Lake Zoar Treated

 With Herbicide

By Kendra Bobowick

What’s in the water?

Wednesday’s herbicide treatments on Lake Zoar to combat the invasive Eurasian watermilfoil are complete.

“It’s all done,” said Lake Zoar Authority member Bernie Lintzner. “Now we wait and see what happens. In a couple days the weeds should shrivel.”

Swimming and recreation can resume in areas treated with approximately 60 gallons of liquid herbicide with the main ingredient Diquat, he said. Lake water may harm the lawn, but animal and aquatic life are safe.

Roughly 40 acres along the lake near the sandbar in Newtown, the state boat launch, and Kettletown State Park in Southbury, portions of the lake below Jackson’s Cove beach in Oxford, and near the Monroe boat launch adjacent to the Stevenson Dam, have been treated.

People may have see an airboat traveling the lake and dispensing the herbicide Wednesday — at times pausing as lightning passed. The rapid-growing Eurasian watermilfoil has been an increasing problem along the lake, Mr Lintzner said Wednesday. “You can’t get a boat through it, and you don’t want to swim in it.”

The invasive weed easily could encumber boat propellers and encroach on the lake’s natural plant life, agreed authority chairman Bob Barnes. The lake authority responsibilities include water quality, and the herbicide applications — about $20,000 — takes place as the budget allows. “If we have money, we do it, if not, we make do,” Mr Barnes said, already anticipating that the authority may have to come up with its own resources next year.

Only the second year of treatment, Mr Lintzner said, “This may be the last year until the economy changes…”

Other methods of eradicating the weed were not successful in the past. Cutting it out does not work. “We can’t keep up,” Mr Lintzner had said. Also, a plant-eating beetle used in a biological control measure was not enough for the 900-plus acres of lake. “If you leave the invasive alone it will take over; it will take out the good weeds. It’s encroaching further and further,” Mr Barnes had said.