Smith Cove wins first round of milfoil fight

Second round hinges on fundraising

Peter Morrissette spent several years fighting for approval for the town to spend its money to chemically treat Smith Cove for milfoil. His opponents said chemicals weren't the way to go, they preferred pulling of the acres of thick aquatic weeds by hand.

Morrissette had the N.H. Department of Environmental Services (DES) on his side because of the extent of the milfoil infestation that was choking the scenic cove, however and the herbicide 2,4-D was effectively applied last summer. Now, all that is left to complete the DES recommended program is to raise the funds necessary to hire divers to pull the plants that survived the treatment.

To Morrissette's dismay, many of those who voiced support for hand-pulling in the past have been silent when it comes time to pay for it. "Everybody's got a solution," he said, "but when it comes time to pay, nobody wants to... We've got a chance to fix it," he said.

This is even more maddening for him because Morrissette says a successful and vigilant pulling operation can prevent the need for future chemical treatments. If the community fails to pay for adequate pulling of the weeds now, the milfoil carpet will quickly return to the levels where another application of herbicide is necessary.

"It was just everywhere, now it's hardly anything," said Morrissette of the milfoil presence before and after the chemical treatment. "The program really is working."

Morrissette is the president of the Glendale Cove Association, which was started with one mission and one mission only: to rid Smith Cove of milfoil, which was so thick, he said, that sailboats would struggle to sail out of the cove and swimming was downright scary. After last year's treatment program, he said the cove is a completely different body of water. The sunlight can now penetrate, and the removal of all the milfoil plant matter allows the water to circulate better, resulting in a fish-friendly, clear cove.

The difference would not have been possible, he said, without the financial support from local yacht clubs, certain lakeside residents and the town's conservation commission. "If it weren't for their help, it would have failed."

The chemical treatment is only the first step, as many of the hardier plants, those which had deep root systems, survived and must be followed up by divers who will pull them by hand.

Mark Richardson is a diver with the Gilford-based company Dive Masers Diver Services. He was out with a four-man crew last week, scouring the bottom of the cove for milfoil.

Richardson said it's beneficial for the cove's ecosystem that more sunlight is penetrating to the bottom, but it also benefits the remaining milfoil. Pulling milfoil by hand used to be a tedious, time-consuming task, wherein divers would find a plant, pull it up, and then stuff it in a net bag. When the small bags were full, they would have to return to the surface and empty the bag on a boat or barge. Fortunately, a technical advancement has swung the advantage decidedly in the diver's favor.

This summer, divers are still finding the plants and pulling them by hand. The difference is that instead of holding a net bag in the other hand, the diver holds the end of what is essentially a large vacuum hose. The diver feeds the plant matter into the hose, which draws the milfoil up to a pontoon boat, where the system spits the stuff into a large net bag. The bag catches any plant matter, and allows water and sediment to return to the cove. A worker removes the milfoil from the net bag by hand. The collected milfoil is removed from the water body, and Richardson then burns and disposes of the remains.

Richardson said divers used to remove an average about 10 gallons of milfoil, not including water, in a day. With the new method, a four-person team can remove 200 gallons or better per day. "It is pretty obvious that we are gaining on it," said Richardson, after a few days of pulling in the cove. "This seems effective."

Even so, he estimated it will take five or six years of pulling before the milfoil is gone. His crew was pulling this week, and will be back for another week in September. He charges about $150 per hour for the four-person team.

Morrissette said his association would like to spend about $25,000 this year on the dive team's services. He'll be applying to the conservation commission for a $10,000 grant soon, and if the grant is approved, the association is going to be about $6,000 shy of its goal.

Morrissette asked that individuals who would like to contribute send their checks, made out to the Glendale Cove Association, to 23 Smith Cove Road, Gilford NH, 03249.

"The only way it's successful is money," he said. "Nobody said the milfoil was going to go away in one year."