http://www.townonline.com/natick/opinion/view.bg?articleid=312129
August 26, 2005
Natick Bulletin & Tab (Massachussets)
Maddocks: Time for a new treatment
By Philip Maddocks
The state Department of Conservation and Recreation's proposal
to check the spread of milfoil in Lake Cochituate with herbicides
has been held up so long in appeal that the state agency, known
as the Department of Environmental Management back in 2003 when
it filed its original plan with the Natick Conservation Commission,
has in the interim changed its name as well as its proposal.
But the new plan and the newly-named agency both seemed headed
for the same fate as the previous ones.
That's because no one knows for certain what affect the chemical
treatment might have on people who use the water in the lake
and from the nearby public water supply. And as we've seen its
the lack of knowledge more often than understanding that leads
to intransigence.
No one seems to know of any documented health problems, but
that seems to be as far as it goes. Take your pick, is it the
absence of evidence or the evidence of absence.
The DCR, which owns Lake Cochituate,
has made theirs. It said last week that further growth of milfoil
has rendered its original plan inadequate. Thus it is planning
to ask the Natick Conservation Commission for permission to
use an expanded herbicide treatment program.
"If we had been allowed to do what we sought to do last
year, the problem would have been solved," Joe O'Keefe,
spokesman for the DCR, told the MetroWest Daily News last week.
"Now we have an even larger scale of (milfoil)."
This is coming from the same agency that said it discovered
milfoil in Lake Cochituate in May 2002 but waited until September
of that year before installing floating mesh netting, known
as vegetation barriers, between the three main ponds of the
lake to help slow the spread of the fast-growing milfoil. And
it waited until May of the following year to bring a treatment
proposal before the town's Conservation Commission.
Now the DCR, whose original proposal called for using the
chemicals diquat bromide and endothall,
will likely file an application next month with the Conservation
Commission that will include a proposal to use the herbicide
fluridone, the same chemical that Wellelsey's Natural
Resource Committee voted against using in the town's weed-infested
Morse's Pond in June because the town's Integrated Pest Management
Policy prohibits the use of herbicides and pesticides on public
land or public water supplies, unless there is a direct danger
to human health or environmental health, and where no other
viable alternatives exist.
In Natick the DCR won't have to contend with any Pest Management
Policy but it will have to contend with the same pests who appealed
the agency's original plan and will likely appeal any new one
that calls for the use of herbicides.
"Do we really want to add more chemicals on top
of those that already exist? I really doubt it," said Carole
Berkowitz, a lakeside resident who is treasurer of POWR (Protect
Our Water Resources), a group formed to oppose herbicide use
in Cochituate, whose presence at the lake last week seemed to
suggest trouble for the DCR on both the political and acronymal
fronts.
POWR gathered at Lake Cochituate on Aug. 17 along with Toxics
Action Center of Boston and a group of kids from a South Middlesex
Opportunity Council program to voice their opposition to the
use herbicides that they see to as a threat to Natick's drinking
water, much of which is drawn from a wellhead area along the
eastern shoreline of the lake's South Pond.
While the children held signs with messages like "keep
our lake safe" and "weed killers kill animals too,"
the adults clung to the idea that unless the state used the
chemicals on them first, its new treatment plan would never
get off the ground - or at least into the water.
With another treatment stalemate seemingly imminent, and with
some estimating that the milfoil has spread to 120 of the lake's
625 acres, it appears that the milfoil is here to stay for the
time being.
Most of the experts say that hand-pulling the weed is only
effective when its infestation is limited. But Americans can
a remarkably industrious people if given a good reason to work.
So I wonder what would happen if the DCR had their own group
of kids posted along Rte. 9 holding signs with the message:
"Milfoil, the natural Viagra" or "Because you're
worth it, the weed that kills any sign of aging."
The possibilities - and the possible harvesters - are endless.
But it might be a question of ridding one invasive species
for another. The presence of this species, though, may have
the advantage of bringing unanimity of thought on the appropriateness
of chemical treatments .
Philip Maddocks can be reached at 508-626-4437 or by e-mail
at pmaddock@cnc.com.
