fluridone – Aquarius-Systems

Massachusetts Blocks Chemical Treatment of Stockbridge Bowl

Tue, 19 Sep 2023 20:26:22 +0000

In a blow to the 400-member Stockbridge Bowl Association, the state has moved to block a test chemical treatment this spring in a portion of the lake.

The Department of Environmental Protection on Tuesday rejected an appeal by the association, which was pushing for the use of the herbicide fluridone to combat a weed infestation at the southern tip of the lake.

The goal is to use the town’s current weed harvester in tandem with a new mobile trailer-conveyor hooked to a pickup truck to dump harvested weeds at the town beach and the town-owned parking lot by the waterfall at the lake’s outlet. The weeds would be transported to property owned by a landscaper, where he would turn them into mulch.

Conservation Commission Kills Stockbridge Bowl Herbicide Test Plan

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 20:01:10 +0000

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.”

Herbicide to Treat Elodea Kills Native Aquatic Vegetation

Wed, 29 Dec 2021 21:49:49 +0000

Elodea is a plant commonly found in aquariums that, if released in the wild, will dominate certain lake or river habitats, choking out native vegetation and altering the food web at all levels.

It increases sedimentation rate, allowing more sediment to settle out of the water. And it can decrease the dissolved oxygen concentration in the water because it is growing so rapidly and using up all of that oxygen. But it also just displaces native aquatic plants, which are good forage for a variety of waterfowl species.

In addition, elodea can ruin the clear-water habitat needed by grayling and spawning salmon, and give an advantage to ambush predators like northern pike.

Applications of aquatic herbicide fluridone have appeared to have worked, and there is no elodea visible in Lake Hood (Alaska) now, but the herbicides killed most of the other plant life in Lake Hood as well.