The El Nino has set our calander forward by a month or two. The algae invasion began a month or two later than it did last year. We can see the algae coming in from the lake through the bridge on Island Drive and in the East Canal entrance. The East Canal and the four canals paralled to Hwy. 20 are severly impacted. Island circle is severly impacted. Shoreview is heavily impacted.
Yesterday several volunteers tried out a fabricated boom used by two spray boats to haul algae out of the East Canal and into the lake. This experiment shows we can remove significant amounts of algae from the main canal.
We are expecting 300 feet of new first – class booms to arrive any day. By placing a boom across the East Canal and one across the Island Drive bridge we hope to prevent most of the algae from entering the Keys. Then using two spray boats with a boom we can haul algae from the East Canal into the lake and keep it out there with the boom in place. We can remove algae from Island Circle with the harvester.
We tried to chemically treat a part of Island Circle canal but did not see much if any improvement.
We continue using the harvester and spray boats to aerate the water and to break the large clumps of dead algae into smaller bits which helps to reduce the unpleasant odors. It is impossible for the spay boats and harvester to ‘beat down’ the algae in each canal each day. We have many hard working volunteers maning the fleet each day doing the best they can.
We have been quite successfull in coordinating the harvester volunteers. We still do not have a good coordinating system for the spray boats. What we tried to do was to get volunteers from each zone to contact the spray boat captains. Unfortunately we have one spray boat captain out for a shoulder operation and another on vacation. Hopefully this coordination situation will be improved soon. Some vacation home (part time) volunteers get frustrated because it is so difficult to coordinate them. It is difficult to organize part time volunteers because
(1) trying to schedule training with experienced operators (who have been working all week) when part timers are available on weekends is tricky.
(2) after training part time volunteers then trying to schedule them not knowing when they will be available is difficult.
If any member is willing to attempt to identify and schedule the part time volunteers please step forward.
When entering the lake one can expect to encounter a significant amount of weeds until one gets past M&M campground. Be watchful of your temperature gage and remove any weeds if you overheat. Sometines, running your engine in reverse for a brief time can clear off the weeds.
We will be battling the algae for the rest of the summer with limited sucess. We are battling a big beast with small hammers.