Side-by-side state comparison of safe water efforts. (Submitted graphic)
RANGELEY — Since 2002, Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust has diligently checked boats more than 25,000 boats for aquatic hitchhikers, like milfoil. Paid and volunteer inspectors are focusing their efforts on high traffic public boat launches.
Over the last 18 summers, inspectors have educated more than 20,000 boaters and visitors to the Region on the larger bodies of water: Cupsuptic, Mooselookmeguntic, Richardson and Rangeley lakes.
As of today, RLHT’s courtesy boat inspectors have collectively inspected 2,407 boats. That’s last year’s total number of inspections and this season isn’t even over yet! 28 plants have been found entering or leaving the water which has been identified as non-threatening/invasive.
It only takes one plant fragment on one boat for an infestation to take hold of a lake. Once established, there is no native predator in to slow its progress and it grows at an expediential rate, rapidly taking over shorelines making the area unsuitable for swimming or fishing.
As an example of the cost of invasive milfoil, in 2010, invasive milfoil was found in a stream leading into Great Pond in Belgrade. To date, $110,294 has been spent on removal just in 2018, and the lake association planned to spend another $20,000 in 2019. Money for removal has come from DEP grants, municipalities, private donors and increasingly, from lake associations. Managing this one infestation will cost an estimated $20,000 to $40,000 perpetually.
