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Tina Sawyer: For 30 years, Higgins Lake, Michigan has been fighting a foreign invader. It's an invasive plant species called the Eurasian Water Milfoil. The Milfoil turns water systems into dead zones when it spreads... creating thick canopies of vegetation, blocking sunlight from native species. To find out more about how officials have been managing these issues, WCMU's Tina Sawyer recently spoke with Rick Meeks from the Higgins Lake Foundation. He began the conversation by explaining where the Milfoil plant is found in the lake.
Rick Meeks: Milfoil, we find will go down, it's usually around eight feet or less, but occasionally the divers will go down 15 feet and find it and pull it.
TS: So, I guess since we're on that subject after its discovery, a way to keep up with getting rid of it is using a process called DASH. Can you tell us what that stands for and the process?
RM: Before we get to the DASH boat, we also tried putting some panels down, big pieces of canvas basically on the bottom of the lake, 15 by 15 foot. And it worked to kind of snuff out the plants that killed them, prevented the light from getting to it. But as it got more and more, that became too labor intensive. That's how we ended up...we heard about the diver assisted suction harvesting boats. And we did some research and had him come to the lake and give us a demo. We bought that boat and it was on the lake, I’m thinking trials in 2011 and I think 2012, was the first full year we used it.
TS: Can you kind of describe what's used to get these plants out of the water?
RM: Well, the divers are hooked to the boat with air hoses. They don't have tanks. And they have a big hose with a five-foot diameter pipe is what it is. And they pull the plant and stick it in there and that pipe sucks right up onto the boat deck and it goes into what we called big onion bags. They fill up, and when they're wet and full, they weigh about 100 pounds apiece.
TS: How many pounds have you gathered all together with this dash process?
RM: Back when we first started, that first year of 2012 and 2013, we used to brag about how many bags we were getting. I mean, over the course of the summer, we'd get hundreds of bags.
TS: Wow.
RM: And then they'd end up at the township compost site. But over the years, we've been getting fewer and fewer bags. Divers are still out there and the plants are still there, but they're not as big and not as plentiful. So rather than saying there's something going wrong, we see that as a success.
TS: Now, is there any way to eradicate it completely from the lake, or you just have to keep up on it?
RM: I think there are a number of invasives that we're getting in our lakes that they're pretty much permanent. The zebra mussels, the quagga mussels are another example that things get in the lake, and you just learn to live with them because try and control them as best you can. And so that's what we view our Eurasian watermilfoil program as just a matter of trying to control it.
TS: Could you use the DASH for any other of the invasive species?
RM: We're pretty tightly controlled by the Department of Environment and Great Lakes and Energy. We can go after a few other plants legally. So, if we're down there and we see them, we throw them in the pipe.
TS: Can you name one of them that you've seen that surprised you?
RM: Since I mentioned zebra mussels, what's interesting is the zebra mussels are on these plants that we're pulling out. So that kind of makes us happy. We're pulling zebra mussels out of the lake too.
TS: Is there anything else for the future that's planned for Higgins?
RM: The Foundation, a big project we have right now, is trying to find out about well water. Different places are starting to show things in it that people shouldn't be drinking and don't know they're drinking. So, we started a process where we will pay to have people take a sample into the lab and we'll pay for their lab fees and the test fees and so on. I think July 1 is when we're going to kick it off.
That was Rick Meeks from the Higgins Lake Foundation talking with WCMU's Tina Sawyer.
