Public Hearing - Printed in the Melrose Free Press on January 24, 2000: In accordance with the provisions of Mass General Law Chapter 39, Section 23B, the Melrose Conservation Commission will hold a public hearing Thursday, February 3, 2000 at 7:45 p.m. in the Mayor's Conference Room, 2nd Floor, City Hall. The purpose of this hearing is to discuss the chemical treatment of ponds in Melrose. Submitted by the Melrose Conservation Commission for application of herbicide to control fanwort, coontail and water lilies in Ell Pond, Towners Pond, and Swains Pond. This work is to be completed in the spring and summer of the year of 2000. Any interested person wishing to be heard in this discussion should appear at the time and place designated.
We are looking at the Determination of Applicability for this project. In attendance was Mr. Gerald Smith, Aquatic Biologist, representing Aquatic Control Technology. He explained some of the chemicals that would be used in the operation.
Mr. Smith: Most of the commissioners know we have an ongoing program of the Melrose ponds for a number of years now. Part of our program is that we go out typically in the spring and do surveys of the three water bodies that we generally have been managing and that includes Ell, Towners and Swains Ponds, and provide an assessment of what kind of aquatic plants are there. We are primarily looking for not only native plants, but particularly non-native species, exotic species that are particularly evasive and take over a pond very quickly. We generally identify the map of plants and we formulate our treatment program. We also file the site's specific permit for each pond every year and that provides DEP a listing of the chemicals we are using. Once we receive our permit, we continue to monitor the ponds and when we feel they are ready for treatment, we typically perform the herbicide treatments for the weeds, typically in May or June period. Again, the intent here is not to eliminate aquatic plant growths from the ponds. Certainly we are fully cognizant of the need for plants for fishing and wild life habitat and the important functions they serve, but on the other hand if these ponds were not managed there would just be no open water. They intend to be shallow, some of them have invasive plants and if the management program was abandoned, they would just be quickly 100% chokers as for instance Towners Pond was many, many years ago. Ell Pond had not been treated for weeds since 1996, and was treated last year through the Program of Monitoring & Management. It is not like we are treating every year regardless; what we do is look at it each year and do the assessment, then if it needs treatment we make known what we have found and the level of treatment that we feel is appropriate. Ell Pond is a remarkably forgiving pond. I recall the pond being green from July - October and I think that has improved a great deal. I would like to take credit for that, but I don't think we can. It was obvious some measure of improvement of homeowners efforts, other activities in the water shed that improved the situation of the algae, and certainly the treatments that we have done have also helped with the algae. Last year we did need to do treatment of the algae weeds and we think we are needing to do some spot treatment there this year, and again we have cat tails and emergent vegetation that seem to be constantly encroaching and through the years periodically we have to trim those back some.
Towners Pond: we have had a very aggressive program the last 5 or 6 yrs. We started off initially with the mechanical removal of the Hydro-Raking process to remove a lot of the water lily plants and many hundreds of yards of plant material were removed. That is a good process, trying to integrate both mechanical and general approaches as part of the project. Following that we have needed to follow up with treatment. Last year was an especially difficult and challenging year for us on managing weeds because of the very low water levels at Towners Pond. That means more sunlight penetrates to the bottom, which means more termination of weeds. It was a very challenging year and we ended up treating at once initially for weed control and then we came back on four separate occasions to spot treat the lilies. Even with that, the control on the lilies were not as good as we had hoped or as perhaps the commissioners had expected, so this year we are planning on treating it with Sonar and Fluridone Aquatic Herbicide which we know will do a very good job.
Swains Pond: We have done both mechanical and chemical work. Quite a few years ago we did mechanical Hydro-Raking on some of the emergent vegetation on the far side. You will recall there is a plant called water willow that grows out of the water 2 or 3 ft. and that was encroaching further around the shoreline and following further out. Therefore we did some mechanical work with hydrant and that was very effective for approximately five years, but that is starting to come back and that could certainly use some mechanical work this year. Also, we treated that three years ago with Sonar herbicide for fanwood. Fanwood is a very common, very aggressive young native plant that will quickly take over and that has really started to choke Swains Pond. We treated that once in 1997 and it provided very good control for three years. Last year we surveyed and found it coming back and we are recommending that it again be treated this year.
