“Forevermore we are going to have to be hyper-vigilant. It came in once and it could come in again.”
—Grant Bogle, president of Twin Lakes Association
SALISBURY — An aggressive and costly three-year battle to rid East Twin Lake of a genetically unique strain of hydrilla that chokes lakes and obliterates native plants appears to have finally paid off.
“The good news is, the hydrilla is pretty much gone. We have not found anything,” George Knoecklein of Northeast Aquatic Research (NEAR), the Twin Lakes Association’s limnologist, reported during its fall coalition meeting of local, state and federal scientists, environmentalists and stakeholders on Tuesday, Oct. 8, at O’Hara’s Landing Marina.
The meeting’s location — several yards from where the first strand of the pernicious plant was discovered at the marina in May of 2022 and where a large sign now warns boaters of the threat — was a fitting backdrop for the 90-minute coalition meeting focused on managing the aquatic invader.
It is believed that the invasive weed, known as the Connecticut River Hydrilla, was introduced by hitching a ride with an unsuspecting boater.
Coalition partners included scientists and officials from the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, local lake associations, town and state officials and other stakeholders.
Three years ago East Twin became the first lake to discover the novel Connecticut River strain of hydrilla in its waters. Since then, it has been identified in 10 additional state lakes.
Coalition member Gregory Bugbee, associate scientist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station’s Office of Aquatic Invasive Species (CAES/OAIS), reported that an effort to inspect all 84 boat ramps in Connecticut this year yielded only one site where hydrilla was found.
The threat nonetheless has lake associations rattled. Several groups from around the Northwest Corner have turned to the TLA and its coalition for guidance, as hydrilla — once established — is notoriously difficult to eradicate.
Herbicide’s impact
The meeting centered on this past summer’s success as well as collateral damage to a native plant, water marigold, following the TLA’s whole-lake treatment with the herbicide fluoridone.
Domenic Meringolo, environmental engineer and project manager with SOLitude Lake Management, said this summer’s treatment with Sonar, SePRO’s flagship aquatic solution, was more successful than prior spot treatments using the systemic herbicide ProcellaCOR.
While the ProcellaCOR failed to kill hydrilla, it was “beautifully effective” on ridding the lake of Eurasian watermilfoil, said Knoecklein. “It became pretty clear that the whack-a-mole strategy wasn’t going to work” on hydrilla.
The SOLitude project manager noted that the two-to-five parts per billion (ppb) concentration of fluoridone used throughout this summer at East Twin was to selectively control hydrilla while minimally affecting native aquatic plants at low concentration.
While the Sonar destroyed the hydrilla, it had an unintended ecological impact on one of the lake’s native aquatic species, Bidens beckii, commonly known as water marigold. The Bidens is a state protected plant that had been growing profusely in East Twin.
“This year, we couldn’t find it,” reported NEAR’S Knoecklein.
Of the 54 species of aquatic plants documented in East Twin Lake, the Bidens beckii was the only one adversely affected by the treatment, he explained. “We have more of it in Middle Twin, and there’s a very good indication that nothing else was impacted here.”
Knoecklein said he has been in contact with DEEP’s Natural Diversity Database (NDDB) regarding the loss of Bidens beckii.
“It was not completely unexpected, but we’ll be watching very closely next year,” he said. “I am hoping for some recovery.”
A diver is expected to re-inspect the lake this week.
“The hydrilla game has really become both surface visualization and looking for hydrilla in deeper waters,” said Knoecklein. “You can’t combat hydrilla in a lake without using these strategies.”
The TLA limnologist noted that prior dives found both young hydrilla plants and larger established ones.
“My suspicion is that this has been in the lake for four years and turned into a fort during that time, with massive plants six feet tall and lots of shoots. We had to move water lilies to find hydrilla growing under those plants.”
A sign warning boaters of the hydrilla threat at O’Hara’s Landing Marina stands in the location where the invasive weed was discovered at East Twin Lake in May of 2022. Debra A. Aleksinas
Lessons learned, lessons shared
The forum touched on the soaring costs of lake management, a concern to the TLA as well as smaller lake groups with limited funds and resources.
TLA’s annual lake management expenditures have increased tenfold — from about $50,000 per year to as much as $500,000 for the foreseeable future — as the association continues its intensive monitoring, testing, and prevention efforts.
Despite those costs, officials emphasized that East Twin’s experience offers valuable lessons for other lakes confronting hydrilla for the first time or preparing for an invasion.
Representatives from the Lake Wononscopomuc Association and Mt. Riga Inc., in Salisbury, attended the fall coalition meeting, along with officials from Mudge Pond Association in Sharon and Doolittle and Benedict Pond in northeastern Norfolk.
Christina Astrove, lake board president representing Doolittle and Benedict, was a first-time attendee. She was hoping to learn about how the TLA has been dealing with hydrilla and what steps are being taken to control and eradicate the worrisome weed.
While her lake community is private and prohibits motorboats, she is “very concerned” about the looming threat.
“I attended a Connecticut Federation of Lakes meeting this spring and have taken several webinars” on the topic, noted Astrove. “It’s scary.”
Mudge Pond representative Andrew Cahill said his group is bracing for hydrilla’s arrival due to high boat traffic.
“We have everything but hydrilla at this point, but I’m sure we will have it at some point.”
