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Maine Milfoil Consortium Receives $500,000 for Fight

November 09, 2009 - BRIDGTON -- Peter Lowell was smiling this week. Those who face enormous costs are always gratified when they secure an enormous grant to help defray those costs.


Fighting milfoil in Maine Lakes takes a lot of intensive effort, and a lot of money, too. Will a half a million dollars help? With $300,000 of that going directly to eradication?


You bet, says Lowell, the longtime executive director of the Lakes Environmental Association.


The Maine Milfoil Consortium, which includes the Lakes Environmental Association, a cooperative that came together two years ago to address the threat of invasive aquatic plants in Maine lakes, has been awarded $500,000, through the Interior and Related agencies bill just passed by Congress. The money will be used to mitigate and control invasive milfoil and seven "test bed" lakes, which pose high risk of spread to other waters.


"We have found that the process of plant control is just enormous," said Lowell earlier this week. The LEA's eradication and control program on the Songo River and Brandy Pond, in fact, drained $8,000 from LEA reserves this past summer, Lowell said, beyond normal operating costs and other grants used to pay for such efforts. "Obviously, we don't have a lot of room to maneuver there, and we can keep doing that," he said.


The federal money will provide economic support for the local water bodies, and their associations -- and the Sebago Lake group isn't even the worst in Maine, though the issue is serious, and Little Sebago in particular has united to fight the invasive plant. The Big and Little Sebago efforts were named right in the legislation. Others will be determined by a screening process overseen by the consortium, Lowell noted Monday.


Earlier grants for state milfoil efforts were for studies, lake monitoring, and so on. Fears were that the eradication of the invasive plant from Maine waters might be a pipe dream, and that the best results could be a rearguard action, a never-ending fight. While this is still the case, the LEA found that their efforts on the Songo River may have turned the corner this year. Still, putting down the invasive plant rebellion will require a yearly effort, where every foothold has been gained, and for the past two summers, the regional agency has had to seek out and destroy milfoil incursions into Brandy Pond, as well as removing several acres of the plant by hand from the Songo River.


A few years back, Lowell approach other Lake Associations fighting milfoil and then that group went to the Governor, looking for some financial help. Working through a homeowner who lives on heavily infested little Sebago Lake, Bobbie Mills -- who also happens to be a Washington lobbyist -- and with help from the Maine delegation, progress was seen in 2007 and 2008, finally resulting in the recent passage of the legislation. Lowell credited especially the work of United States Senator Susan Collins. "She really grasped the issue and saw the significance of it," he said. "The whole delegation helped, but Senator Collins is really right there, upfront."


The mission of the Lakes Consortium is to address the milfoil infestation threat through a focused program of prevention, research, management, mitigation, and eradication, through the application of "best practices."


Currently, 26 Maine lakes are infested with variable leaf milfoil, the invasive aquatic plant that was introduced to the state by visiting boaters. Lowell notes that the problem is far worse in Massachusetts and New Hampshire.



Milfoil can destabilize the fundamental ecology of lakes vital to recreational boaters, homeowners, businesses and visitors to Maine. Maine's 6000 lakes generate $3.5 billion in direct and indirect spending in Maine each year. The Maine Milfoil Consortium has a proactive plan to contain the milfoil threat before it escalates to attack the thousands of other lakes in the state, as it has in neighboring New Hampshire and Vermont.


A request for proposals will be sent to lake associations in Maine that represent lakes infested with variable leaf milfoil and have robust citizen action to mitigate the spread of milfoil. In addition, matching funds will be raised for public education campaigns, scientific study of milfoil, and the dissemination of "best practices" to all Lake Associations statewide.


The project will be coordinated by Jacolyn Bailey, a doctoral student working with Dr. Alan J. K. Calhoun at the University of Maine at Orono, one of a small group of scientists that is studying the invasive plant in Maine. Members of the consortium are St. Joseph's College, which is located on Sebago Lake, Little Sebago Lake Association, the Maine Congress of Lakes Associations, the Lakes Environmental Association, and the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program.


By Mike Corrigan, staff writer, the Bridgton News, November 5, 2009


Lakes: Little Sebago Lake, Sebago Lake
Regions: Sebago


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