Extreme action needed to rid cove of milfoil
07/22/2009

Eurasian milfoil, a hardy, aggressive plant that can wreck lakes and ponds with its unchecked growth, has infested a cove in one of the Belgrade Lakes and shows no sign of leaving.
State environmental officials say their best option for controlling the infestation and preventing its spread may be to use an herbicide to kill it off. That's strong medicine, but we believe that you can't fight milfoil politely. It may very well be time to "nuke" the cove, despite our distaste for the fact that the herbicide also can kill the fish and native plants that live in there.
Discovered last year by a summer visitor to Salmon Lake, Eurasian milfoil is the nastiest variety of the invasive plant. One Maine environmental official calls it the pit bull of milfoil for its tenacity.
Once it's in a lake, it's almost impossible to get rid of it, and infested lakes and ponds to the south and west of Maine literally must be mowed with aquatic shears to keep swimming and boating areas open. And even then, the amount of vegetation the milfoil contributes to the water body can wreak havoc with the lake's ecology, making it unfit for native vegetation or fish.
Since last summer, the state and volunteer groups have worked valiantly to rid the small cove on the western side of Salmon Lake of the invasive plant.
Divers have made repeated forays into the cove to pull the plants; a heavy mat has been put down on the lakebed to smother the milfoil; all but local boats have been banned from the cove; nets have been installed at the cove's mouth and outlet to capture any plant fragments that have broken off.
Those fragments threaten to spread the cove's infestation to the rest of Salmon Lake and elsewhere in the Belgrade Lakes system.
But here's the paradox of all that hard work: Some of it may very well end up helping the milfoil to spread into other lakes. That's because even the most careful and painstaking effort by divers to pull plants without spreading broken pieces can, in the end, fail.
Or the few boats allowed in the infested cove could carry a piece of milfoil out on a propeller, and it could travel from the propeller into the southern part of the lake.
And since Salmon Lake flows through an outlet stream into Great Pond, that means the infestation could spread into Great Pond and from there into the other two bodies of water in the Belgrade Lakes system, Long Pond and Messalonskee Lake.
That's the nightmare scenario. Once the milfoil gets into even one of the lakes, a lot of damage could be done.
Maine's lakes contribute more than $3.5 billion annually to the state's economy, from property taxes paid by shorefront owners to the ice cream cones tourists buy in lakeside villages.
But a milfoil-infested Belgrade Lakes system isn't a region that tourists want to visit. With lakes wrecked by milfoil, shorefront property values could plummet and tax revenue could diminish. And with that would come a cascade of consequences.
Consider that in Rome, for example, shorefront properties contribute 80 percent of the town's property tax base -- and that almost $2 million in tax revenues for Rome is equal to the cost of paying for the schooling of the town's 110 children.
The cost of using an herbicide to kill Eurasian milfoil in Salmon Lake is high. The cove where the infestation is located is reputed to have the best bass fishing in the lake.
But the price of not using an herbicide is, unfortunately, higher. The bass can, in fact, be returned to the lake, as can native plants.
We do not yet know, however, about any lake in the country that has recovered from a massive milfoil infestation.

Extreme action needed to rid cove of milfoil
Kenebec Journal / Morning sentinal 07/22/2009