In Goshen’s Lake Weed War Technology & Bureaucracy Are Key Challenges

Keeping Goshen’s lakes viable for recreation is critical to the Town’s property tax structure. Lake community properties account for roughly 2/3 of the Town’s Grand List, including Tyler Lake, West Side Pond, Dog Pond and Woodridge Lake. All 4 lakes face the ongoing challenge of combatting invasive weeds, and considerable resources are regularly expended to keep them in check.

The approaches to weed control fall into 4 basic categories: Mechanical, Chemical, Environmental and Biological. All four have been employed in Goshen at one time or another, with varying levels of success. While these approaches can involve significant expense, Technology and Bureaucracy, rather than Funding, have been the greatest challenges in maintaining Goshen’s lakes.

In 2024, according to the Town’s Lake Weed Management Committee minutes, Dog Pond employed hydro-raking to clear the pond’s north end. Lake management contractor SOLITUDE’s website states that hydro-raking (mechanical raking) is a widely used and effective technique for selective removal of nuisance, rooted vegetation. It is also able to remove organic debris from the bottom of a pond, which can help to reduce the overall nutrient load, minimizing common water quality issues like low dissolved oxygen, foul odors, and nuisance algae blooms. Due to difficulty in getting the equipment onto the water at Dog Pond, however, the contractor has advised they will not return in the future.

Other mechanical means of weed control include the use of harvesting equipment that cuts and collects weeds for disposal and suction harvesting wherein divers pull plants from the lake bottom. The problem with mechanical harvesters is that they cannot effectively remove everything they cut, and the floating weed remnants can take root and actually spread weed infestations. Suction harvesting is relatively unproductive, and its usefulness is limited to small problem areas.

The common Environmental approach involves drawing down of lake water levels in Fall to expose the roots of weeds growing in shallow areas to freezing. This is done on a biannual basis at Tyler Lake, and the drawdowns also create opportunities for repair of lake retaining walls. The use of drawdowns has been terminated at Woodridge Lake, however, as its effectiveness has been variable, depending on winter weather cycles, and it was also found to be detrimental to the lake’s fish population.

The use of chemical herbicides is one of the most potent tools for diminishing weed populations, but it comes at considerable cost. Tyler Lake deployed herbicide earlier in 2024 and has reported moderate success.

Herbicide applications require permitting by the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) and dealing with the bureaucracy is sometimes a challenge in itself. According to the Lake Weed Management Committee minutes, West Side Pond failed to obtain their permit this year “because of a foul-up with the Fisheries Dept. at DEEP” and may have to go through the entire permitting process again next year.

Application of herbicides at Woodridge Lake became a highly contentious issue, when first proposed in 2018 and 2019. A lawsuit filed against the Property Owners’ Association delayed the application until 2020, when a compromise was reached to follow up the herbicide use with the deployment of sterilized grass carp, a natural herbivore that can consume large quantities of lake weeds. Part of the permit application requirements involved construction of a large screen on the spillway at the lake’s outlet, to prevent the carp from making their way into other bodies of water downstream. The DEEP-designed screen was installed at a cost to Woodridge Lake residents of roughly $100,000. The 1-2 punch of herbicides and herbivores effectively eradicated invasive Eurasian milfoil for two or three years, but in 2024 weed growth was on the rise again and the Association applied for a permit to restock grass carp at 50% of the original numbers, to make up for natural attrition. That’s when they ran into a bureaucratic stone wall at DEEP.

Overstocking of carp at Candlewood Lake had been blamed for denuding the lake of its plant population, sending it into an ecological crisis. Carp stocking at Candlewood had been performed twice in two years, with each deployment introducing double the number of fish per acre as was deployed at Woodridge. DEEP faced considerable public criticism over these developments.

On the other hand, annual plant growth studies at Woodridge confirmed a healthy lake ecology, with native species of plants replacing the eradicated invasive species, indicating that the more moderate stocking levels were a better balance with plant growth rates. Nonetheless, DEEP sat on the restocking permit application for months, with no indication of when or if it would be approved.

In June, the Association reached out for help to State Senator Stephen Harding, who sits on  the state legislature’s Environment Committee. After explaining the economic and environmental benefits of Woodridge’s grass carp program to Harding and the apparent bureaucratic logjam at DEEP, he advocated on the Association’s behalf for issuance of the carp restocking permit. DEEP quickly responded with a positive indication that the permit would be issued, once some additional measures were taken to assure more positive carp containment within the lake. A secondary screening system was installed within several days by the Association’s maintenance staff and Lake and Dam Committee, but the summer passed and still no action was finalized by DEEP.

In late September, with the window of opportunity for restocking closing, the Association again reached out to Senator Harding, explaining that the permit was apparently still “stuck in bureaucratic limbo”. This time, within days of Harding’s contact with DEEP, the permit was approved. Restocking is being scheduled for mid-October.