Reported on WFSB-TV
Crews Take To Lake To Kill Invasive Weed
Fast-Growing Plant Covers 20 Acres Of Lake, Crews Say
POSTED: 5:09 pm EDT August 4, 2009
UPDATED: 7:50 pm EDT August 4, 2009
ELLINGTON, Conn. -- A tiny plant in Ellington's Crystal Lake has drawn a huge response from crews.
Milfoil is a green plant that can grow a few inches in a single day and can reach lengths of 25 feet.
"Pretty soon, it's going to clog the boat lanes and make it hard for the fishermen to get their lures through and the swimmers will have difficulty, so we're trying to attack it now," Crystal Lake Milfoil Committee member David Arzt said.
Milfoil removal crews began removing the invasive plant on Tuesday. They said it's native to Asia and that it's unknown how it got to the U.S.
So far, crews said, the invasive weed has already taken over 20 acres of Crystal Lake, choking out swimmers and stopping boaters. They said it's so invasive that even a tiny piece left behind will sprout a new plant, so the only way to get rid of it is to vacuum it up, roots and all, and truck it away.
"He's going to pull the root ball up, suck it up through the hose," said Jason Houghtaling, of Water's Edge Restoration and Management. "It's going to go into that bag, and we're going to remove the bags, and the weed's going to be gone from here."
Houghtaling said milfoil is a problem in other parts of the state as well.
"I haven't found a municipality in the state of Connecticut that's not dealing with this problem," he said.
The town's three-week, $67,000 contract with Water's Edge is being used to remove a third to a half of the 20 acres of milfoil in Crystal Lake. Officials said they hope to build an anti-milfoil barge so they can fight it every year to make sure it doesn't overtake the lake.
Milfoil In Crystal Lake
Jim Altman Fox 61 Reporter
6:27 PM EDT, August 4, 2009
ELLINGTON - Crystal Lake appears as pristine as its name, at least on the surface.
But down below is where the milfoil lies a slimy and insidious aquatic invader residents here are battling to root out.
The Crystal Lake Association, a group of residents dedicated to preserving the lake, is taking action, with the help of $67,000 the town has put up for an anti-milfoil campaign. Milfoil can cause problems for boating and fishing, even swimming.
"We want our lake," said Jean Burns, a Crystal Lake Association Member and lakefront homeowner. "We want the resource to stay."
Native to Europe and Asia, milfoil is a freshwater weed that is an unwelcome presence in Connecticut from Candlewood Lake in the western part of the state to Crystal Lake in the East. The plant is believed to be transported between lakes and ponds by boat trailers and water fowl.
The effort to get rid of the milfoil got underway Tuesday.
Armed with giant underwater vacuums and Navy SEAL-style scuba gear, Jason Houghtaling and his three-man crew from Water's Edge Restoration and Management of Danbury will spend the next three weeks working underwater to remove the spiny sea weed.
"We're using a method called 'suction harvesting,'" Houghtaling said Tuesday, aboard his pontoon boat 200 yards off the shore. "We actually are sending a scuba diver down who is controlling a four-inch vacuum hose. He catches the top of the plant in this vacuum hose, he reaches down with his hands, plucks the root ball out and it goes up the giant hose into a large bag."
A recent survey of Crystal Lake found that about 20 acres of the 200-acre lake has been overtaken by milfoil. Broken off pieces of the feathery underwater foliage can grow back and get to be as long as 25 feet.
"This plant can take over a lake, you will no longer be able to boat in the lake, you will no longer be able to swim in the lake," Houghtaling said.
The objective of this mission is to rid the lake of about half of its problem.
"This is an on-going battle so you have to take it one step at a time," Houghtaling said. "We can take a bad problem and make it very controllable."
Copyright © 2009, WTIC-TV
August 4, 2009 was the start of the month long project to remove a large portion of the milfol from Crystal Lake, Ellington.
Both WFSB-TV and WTIC-TV, Hartford had their reporters and film crews in attendance for the event. Both stations aired their stories on the evening news at 5 PM and at 10PM with an added story by WTIC's Jim Altman on "Real Story" Sunday August 9th.
AUGUST 28, 2009 FRONT PAGE ARTICLE -JOURNAL INQUIRER
Ellington battles plant invaders;
Victory in sight as divers drive colonies of milfoil from Crystal Lake
By Kala Kachmar
Journal Inquirer
Published: Friday, August 28, 2009 1:44 PM EDT
ELLINGTON — It’s hairy, it’s slimy and it looks like a creepy swamp thing.
What it is, however, is milfoil.
And it’s been invading Crystal Lake for years, sucking the very life out of the lake.
But this summer the town of Ellington fought back, hiring a team from Water’s Edge Restoration and Management, a Danbury-based company, to do battle.