Mr. Smith had information on the chemicals with him for the commissioner's use and this year's proposal. We do need to be filing permits soon with DEP and Mr. Smith asked the commission, if they feel it is appropriate, to act on the subject of Bob's review and budgetary availability. During the course of the project Aquatic Control is very sensitive to public perception and any adverse impacts, again typically they do not see any fish mortality or adverse effects on wild life. It is a very safe process done by professionals and done by the book.
Bob: Are all of the Herbicides approved by the state?
Mr. Smith: Yes, they are registered both by the Federal EPA and by the Commonwealth. There is probably no chemicals that are more intensively reviewed than what we use in aquatic situations. All these products that we are using have been registered and have been in use for a minimal of 15 years, some of them as long as 25 years.
Bob: Is there any need for posting notification around the area?
Mr. Smith: With any products we use per state requirements, we could actually apply these chemicals and we could swim immediately. As an extra precaution, we think it is prudent to keep people out of the water, not that there are people swimming in any of these water bodies anyway, but when we use a herbicide we post and restrict swimming beyond herbicide, so if this is going to have an impact, it is going to be on anybody that might be drawing from any of these ponds for irrigating. The only one might be Ell Pond and I haven't seen any intakes there as well.
Bob: We try to inform the local police department, health department, building department and engineering department when you are coming.
David: How about terms of consumption, particularly at Swains Pond there are people that fish there?
Mr. Smith: There is no restriction on eating fish from treated waters. Again, we are treating 250 ponds and lakes a year, so it is a real common practice and with any of these products you can fish immediately and the chemicals do not concentrate in their tissues as some of the other chemicals you have read about previously.
Bob: How about the wild bird life in the area. Will they be affected?
Mr. Smith: No. There are over 120 different short term and long term toxicity tests and studies that these chemicals are subject to and they were approved a number of years ago, but in the last five years EPA has more stringent protocol that we have had to undergo and retest these products to meet that protocol. No one can come in and tell you a chemical is perfectly safe, but they do not pose negligible risk.
Nancy: The compounds we are talking about are ones in the Sonar?
Mr. Smith: These chemicals have two names, one is a common name which is Sonar and the active ingredient is Fluridone, depending on the type of plant.
Nancy: How do the most stringent toxicity values compare with your rate of application or quantity of application?
Mr. Smith: With Sonar for example, we are applying at a very low concentration - 20-50 parts per billion, incredibly low.
Nancy: What is the toxicity values that would correspond to one of the chemicals in Sonar.
Mr. Smith: It would depend on the organism. There is a safety factor probably a minimum of ten-fold.
Nancy: So you don't apply above the toxicity value?
Mr. Smith: No, we can't, we are regulated the labels specified application rates. We Can apply Sonar up to 90 parts per billion in a pond, 150 parts per billion in a lake. We are only applying it at 50 parts. We are only ½ of what EPA and the state says we can apply it, but if we can do the job at a lower rate, that is what we want to do. Also, what we are trying to do is be more selective in the plants we control. We are not out there to wipe out all plants, we have a lot of good, low growing desirable plants we want to keep, but we do want to control some of those tall and profile plants. Those plants happen to be especially sensitive to Sonar, so we can control them at lower doses and leave some of the desirable species.
David: I am just curious how it is applied. If I wanted to use something like this on my walk, I just spray it on and you can't do that in a pond.
Mr. Smith: We have boats, sprayers, tanks, pumps and are measuring out carefully calculated how much material goes in a specific area and we use low pressure sprayers. We probably do more non-chemical work than anybody in the northeast, we try to use the mechanical approach where practical and we have done that certainly in Melrose and we will continue to do so. We really do need a balanced approach.
