Lake McMurray Celebrates Decade of Eurasian Milfoil Freedom

As this Fourth of July weekend is upon us, Aquatechnex biologists have completed one of two annual surveys to detect Eurasian Milfoil in this Western Washington Lake.  Lake McMurray was plagued with excessive growth of this invasive aquatic weed throughout the 1990’s.  With the help of our team, the community developed and implemented a Integrated Aquatic Vegetation Management Plan and secured funding from the Washington Department of Ecology to target this noxious weed. 

The plan called for a whole lake Sonar Aquatic Herbicide treatment, augmented by yearly diver surveys to detect any remaining plants.  Our team has used this technology to eradicate Eurasian Milfoil from a number of lakes in the Western United States.  The 167 acre water body was treated by our team in the summer of 2000 using methodologies we developed.  Sonar herbicide has an extended contact exposure time requirement.  We calculated an initial dose for the lake, make that application in June of that year, and monitored levels throughout the next eight weeks using SePRO’s FasTEST system of analysis.  At two and four week intervals are team used the FasTEST data to build additional treatment prescriptions and those were added to the system.  The overall project cost approximately $70,000.00 to perform. 

In the 10 years since, our biologists have performed twice yearly boat and diver inspections of the littoral area of this lake.  Like many others in the region, the 2000 Sonar treatment we performed has eliminated this noxious weed from the system and native aquatic plant communities are thriving.  The effective cost of Eurasian Milfoil control in Lake McMurray has been greatly reduced by the longevity of the results.