LEWISTOWN, Logan County — UPDATE @ 11:13 p.m.
Harvesting and the use of herbicides will be the short-term plan to get control of invasive weeds that threaten to put an economic chokehold on the town that relies on Indian Lake.
Hundreds turned out for Wednesday night’s public meeting at Indian Lake High School featuring the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and the Indian Lake Watershed Project discussion of the plans for the Coontail, a naturally occurring plant that began growing uncontrollably, and the Eurasian watermilfoil, a non-native species.
>>RELATED STORY: ODNR provides update on efforts to combat Indian Lake Vegetation
To bring the lake to a state where people such as could run their boats and fish freely, the watershed project worked with Restorative Lake Sciences and ODNR contracted with Aqua Doc.
“Indian Lake is a very unique situation” that prompted the customized approach, ODNR spokesman Mark Bruce told News Center 7′s Molly Koweek.
“We’ve used a number of different management techniques like harvesting in areas to ensure that there were navigable channels to the use of some selective herbicides to get rid of large areas where milfoil was the primary target, utilizing all these different techniques and having the support of the community has resulted in what happened at the end of the year,” said Edward Kwietniewski, aquatic biologist and certified lake manager.
The community relies heavily on the lake.
One of the scientists at the meeting presented a chart, using data from the Indian Lake Chamber of Commerce, to show that 54 percent of the businesses are on or near the lake.
“When you have a community that starts to come together and they care about their lake as much as they do, managing that lake becomes easier, because they themselves become a part of the solution,” Kwietniewski said.
ODNR’s Bruce said the short-term solution will include the continued use of harvesting and herbicides.
Kwietniewski, the biologist, said, “Going into next season, one of the most crucial things would be to get in early and figure out what is starting to grow right off the bat, so that we can be dynamic with how we’re going to go ahead and treat these weeds, manage these weeds, and be able to be adaptive.”
ODNR has spent $1.5 million treating the lake this year. The agency doesn’t have a cost estimate for the treatment program in 2023, but ODNR continues to search for long-term fixes to allow Ron Schlater, of St. Paris, and others to enjoy the water.
Schlater, who casts lines a few times a month, said he saw how bad things were on the water in spring and summer.
“It was a solid weed bed. You could not run, put a boat on it,” he said.
But now, he said, “you can get around, and you can fish for any kind of fish you want to fish for. It’s nice. I enjoy going out.”
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