Bob: Towners Pond has always been a problem. Will the treatment this year eliminate this problem?
Mr. Smith: It won't get rid of it permanently, but it will do a job and I have no reservations about it. We will follow through on it. We were trying to be a little bit less intrusive by following up with the Rodeo and spot treatments, but it is just not enough. It is going to be a challenge because it is so shallow. It has a soft bottom. Particularly last summer with the low water, an average depth of 2.5 ft. and the sunlight beating to the bottom caused the growth of a number of plants.
Nancy: Do you propose anything mechanical this time?
Mr. Smith: If funding allows, we put in optional for Swains Pond on the water level for that pond's shore. Bob and I need to go look at this shore.
Nancy: What happens to the chemicals eventually? Where do they go?
Mr. Smith: The products we use in aquatics dissipate from the water very quickly, on the matter of generally, days. The chemicals as they move, if they are incorporated in the plants and move to the sediments, are degraded from the sediments either by micro, light, and those are the two most common pathways that are broken down and are broken typically in the simple elemental compounds. They are not broken down into toxic deriveters that are made in the sediments. I know you have an interest in this and there is some literature here that will talk about the end products and the fate of these materials.
Dave: Is it possible to do some kind of treatment that absorbs or negates the nutrients that are in the pond that would prevent these things from growing?
Mr. Smith: Where you have chronic algae problems, free floating algae gets in nutrients from the water column, and ideally what you want to do is clean up the water shed, so you don't have the nutrients going into the system. Ell Pond is a classic of having an 8 year $1,000 study done years ago which said clean up the water shed. Barring that and if you have done as much as you can in the water shed, and you are still having chronic algae problems, then one technique used very successfully is called Alan Treatment, which is aluminum sulfate, used in drinking water plants for decades. It is a fairly expensive process and it is not effective as long as you have a lot of nutrients coming in like Ell Pond at a rapid flushing rate. We have a pretty large drainage area there and it has fairly rapid turnover so the cost for an Alan Treatment really isn't cost efficient.
Bob: We have been working with the soccer league that abuts the Ell Pond area and a prior request that they use organic fertilizer. Would that be a use of reducing the amounts of chemicals getting into Ell Pond.
Mr. Smith: Obviously, minimizing fertilization is probably the best practice, then beyond that using an organic nitrogen type of fertilizer, we actually distribute a no phosphate fertilizer to lake associations. That has a good portion of nitrogen in organic form, which means it is going to be a slow release nitrogen so if you get a rain storm it will flush right in. Phosphorous is really the nutrient of keys for the weeds. That is a good thing to do.
Nancy: Please send us info on this one.
Nancy: If we did not do this treatment, what would happen to the ponds?
Mr. Smith: You would see the ponds revert to the way they were. Those of you who have been here will remember Towners, it will be 100% covered. Ell Pond was socked with vegetation on the surface and sometimes in the past it has been a stinking mess.
Bob: I remember Towners Pond probably eight years. You could actually walk on the vegetation. Even the ducks were having trouble getting through.
Mr. Smith: That is not good fish habitat because you have so much plant life, you have just really low oxygen levels when you get that kind of conditions and the best thing is to have open water and vegetation. Again, what we really try to do is maintain vegetation obviously in the pond area, but also the shore line vegetation is really important and the products we are using aren't impacting emergent shoreline plants unless we specifically spray it on them. We can be pretty specific in what we do as compared to say 30 years ago when it was really an "all" approach.
Bob: Is there any one in this hearing who would be against this project
No reply.
Voted: To close the public hearing.
Bob: We are coming for a Determination of Applicability from what we have heard and what I have read in the previous documentation that was submitted. I am looking for a negative determination for this Determination of Applicability. It will probably go under the work described "it is within the buffer zone as defined in regulation, would not alter an area subject to protection under the act, therefore said work does not require the filing of a notice of intent."
Voted: A negative for this Determination of Applicability, which does not require filing a notice of intent.
