follow all rules when treating nuisance natives in our boat lanes
• EGLE has begun restricting the areas where we are allowed to treat. We were able to get a special permit approved in 2024 for some areas of the lake, but the weeds this year are bad outside of these permitted areas Weed Harvesting: Progressive and Savin have advised us to begin using weed harvesting in our weed management strategy again for several reasons:
• Nuisance natives have been a consistent issue in the boat lanes and are particularly bad going into July this year
• Milfoil is now under control (no concern about cutting fragments and spreading the invasive)
• EGLE is limiting our ability to manage boat lanes with application
• Harvesting removes plants from the lake which reduces the phosphorus loading on the lake when those weeds decompose at the end of the season PLPOA requested Progressive conduct a bid for harvesters in early 2025:
• Solicited 4 bids, received 3
• Oakland Harvesters selected not just for price, but also the quality/age of their harvesters to minimize debris as well as technology to report the amount and areas harvested 2018 was the last year where weeds were harvested in late summer and harvesting had been done regularly for many years on the lake in the past. Given current conditions with nuisance natives, we have made the decision to begin harvesting again. Next Steps of our summer weed management will be conducted in two steps, one a spot treatment for Milfoil and the next for harvesting nuisance natives approximately three weeks after the milfoil treatment. Please see the treatment maps below and look for notices regarding the Milfoil treatment in the next few weeks.
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