(Orleans)– What’s become an annual nemesis on some of the Iowa Great Lakes is about to rear its ugly head again this spring: curly leaf pondweed. Mike Hawkins of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources says their mitigation plan for the weed this year is going to be similar to what was done last year with a combination of chemical treatment and mechanical harvesting. He says the water temperature needs to reach a certain level before the chemical application can begin…
“Our kind of tentative schedule is sometime in mid-April. We need to allow water temperatures to start to warm up. We need between 50 and 60 degrees and we want to see the plant actually actively growing when the treatment occurs. The herbicide we use is a contact herbicide. It has to hit a very specific concentration to actually kill the plant. And so the application is fairly precise. We’ve learned some things over the last few years with application and the professionals that we’re using have been modifying their techniques a little bit here and there just trying to maximize the value.”
Hawkins says the herbicide treatment will be done on about 60 acres…
“That will be concentrated along the outside of boat docks on the northern half of East Okoboji, and then some work as well down in Lower Gar. That will be followed up with some mechanical harvesting and really the objective of all of this is to improve navigation and people’s ability to get out and enjoy the lakes.”
In addition, Hawkins says they’ll be doing about 25 acres of mechanical harvesting of curly leaf pondweed, with most of that taking place in the north bay of East Lake Okoboji.
