March 10, 2026 – Surface Water Quality Committee – Video & Transcript
March 10, 2026 - Surface Water Quality Committee
Let's do, since we're, since these are remote meetings, we have to announce our presence.
So at 7.01, let's get the meeting underway and let's announce our presence.
I'll start with myself, Tom Klem, present.
Tom Largy, present.
Steve Garone, present.
Larry Kiernan, present.
Awesome. Great. Thanks, guys. Thanks all for joining tonight.
First item on the X, let me ask, I don't know, Robbie, somebody on the town, is there any public comment?
I haven't asked in a while. There never has been, but I should probably check in occasionally. Okay, there's not. First item on the agenda will be to approve the minutes from last month. Larry, you could abstain. You weren't here for that one. So whatever's in the minutes, true or false, you can just, you know, stand by. So we still have a quorum with Steve and Tom and myself. So motion to approve the minutes from February 3rd.
So moved. As submitted. Okay. Okay, I'll second.
All right. And then let's go around the room and vote. So Steve? Steve, yes. Tom Largy, yes. Tom Klem, aye. And then Larry, I'll just have you as abstain since you weren't here for that. Abstain, yeah. All right. Well, since Steve, since you have, I was going to reverse the order of our two agenda items, but since you've got plenty of time, I'll keep the order as on the agenda, which is Herd Pond. And Larry, the regular thing that Tom Largy has been overseeing on Herd Pond for 20 plus years is the annual hand harvesting of water chestnut. The plants are invasive. They're a perennial problem. It's ebbed and flowed over the decades. But in recent years, it's gotten so bad. And we have so few options as for hand harvesting that our one vendor solitude, every year it's a struggle for them to get people to pull the stuff and the boats get smaller and smaller. They had kayaks last year. So we go through the exercise anyways, but to complement that, we hope, we got approval last year to do herbicide application to try and maintain some kind of equal footing with the plants here. And so the hand harvesting, we've done every year for decades now. And Tom just got the contract, which I'm looking forward to you guys, you and Steve, a short while ago. We got it on Monday, but you can take a look later on. It's the usual thing. We cap it at $9,900. If you go over $10K, you've got to go through an RFP process. So Tom has craftily requested these to be $9,900. And then we do have, we always need a few more days of hand harvesting. So you can go up to 25% over that contracted amount. So it's a way to just keep under that ceiling. And so what you're seeing there is the typical thing that solitude provides us. And what they'll do is they'll do a pre-survey and then they'll go out. In fact, Larry, I'll make a note. I'll send you some prior reports that we get from them. Yeah, that'd be great. Actually, Tom, the contract says that the cost will be $0 for the pre-survey, and I will do it, which I've done every year. So we do a pre-survey. Okay. So it's always been, Tom, you've been the one to do it. I know they always rely on your survey. So that's been the standing practice for a long time where you do the survey and just give them the information. Yes, yes. Okay. So anyways, Larry. Tom, are we looking at a document now? Is there a contract? No. All right. I didn't call it up. If you'd like to see it, I can, but I did not call it up. I'll look at it later. Okay. That's fine. Yeah, and if you have any questions, you can write to, well, me, and then I can answer any questions. But what you'll see in there is the same old thing that we've done since time immemorial, basically. Yeah. Yeah, well, let me discuss that a little bit. Sure. Herd Pond is about 85 acres. And historically, the far southwest corner, which at low water time is mucky bottom, one to two, three feet of depth. And that's been the hot spot. The rest of the pond, depending on the depth, has been a problem. But Herd Pond, unlike other water bodies like Lake Cachichwood or Dudley Pond, for whatever reason is, and I don't quite understand it, it's, I don't know if the term is turbid, but there are blooms in the summer and so forth. So, at certain depths, and the pond is, at low water is only about eight feet deep at its deepest. We don't tend to have weed problems where it's eight feet deep. Apparently, the sunlight doesn't get down there. Right now, it's probably 11 to 12 feet deep. So, about 70 acres of the pond, we've been hand harvesting. And actually, we mechanical harvested until 2009, and then hand harvested for a number of years. And actually, we're doing great. And up until 2016, when the pond just exploded. And apparently, these water chestnut seeds, I estimated that over the years, we've pulled over 3 million plants. These water chestnut seeds just are in the sediment, and they're viable for many, many years. So, when we started the project, they said seven years viability, then 10, then 10 to 12, then 