The last elodea herbicide treatment of the season has been issued to Stormy, Daniels, and Beck lakes in Nikiski.
Matt Steffy with the Homer Soil & Water Conservation District has been with the project since it began.
He gave an update on how the herbicide has been working so far.
Steffy: “Beck lake which was the most infested of the lakes, pre application process this spring we were at elodea frequencies of 70% at sample sites and we are down now to 12% so the elodea is disappearing. In Daniels lake we had initial frequencies of 24% and that is actually down to zero, so Daniels is great. Stormy lake we got a later start on because we were waiting for the funding to come from the state through the borough in July, so right now we’ve done the applications, we’re not seeing a huge difference just a slight decrease, but given the effectiveness in the other two lakes we think its just because of the delay in time.”
Steffy said volunteers along with the Kenai Watershed Forum have done extra sampling throughout the summer.
Steffy: “Lake sampling’s around the Kenai area specially in the Bishops creek watershed and every lake they sampled turn up negative so we’re still looking pretty good on the Kenai.”
Representatives from a variety of Palmer and Fairbanks groups came to see the progress. Fairbanks has been experimenting with manual eradication via rakes and suction but finds it labor intensive and less effective.