For three weeks the team fought against the invasive weed, which experts say came from somewhere beyond the town’s borders.
“It knows we’re here,” said Jason Houghtling, owner of Water’s Edge. “We’re taking it by the truckloads.”
The milfoil, which grows at a rate of 2 to 3 inches a day and disrupts the health and recreation of the lake, has finally begun to retreat.
With victory in site, late Thursday afternoon the town approved contracting with Water’s Edge for an additional 50 hours of work to finish removing the milfoil from cove areas at the lake, according to Bill Merson, project coordinator and co-chairman of the Ad-Hoc Crystal Lake Milfoil Committee.
Funding for the additional hours is coming from a $20,000 fund that was set aside to purchase maintenance equipment for the milfoil problem, Merson said. Half the money will be used for an additional 50 hours of removal next spring.
The milfoil began to reveal itself in 2002 when it showed up in a study of the water’s chemistry, Merson said. And it quickly became a problem.
Officials believe the milfoil may have been brought into the lake by a boater whose vessel became entangled with the weed at another lake. Another possibility is that it was brought to the lake by a bird or goose that caught some of it on its leg at another lake.
The good health of the lake contributes to the growth of the milfoil, according to Houghtling.
The 2007 study by Northeast Aquatic Research indicated the milfoil at the lake had increased 65 percent from the previous year, and was destined to become an even bigger problem if it wasn’t removed.
Last February the town approved $67,000 for the project, which was spearheaded by the Ad-Hoc Crystal Lake Milfoil Committee, Merson said.
“At that point we said we have to do something about it because it was getting out of hand,” Merson said.
The money was supposed to be matched by a grant from the state Department of Environmental Protection but fell through when the state decided to pull its funding, Merson said.
The $67,000 bought the town 315 machine hours with Water’s Edge, which originally estimated it could remove only about seven or eight acres of what its staffers thought was a 17-acre problem in the 200-acre lake, Houghtling said.
However, because the lake water is so clear, the crew was able to get rid of more than 18 acres of milfoil.
“There was more than we thought,” Houghtling said, adding that his workers removed about 90 percent of the milfoil.
Houghtling said his crew found more milfoil by using a 10-foot-long tube camera in the lake.
He said he believes there are about three more acres hidden in coves.
If the majority of the problem isn’t taken care of, the milfoil will come back quickly, Merson said.
“We don’t want to leave anything unsaid or undone to lose this battle to milfoil,” Houghtling said.
Since the project began Aug. 4, the Water’s Edge crew has removed between one and two tons of milfoil each day. Each bag full of milfoil, which is about 6 feet around and 8 feet long, weighs more than 500 pounds when its dry.
“We put a big beating on the milfoil,” Houghtling said.
With a crew of six divers, two boats, and an original piece of machinery, the company used suction harvesting as a method to remove the weeds, Houghtling said. Divers in the lake would remove the roots from the sand and use a 40-foot-long, 4-inch-wide suction hose connected to the boat to collect the weed and its particles.
The weeds are sucked into large net bags that are connected to the boat.
When several bags are full, they get dragged by the boat to the boat launch. Divers then shovel or dump the weeds onto a truck that is driven to a compost pile in town, Houghtling said.
In the water, milfoil resembles long, bushy snake-like structures that grow straight up out of the water or coil up on the bottom.
Out of the water, the plant is different shades of green or maroon with hair-like roots and a stringy texture.
In Connecticut, it’s illegal to sell or possess the weed, which grows exponentially and only lives depths where sunlight reaches the bottom.
A new plant forms when a piece or particle of an existing one is broken, cut, or falls off, according to Houghtling. A floating piece in the water will spring roots that will grow into the ground.
Trying to remove the weed by cutting it only makes the problem worse, Houghtling said. The plant needs to be handled carefully, otherwise its growth will spin out of control.
The plant destroys fisheries, disrupts recreational activity and essentially chokes the lake, Houghtling said.
Houghtling said swimmers can easily get tangled in the plant and drown, especially if there’s a lot of it. The plant can also get caught in motors and destroy them.
“I don’t want anyone to think this problem is completely gone,” Houghtling said.
Merson said after next spring, he hopes the town will allocate funding for additional milfoil maintenance.
Compared to the amount of time spent this year, the maintenance needed will only be minimal from now on, Houghtling said.
Merson said even though some of the lakefront properties are located in Stafford, there were no political boundaries on the scope of the project.
“When you’ve got an issue with an invasive problem that comes across town lines, you need to address the whole problem or it’ll come back very quickly,” Merson said.
“We were lucky to be able to ram rod this thing, get some listening ears and get something done about it,” Merson said. “This lake could be ruined in a few years.”