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Otisco Otisco lake spreading invasives


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Weedcutting efforts are at an all time high here on Otisco.  We haven't had a single week without some cutting, and it's more like ripping this year as there are roots and zebra mussels in the weed mats.  I can't help but wonder how long before every body of water down stream from here has both invasive weeds and zebra mussels.  With the lake being over the dam all season every bit of the cutting goes over the dam every time flow is up or wind is out of the south.  Hard to believe there is no DEC oversight...why inspect every boat launching when we send everything down 9 mile Creek anyway.  The tigers do well in the  trout stream so I'm sure the weeds and zebras will help as well!!!  How is it legal for OCWA to rip out all the weeds?  

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Well the mussels and weeds have spread like a brushfire here since they started cutting a few years ago...and this is the first summer in at least a decade with water going over the dam all season.  The clearer the water gets here the more weeds grow...the more they grow the more we cut...the more we cut the more everything spreads!  Weekly pruning keeps everything growing...

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  • 4 years later...

In a properly managed weed cutting program, the weeds that are cut must be removed to a landfill. Otherwise, they just go back into the system as nutrients. Those nutrients will feed more weeds and algae blooms. That is also a problem when using herbicides because the weeds die, decay and fall to the bottom which become nutrients for more weeds and algae to grow. The nutrients keep loading into the lake from farm and fertilizer runoff and possibly from poor septic and wastewater systems which are the root causes of the problem. Just cutting weeds without removing them just doesn't make sense. It is a complicated problem that will take a whole system approach to solve.

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