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THE DAILY ASTORIAN • MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2016
Residents put weeds in the crosshairs at Loomis Lake
Spraying of
herbicide at
peninsula’s
largest lake
By DAVID PLECHL
EO Media Group
LOOMIS LAKE, Wash.
— The latest battle in the war
on invasive weeds is being
fought at Loomis Lake.
After a 10-year cease ire,
the Washington Department
of Ecology approved a plan
and funding for staggered
applications of herbicide fol-
lowed by spot treatments to
be applied to the infested
lake. Spraying began earlier
this month.
“Just looking at it now, it
looks awful,” said longtime
Tides West resident Janet
Easley, as she gazed out the
window of her lake-front
home. “About half the lake is
covered.”
The noxious weeds are
most visible around the
fringes of the lake. Since the
mid-1990s, when invasive
aquatic plants irst took hold,
recreation and boating on the
lake, once popular, steadily
declined as the weeds began
to strangle boat propellers,
tangle swimmers and crowd
out native vegetation and ish
stocks.
As the problem worsened,
a consensus emerged — the
weeds had to go — but neigh-
bors to the lake found a solu-
tion to the problem did not
come easy, as jurisdiction
over the peninsula’s largest
lake was not always easy to
discern.
“When you’re not in an
incorporated area, you’re like
an orphan,” Easley said.
Eventually, the neighbor-
hood groups conducted sur-
veys, hosted forums and
through conversations with
state and local land-use agen-
cies, came up with a plan and
$75,000 grant funding from
the state to treat the lake. The
last time the lake was treated
was in 2005, and that was a
follow-up to a 2002 treatment.
“There’s a lot of support
for this plan from people who
live on the lake, or near the
lake, that love the lake, and
just want it to look the way
it used to look,” Easley said.
She leads a loosely organized
citizen group, the Loomis
Lake Restoration Group, that
has been at the forefront of
the effort that refuses to cede
to the weeds.
Eradication of ‘Class A’
weeds is required by law.
However, management of
‘Class B’ weeds, like the Bra-
zilian elodea and Eurasian
watermilfoil at Loomis, is
aimed at containment, with
control measures decided at
the local level. Several appli-
cations of herbicide will likely
be necessary just to contain
the proliferation of the tena-
cious weeds, say those famil-
iar with the plan.
David Plechl/EO Media Group
Janet Easley’s private dock at her home on Loomis Lake rises above approaching noxious aquatic weeds. She leads
the Loomis Lake Restoration Group which has been successful at forging partnerships with local agencies to develop
a plan to manage the weeds that have affected recreation and the ecology of the lake.
Facilitating
a game plan
Homeowners take
the initiative
“These weeds are not just
any weeds,” said Mike Nor-
din, district manager for the
Paciic Conservation District.
“They are recognized as some
pretty bad weeds, and that’s
why we can get money to do
this.”
The conservation district
secured the grant through
the state after homeowners
and other agencies, over the
course of several years, came
up with a detailed vegetation
management plan to rid the
lake of the infestation.
According to Nordin, the
district does not function as a
regulatory agency, but instead
works to assist stakeholders
facing conservation and natural
resource management issues.
Sometimes those issues affect
cranberry growers, dairy pro-
ducers, isheries or just neigh-
bors to a natural resource, like
Loomis Lake, he said.
A little over two years ago,
homeowners around the lake
contacted the district after a
recommendation from county
commissioners, who said they
weren’t equipped to deal with
the weeds. No other agencies
had stepped forward to man-
age the growing problem, and
that yielded an opportunity.
“We can pick up the ball
and run with it as long as
nobody else is carrying the
ball,” Nordin said.
The conservation district
met with lakeside residents
and enlisted input from other
agencies, such as the Depart-
ment of Natural Resources,
Department of Fish and Wild-
life, and Department of Ecol-
ogy, as to the best way to deal
with the weeds.
Nordin said a review of the
lake and input from all those
Several neighborhood-led
groups have tried their best to
battle the weeds as far back
as the mid-1990s, when the
plants, native to the Amazon,
started showing up in North-
west waterways, possibly the
result of people dumping out
aquarium plants into lakes.
Those tiny decorative
sprouts have literally grown
into miles of holy terrors, cost-
ing municipalities and county
governments tens of thousands
of dollars a year in manage-
ment costs. The weeds clog
drainage ditches across south-
west Washington and are a
perennial problem in lakes
and slow-moving bodies of
freshwater.
Easley watched the per-
sistent spread of the lake invad-
ers over the years from the lake-
side home she has lived in since
1987. She said her involvement
in the effort to eliminate the
David Plechl/EO Media Group
Loomis Lake has grown thick with invasive weeds in the
10 years since it was last treated. Now, a new round of
treatments is set to begin mid-month, after a grant from
the Department of Ecology was secured to chemically
and mechanically remove the invasive Brazilian elodea
and Eurasian watermilfoil.
agencies resulted in what he
believed to be a clear consen-
sus that a chemical treatment
management plan was the
only viable way to proceed.
“We told the homeowners
from the get go that if there
was going to be resistance
to this project we wouldn’t
be getting involved,” Nordin
said. To date, that resistance
has not emerged, and Nor-
din said residents have voiced
overwhelmingly that swim-
ming and recreation need to
return to the lake. Removing
the weeds will also provide
habitat for ish and birds that
use the lake, oficials said.
While the conservation
district facilitated the plan
and secured the state grant,
the Department of Natu-
ral Resources is applying
the herbicide, Nordin said.
This includes several sepa-
rate treatments to small sec-
tions of the lake, rather than
one aggressive treatment that
planners fear could result in
a potentially lake-suffocating
die-off.
“If you kill a lot of veg-
etation all at once, you get
eutrophication, and you end
up killing small ish species,
so we’re going to do it little
by little,” Nordin said, adding
that next year, the lake will be
reviewed and spot treatments
applied as necessary.
weeds began years ago when
she started asking neighbors
whose responsibility it was to
manage the weeds. Nobody
seemed to know.
“I just assumed there was
some government agency
watching over it,” Easley said.
“As it turns out, it’s not a sim-
ple answer.”
The Department of Natu-
ral Resources owns the bot-
tom of the lake. Department of
Fish and Wildlife manages the
ish and waterfowl. State Parks
owns much of the land sur-
rounding the lake, but nobody
was eager to claim the weeds.
That led Easley and oth-
ers to start gathering informa-
tion and allies in an effort to
deal with the problem. Doz-
ens of neighbors signed off
on their support, and county
and state agencies were recep-
tive to the group’s efforts, but
money to treat the lake and a
speciic agency response was
still lacking.
The Restoration Group
sought input from residents
around the lake and found most
supported treating the lake
with herbicides. Easley said
the plan to treat the lake has
the endorsement of the Dunes
Bible Camp, the Tides West
Homeowners Association and
the Sunset Sands Homeowners
Association.
She said iguring out who
had the responsibility to treat
the weeds has been an eye
opener. It’s taught her that cit-
izen involvement is sometimes
the key to getting the wheels in
motion.
“If we hadn’t started work-
ing on this, we wouldn’t have
started this year, and no one
would be doing anything,”
Easley said.
She’s heard old timers
recall when the lake was a hub
for recreation, swimming, and
even motor boat races. The
lake is shallow, and free of dan-
gerous logs, undertows, crab
holes and currents.
“Our goal is that it will be
returned to its beautiful state
and be friendly to boaters and
swimmers and ishers,” Easley
said. “It used to be very import-
ant on the peninsula as a rec-
reation resource, because it’s
safe!”
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