TLA President Grant Bogle said he is pleased to share information from lessons learned. “The goal is not only to support Twin Lakes, but to spread the word. It takes a village, literally, to address this threat.”
TLA officials said they have been fielding calls from lake associations throughout the United States seeking advice and guidance, and they are happy to share.
CAES’ Bugbee praised the Twin Lakes group’s aggressive response to the hydrilla threat, swift creation of its coalition of advisors and for sharing their collective knowledge. “This organization is second to none. It’s almost like a poster child for how things should be done.”
Knoecklein said despite vigilant surveillance of boat ramps and closing lakes off to the public, the hydrilla threat persists.
“In my opinion all possible vectors are on the table,” including recreational fishing and birds flying overhead dropping plant fragments.
Grant Bogle, TLA association president, agreed that “surveillance is key.”
“While we have good news to report in terms of hydrilla, this isn’t over. Forevermore we are going to have to be hyper-vigilant, no matter what happens down the road. It came in once and it could come in again.”
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Marge Parkhurst with a collection of historic nails recovered from wall cavities during restoration work.
“At first it just looked like old paint,” said Parkhurst, who has been painting and restoring historic homes in Litchfield County for decades. “Until I realized it was a stencil, a beautiful pattern that repeated.”
She kept going carefully — a wet sponge, hot water, a little fabric softener — peeling back until she could see it clearly. A climbing vine emerged, applied in vertical runs to give the wall the look of wallpaper. Someone had signed it. The signature was faint, tucked above the baseboard in the corner, not fully legible. But the date was clear: 1870.
Parkhurst, owner of Cottage & Country Painting Co., has worked in enough old houses to develop a practiced eye for what they conceal — understanding that layers of paint, paper and plaster in a 19th-century New England home form a kind of compressed archive of the people who lived there.
The stencil bore a strong resemblance to what historians call Moses Eaton-type stenciling — a tradition of itinerant craftsmen who traveled New England in the early 1800s with portable kits of cut-pattern stencils. Their trade flourished because imported wallpaper was expensive. Stenciling offered the same visual effect at a fraction of the cost.
“These stencilers typically worked for a combination of cash, food and lodging,” Parkhurst said. “Their compensation was modest by any standard.” She paused, “He was a tradesman. But the work he left behind — that’s art.”
The vine pattern was dull with age but still legible. One section had survived intact beneath the layers of paper. The homeowners chose not to paint over it — instead building a wooden frame around it, a small window into 1870.
“Preservation means protecting something to prevent further deterioration,” she said. “Restoration means returning something to a previous state. In that room, we preserved what was there.”
This bottle is from the Hartmann Brewing Company of Bridgeport, CT, found inside a wall of a former railroad outbuilding relocated from Canaan to Colebrook CT. The bottle was sealed with a glass stopper held by a wire, inside was a grocery list written on the back of an envelope postmarked 1915. Photo courtesy of Marge Parkhurst/Cottage & Country Painting Company
A Station’s Secrets
Not every discovery is decorative. Some are written into the bones of a building.
Parkhurst’s own home in Colebrook is a former railroad outbuilding moved from Canaan in 1920. Scraping the trim revealed it had once been sage green — and beneath that, a warm orange-brown soaked into the wood grain. “Old paint was made more like a stain back in the 1800s,” she said. “It penetrated the wood rather than sitting on top of it — so there’s never a shine.”
Up in the attic, eye bolts still anchored in the framing mark where cables stabilized the building during its move a century ago.
The most memorable find came by accident. Cutting open a wall under the stairs, she found a clear glass bottle sealed with a glass stopper held by a rusted wire. The label read: Hartmann Brewing Co., Bridgeport, Conn. It took days of careful oiling to free the stopper. Inside: a handwritten list of sandwiches and drinks, a postage stamp still attached. Not treasure. But a treasure just the same.
“I worked for days to get that thing open — and it was just somebody’s lunch order.”
Newspapers stuffed into wall cavities, hand-wrought nails, paint layers thin as stain — over 50 years, Parkhurst has cataloged the details that tell a trained eye when a house was built and by whom. Litchfield County’s architecture is unusually varied: Georgian and Federal-style houses on Litchfield’s Main Street, industrial buildings along the rivers in Torrington and Winsted. “Each town has its own fingerprint,” she said.
The most consequential mistake she sees is changing a home’s character. “When you paint over stained woodwork, you hide the details. You can’t get them back.” She has talked more than a few owners out of it. Some have listened.
Not long ago, Parkhurst and her grandchildren gathered a few small objects, wrote a letter and tucked it into a wall of her Colebrook home. Someone will find it — a record of people who were once here.
“Walls still surprise me,” she said. “If you look hard enough, you can find buried treasure.”
In a county full of houses whose walls hold untold stories — stenciled by traveling tradesmen, nailed together by farmers, papered over by housewives following the fashions — Marge Parkhurst has spent a lifetime reminding us that history doesn’t only live in museums. Sometimes it’s hiding just behind the wallpaper.
Marge Parkhurst is the owner of Cottage & Country Painting Co. She can be reached at marge@cottageandcountryct.com or 860-379-4748.
Sarah Belzer is a writer, editor and creative director whose career has crossed journalism, advertising, film and cultural commentary. Managing Editor of The American Rant and founder of Jump Advertising, she has spent three decades shaping narratives for media and national and global brands.
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