No fast solution to hydrilla removal

Bob Malek pulls hydrilla from his boat landing on the Swift Creek Reservoir. Page Dowdy/Chesterfield Observer A colder-than-normal winter delivered a body blow to the aquatic plant that blanketed more than 700 acres of the Swift Creek Reservoir last summer, but it wasn’t a knockout punch.

Hydrilla is back, and based on the density of the troublesome weed clogging the propeller of Bob Malek’s pontoon boat, it’s growing as rapidly as ever.

“Over the winter, I couldn’t see any sign of it near my house, but I knew enough to know it didn’t die,” said Malek, a longtime Brandermill resident and chair of the Reservoir Management Group, which was formed earlier this year as part of the county’s plan to control the massive hydrilla infestation. “At this point, it’s at least as bad – and in some places, worse – than it was at this time last year.”

Boaters often have a hard time navigating the Swift Creek Reservoir because hydrilla becomes tangled around their boat propellers. Page Dowdy/Chesterfield Observer That’s hardly a surprising development to Utilities Director Roy Covington, who noted that county officials were “extremely outspoken” from the outset that achieving any significant control of the aggressive plant would be a long-term process.

“We said it was going to take at least two or possibly three years before we start to see appreciable differences,” Covington said. “We had a great winter, and that reduced the amount of hydrilla in the water, but when the weather gets hot, and the water is warmer, that facilitates activity.”

A report submitted earlier this year by Dr. Kenneth Wagner, a Connecticut-based consultant hired to evaluate the county’s hydrilla situation, recommended a two-pronged attack combining the introduction of sterile grass carp with the use of specialized machines to harvest heavy shoreline growths.

The foot-long carp – 10,500 in all – were released into the reservoir April 26 and have been monitored periodically by utilities staff. That includes Covington, who went out recently to check on water levels in the reservoir and was pleased to see a multitude of dark tail fins protruding from the water.

Carp eat with their tail fins out of the water, and they’re large enough now that you don’t need binoculars to observe them in action.

“I was there when we put them in, and they were really pretty small,” Covington said. “They’re growing, so we have to conclude that they’re eating the hydrilla as they’re supposed to do.”

The carp, which were purchased from an Arkansas company at a cost of $40,000, have a normal life expectancy of about 10 years. They can grow as large as 40 pounds and are capable of eating their weight in hydrilla on a daily basis.

That’s little comfort, however, to the many county residents who own property on the reservoir and are once again struggling to get their boats off the shoreline.

“We just want to be able to take our boats out. Is that selfish? I guess some people would say it is,” said Charlie Davis, whose shallow Brandermill cove has been particularly affected by hydrilla. “Even a trench out to the main channel would’ve made a big difference.”

At this point, spending several hundred thousand dollars on harvesting machinery is not high on the priority list for a county government that already has tightened its fiscal belt to cope with shrinking tax revenues – especially since the presence of hydrilla has not made an impact on the quality of drinking water provided by the reservoir.

With the support of Congressman Randy Forbes (R-4th District), the county applied for $2.9 million in federal funding through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Aquatic Plant Control program, but the application was not approved.

While the Reservoir Management Group continues to explore various options, such as purchasing a smaller machine to carve out individual boat pathways through the dense hydrilla closer to the shoreline, the price tag remains a substantial deterrent.

“The reality of the situation is any other method of getting rid of the stuff is extremely expensive, and the county is not going to come up with the money,” Malek said. “In this economy, I don’t think it would go over very well if they did.”

At the same time, Malek cautioned anyone who thinks the hydrilla is merely “a problem for boaters” to look more closely at the big picture concerning the future value of property adjacent to the reservoir.

“If you have a boat, and you can’t use it,” he said, “what good is it to own land on a lake?”