From the President's Desk

From the president’s desk

Amy Kuhns, ALA President

April 19, 2016

Spring has finally arrived with some warmer weather. The snow is almost gone, the ice on the lake is starting to break up and the birds are singing. Even though the winter was milder than previous years there was enough snow for cross country skiing and snowmobiling. Ice fishermen on the lake enjoyed themselves as well. The monthly fish fry gatherings were well attended. Our members are now looking forward to the opening day of the fishing season and getting back on the lake. The Lake Management Plan committee is meeting later this week with the experts from Onterra, the DNR and the USGS to discuss the data from all the research and surveys conducted by these organizations. This information will be crucial to the development of a thoughtful Lake Management Plan for Anvil Lake.

Our board of directors has met three times since the annual meeting to thoughtfully discuss and move ahead with our effort to manage the invasive species challenging the lake. We received the final report for 2015 from Onterra in February. I have sent it to all the members, along with the reports from Many Waters and Gene Welhoefer, summarizing their EWM harvesting efforts. Despite our significantly increased hours of harvesting EWM last summer, our difficult reality is that EWM continues to spread through the north bay. The good news is that it continues to be found in only scattered areas outside of the bay.

It has become clear to the board over the past two years that we need to develop a more efficient way to increase our EWM harvesting in the north bay. A DASH unit provides this by allowing the divers to remain on the bottom pulling EWM and feeding the plants into the suction hose, instead of repeatedly having to come to the surface with the bags of EWM that they have harvested. The dive team from Many Waters uses this method, but we do not have the funds to significantly increase their time on the lake. It will ultimately be more cost effective to create our own DASH unit to be used by our paid and volunteer divers. I want to thank Bob Mendlesky for all his hard work leading this project. He organized the refitting of the used pontoon boat that was purchased last summer. He is now getting final estimates for the equipment for the suction harvesting system. We are receiving advice from Many Waters, Onterra and the DNR as we move forward with this plan. We are not the first lake association to develop their own DASH unit. Our goal is to have it operational by July.

If you want to continue to swim, boat and fish in a lake that does not have mats of EWM please continue to volunteer. The membership renewal forms have been sent out with the information and goals for our EWM and DASH unit funds. Please renew your membership and contribute as generously as you are able to each of these funds.

With many thanks, Amy