The Adirondack Council

News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, Wednesday, January 2, 2002

BOLTON LANDING, N.Y. -- After months of public hearings and confidential negotiations, the Adirondack Council, Lake George Park Commission and the Adirondack Park Agency have signed an agreement that could allow an experimental application of a chemical herbicide to control Eurasian watermilfoil in Lake George, in New York's Adirondack Park, this spring.

"It took some time and a great deal of patience, but the new plan is a huge improvement over the proposal presented to the Adirondack Park Agency last summer," said Adirondack Council Acting Executive Director Bernard C. Melewski. "The test areas are vastly reduced, from four sites to two and from 35 acres down to five acres. The potential for adverse impacts on the environment, water quality and human health have been minimized. And plans are now in place to provide a scientific review of the results.

"It's our job to protect the Park's natural resources and human communities," said Melewski. "If this is going to be the first use of an aquatic herbicide in an Adirondack lake, we wanted to be sure the project was done right."
The applicants must still receive a permit from the APA board of commissioners and the Department of Environmental Conservation before receiving final permission to proceed with the experiment.

Eurasian milfoil is not native to the lake, but was brought here by one or more careless boaters. Milfoil can aggressively colonize lakes where conditions are right for its growth and overtake native species. While milfoil has been present in Lake George since 1985 or earlier, it only finds suitable habitat on eight percent of the lake bottom. Currently, it occupies less than three percent of the lake bottom.

Milfoil has not spread further because the LGPC has done a good job of controlling it with mechanical harvesting, hand pulling and lake-bottom mats. In some places, it even appears to have disappeared on its own. This year, LGPC asked for permission from the APA to experiment with high doses of fluoridone (brand name: Sonar) in four bays.

Sonar was approved for use in the United States in 1986. It was banned in New York until 1995. It has never been used in an Adirondack lake. The Council's board of directors has adopted a policy stating that chemical pesticides should be used only as a last resort to control exotic species, after all other less toxic methods have failed.

But the Office of General Services was a co-applicant for the permit. The Department of State awarded the LGPC a grant to undertake the project.

Meanwhile, the Council raised reasonable scientific and public safety issues during public hearings. The Council participated in confidential negotiations to ensure that its concerns over the loss of sensitive, native species and the potential contamination of drinking water were addressed.

The Council objected to the original plan proposed by the LGPC, stating it was dangerous to native plants and could have contaminated tap water.

The Park Agency unanimously agreed with the Council that the application could not be approved in its current form. The APA's commissioners sent the matter to a public hearing. Before the APA's hearings could get underway, settlement discussions began.

Unlike the original plan proposed by the LGPC last spring, the negotiated plan would be undertaken in only two of the four proposed areas, eliminating most of the risk to drinking water supplies and rare native plant communities.

Only Moonlight Bay and Paradise Bay will be treated. The original plan called for applying high doses of Sonar into all four sites, while only containing the chemical in three of the four (with curtains that run from the surface to the bottom of the lake). In at least one case, the curtains were to be notched to allow boaters to travel in and out of the treatment zone. That would have allowed the chemical to reach other parts of the lake rather easily.

Instead, Moonlight and Paradise will be curtained off completely. In one location, very low doses will be used for a longer period of time. The second site will receive slightly higher doses. Neither site abuts developed areas or water intakes. Neither has high concentrations of native, protected plants.

Ultimately, the Council agreed to a plan that would yield information that can be used to determine usefulness of Sonar and the potential side effects in Lake George. Rather than constant reapplication of the chemical with no follow-up studies, the results will be carefully monitored over a five-year period. Hand harvesting would be used to control remaining milfoil plants in the years following treatment. The data must be peer reviewed by scientific experts and distributed for public comment.

If APA board of commissioners and the DEC grant final approval to the negotiated plan, and if the results of the pilot project are promising, the information will be incorporated into a comprehensive plan to control exotic species in Lake George. That plan will also include a variety of non-toxic control methods.

"If the experiment must go forward, at least it will be done in a way that causes as little harm as possible to non-target species and yields results that can be measured and evaluated," Melewski said.

The Adirondack Council is an 18,000-member, privately funded, not-for-profit organization dedicated to protecting and enhancing the natural character and human communities of the Adirondack Park through research, education, advocacy and legal action.