EWM Working Group Gets Ready for EWM Control this Summer
As you can see by the thermometer atop the website, our 2023 fundraising is doing well. The Working Group has met and agreed on a number of things as we gear up for monitoring and controlling EWM this summer. Monitoring will begin in June with visits to all 19 sites on our map as of fall 2022. We anticipate at least 3 days of diver assistance will be needed, and that number could grow to 5 depending on our June monitoring. We've booked our dive contractor for the week of July 17, knowing that providing service to their larger clients could cause the date to slip further into the summer. We appreciate all reports of possible EWM growth, every volunteer and every EWM Fund donor. Finally, one of our Working Group members wrote the following, which we offer to all Drag Lake boaters as cautionary advice.
Avoiding EWM near Pine Tree Point
To mangle and mash a couple of lines from Bob Dylan: “Come gather ‘round people whatever your boats…and accept that the waters around us have growths… and our routes they need ‘a changin’…”
The “growth” is a new outbreak of Eurasian Watermilfoil (EWM), just north of the two hazard buoys located between what the Community of Drag Lake map designates as Sandy Point Beach and Pine Tree Point. Putting surface markers around the weed bed is a problem for various reasons, both legal and aesthetic. The easiest way to avoid it is to keep the outer hazard buoy on your RIGHT when heading NORTH, and on the LEFT when going SOUTH. The buoys mark the ends of a shoal. Going between them runs the risk of both prop damage and cutting through the weed bed.
As the water warms, the weed grows to within inches of surface level. A frond can be broken off by something as seemingly innocuous as a canoe, kayak or SUP paddle. Every frond is the lake equivalent of a cancer cell. They travel unnoticed until they find a place to take root -- and then unrelentingly metastasise. Milfoil can clog a prop or jet ski as happily as it chokes the life out of a lake. Going between the buoys may be a quicker route, but who comes to Drag Lake to be in a hurry? And for those who are, bear in mind that if milfoil isn’t kept in check, as Dylan summed it up: “…the first one now will later be last.”
Comments