Swanton town officials will apply for a state grant that could help address nuisance plant growth in Maquam Bay, selectboard members voted Tuesday.
Several town residents say the plants wash up behind their homes on Maquam Shore Road and rot in the sun, forming a malodorous concoction they refer to as “muck.”
The board will also consider applying for a similar aquatic invasive species grant from the Grand Isle-based Lake Champlain Basin Program.
“I was very pleased,” Maquam Shore Road resident Roger George, who was at the meeting, said in an interview. “We appreciate what help they can give.”
VTDigger reported in August that George and several of his neighbors had been asking Swanton officials for help clearing the rotten plants along their properties for more than a year, but had received little response and were growing frustrated.
The board’s decision Tuesday night to apply for the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Aquatic Nuisance Control Grant-In-Aid Program came after about an hour of discussion on the cause of the muck and what could be done about it.
A large crowd turned out for Tuesday’s meeting, including multiple state officials.
Kimberly Jensen, an environmental scientist at the state Department of Environmental Conservation, suggested the town apply for the grant with a plan to study some of the causes of nuisance plants in Maquam Bay and some options for managing them.
In an interview Wednesday, she said it also would be useful to figure out the specific plant species causing the nuisance and to study the history of the local landscape.
After that, the town could consider removing plants from the bay, Jensen said. But she noted that doing so on a large scale would almost certainly require permitting.
She said mechanical weed harvesting, which is conducted by organizations in St. Albans and North Hero, may be more difficult to do in Maquam Bay.
“We want to make sure that they can get some answers before they proceed with any activity, making sure that those activities would be a permitted activity by the state so the natural resources are not threatened,” Jensen said in an interview.
Any plant removal that’s done with hand tools does not require permitting, Jensen said. Several Maquam Shore Road homeowners said they’ve tried to do that but have found it to be ineffective at improving access to the bay.
Cause and effect
Peter Isles, an aquatic biologist at the Department of Environmental Conservation, told the selectboard Tuesday that low water levels across Lake Champlain this year are likely worsening the nuisance plant growth.
Lower water levels allow more light to pass into the lake, he said, encouraging plant growth.
High phosphorus loads in the water also cause more growth, Isles said, and the lake’s Northeast Arm has “pretty rapidly increasing phosphorus concentrations.”
“This is kind of a background pressure toward increased cyanobacteria, as well as increased plant growth,” he said. “Essentially, you have more nutrients available.”
Karen Bates, watershed coordinator at the Department of Environmental Conservation, said phosphorus has also built up in the lake’s sediment and can get released, which contributes to growth such as algae blooms.
Phosphorus loads in Maquam Bay likely come from a number of sources, she said, including sand put on the roads in the winter and local agriculture operations.
“We can assume that anything that’s washing into Maquam Bay is going to be affected by road runoff,” Bates said.
Town officials said Tuesday it would be useful to have additional monitoring of where exactly polluted water is entering the bay, and at what rate.
One analysis of the local lakeshore is already underway. Friends of Northern Lake Champlain, a St. Albans-based organization, was awarded about $35,000 last December to study the shoreline in Swanton and Highgate.
The money is from the Lake Champlain Basin Program.
A field assessment will take place this fall, Friends board chair Kent Henderson said at the meeting. After that, he said engineers will draw up solutions and reach out to the community for input.
He noted, though, that these projects would not address plant growth directly.
“Our charge is not to remove nuisance plants. Our charge is not to change the shoreline,” Henderson said. “Our aim is to stop the pollution in the lake.”
