Hydrilla scare prompts boat ban at Lakeville Lake

SALISBURY — In response to the rising threat from an invasive aquatic species, hydrilla verticillata, the town has issued a moratorium on boating at Lakeville Lake.

“We are shutting the launch at the Grove for the rest of the year,” Salisbury First Selectman Curtis Rand reported on Monday, Sept. 25.

Rand said he is also considering instituting a ban on boating at the town-owned launch at Long Pond.

Bill Littauer, president of the Lake Wononscopomuc Association, requested that boats be banned from launching at the Town Grove in the wake of the recent discovery, and chemical treatment of hydrilla in neighboring East Twin Lake.

In a Sept. 24 letter to Rand, Bill Littauer said the association is “deeply concerned” about the threat of the non-native hydrilla spreading to Lakeville Lake, also known as Lake Wononscopomic.

“The board of directors met yesterday and found it outrageous that no one at the state and local levels or Twin Lakes thought to warn us of this threat,” wrote Littauer.

“We are alarmed to find that hydrilla was discovered June 21st three months before we found out about it. Not only is it hydrilla, but a most vicious and virulent form of this highly invasive species.”

Until its discovery in East Twin within a four-acre area of O’Hara’s Landing Marina, the novel variant of hydrilla had only previously been identified in the Connecticut River, where it first appeared in 2016 and continues to be a major concern there.

Rand said upon receiving Littauer’s letter on behalf of the Lake Wononscopomic Association requesting the ban at Lakeville Lake, he contacted the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP) to notify them of the ban. “I just told them that we need to do it. We had never run into this before. It’s all new.”

Littauer said his lake association spends thousands of dollars each year to fund a boat watch at the Grove launch site in the spring and fall when the Grove office is closed.

“Boats that have been in Twin Lakes are often brought to our lake by fishermen to try their skills here. The Grove staff is rigorous in trying to ascertain that boats have not been recently in infested waters,” he wrote, “but no such system is foolproof and only a tiny fragment of hydrilla can lead to an infected lake.”

Littauer further noted that his next-door neighbor had a pontoon boat delivered from O’Hara’s Landing Marina on East Twin Lake this summer, “and now he is worried that he may have unwittingly brought in hydrilla.”

He said it is particularly troublesome that the worst infestation is around O’Hara’s Landing Marina. The association is working to retain a qualified plant specialist to determine if hydrilla is present in Lakeville Lake, according to Littauer.

The Connecticut River variant of hydrilla was discovered in late June near the public boat launch at O’Hara’s Landing Marina. The finding prompted swift action by the Twin Lakes Association to locate and eradicate the worrisome weed, which once established in a body of water, crowds out native vegetation, harms fisheries, sickens wildfowl and impedes recreation.

Littauer reported that “We haven’t found any hydrilla in Wononscopomuc yet, but it is a concern if it has been found in Twin Lakes.”

State and local officials believe the hydrilla in East Twin was carried there from the Connecticut River by an unsuspecting boat owner.

On Tuesday, Sept. 19, hydrilla hot spots within an area of roughly four acres around East Twin’s marina were treated with an herbicide called ProcellaCOR. 

(For more about the treatment at Twin Lakes, see ‘A lot of unknowns’ surround hydrilla battle.)