The Town of Stockbridge, Massachusetts’s Conservation Commission rejected an application by the Stockbridge Bowl Association to combat the infestation with a limited, low-dose test of an herbicide this spring. Members voted 4-0 to deny a permit for a fluridone treatment by Solitude Lake Management on a 40-acre portion of the state-owned lake’s southern shoreline area, as recommended by Robert Kortmann, a commission-hired scientist.
The reason, according to the commission: The project would not “significantly improve the capacity of the Stockbridge Bowl to protect and sustain” the ecological restoration of the lake under the state’s Wetlands Protection Act.
In a separate decision, the commission also rejected the project under the town’s wetlands bylaw, voting unanimously that the treatment approved by state and federal environmental agencies would “harm the environmental quality of the Bowl,” or “would have unacceptable significant or cumulative effects upon the resource area values protected by the bylaw.”