15, and so forth. So, that's what we're fighting against. So, it blew up on us in 2016, and ever since then, several blow-ups, quite large the last three seasons or so. So, Tom and I, I've taken Tom out a couple times on the pond. And when the hand harvesters, when it blows up in the southwestern cove area, hand harvesting is, it just doesn't work. I've got photos, I think you may have all seen them of Tom and I on the boat, in a boat full of weeds. And, and I'll be 86 tomorrow. That's my birthday. And I'm wearying of it. I don't have the energy to go out. I have energy to go fishing, by the way. I'm planning a big trip to Washington State in September. But, that's different. We'll have a guide rowing our boat down the river. So, if Tom and I had done that intensively for a couple of days, I guess we could have cleaned it up. But, we didn't. So, the herbicide seems to be about the only thing we do. There is a glitch, a major glitch or problem. And that is that last year, when we were going through the permitting, fish and wildlife raised, it was, they had maps showing that Herd Pond was that far southern area, southwestern area. Some of that was fish and wildlife property. Anyway, therefore, the, and Tom Klem and I went, there was quite a bit of discussion around that. Therefore, the applicators last year left a, an untreated band around the perimeter of the pond. And, so, in the report, and you may not have gotten it, Larry, or I may have said it to you, but there is a photo of Tom and I were out in the pond late last August. And, you can see this green band. Now, water chests, that's, a single plant will drop anywhere from three or four to a dozen to a few dozen seeds. It's a kind of plant that sends out something called a rosette. And then the rosette will, in turn, send out another rosette. There may be seven, eight, nine seeds per plant. They drop down. So, by virtue of that untreated area, what that's done is it's added to what's called a, quote, seed bank, a seed bank of viable seeds in the sediment, which are going to be good for many, many years and will tend to drift further into the pond. So, to me, it's, it's fairly discouraging. I've thought a few times this winter that we just give up on the pond. When, around 2000, when we started the project, the pond, a large part of it was, in the summertime, was a 100% monoculture on top of water chestnut plants. So, there was no boating or fishing or anything else there. It's pretty tough. It's a very, very, a herd pond apparently is unique. It's just tough. That's, that's all there is to it. But, back to the hand-pulling, the hand-pulling is for the 70 or so acres that are not big problems and haven't been for a number of years, whereas the herbicide is for that 13 or so acre portion of the Southwest Cove, which has been a huge problem for many years. So, that's, that's what it amounts to. Another point of view, looking at it, is that from a recreational point of view and maybe a waterfowl point of view and so forth, if we can keep that 70 or so acres open, then that means the pond is open for recreation and fishermen. And I've even seen sailboats out there, canoes, kayaks, whatever. Whereas, that Southwestern Cove area is so difficult that hardly anybody goes in there. It's just plain difficult. That's all there is to it. So, we're, we're, we're doing our best to keep at least some kind of a equilibrium and we might have, we might be losing that South Cove area. And to get back to a point that Tom was making, 2016, it looked like we were making, Tom, I should say, before I joined, was making good progress. And in 2016, the plant spiked. And it went down again. And we hadn't seen this once before previously. So, we thought, okay, it's just one of those things where conditions came together in a way that the plant spiked. And they went down to manageable levels for the next maybe about five years. But in the past three or so, it's just been wild growth of these plants that we've not been able to contain just by hand pulling. So, almost two years ago, Tom and I worked with Solitude to get permitting to apply herbicide to herd pond. And we got that early last year. And so, last season was our first attempt at applying herbicide to the pond. Not quite clear how successful it was. So, I'll try again this year. To the point that Tom was making about the boundaries. And Tom, I sent a bunch of information this morning that was a good refresher for me. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. Thank you. So, what Tom was talking about was, you know, when we went through the process of Solitude, we had to get permit approved from the state. So, we went to CONCOM. And before CONCOM could approve it, they said, go to the state. We went to the state. And the state said, well, this is a national wildlife refuge. You have to go to the federal government. So, we went all the way to the top, if you will. And the feds, the federal government said, okay, you can do this. But the boundaries of the pond are somewhat in U.S. fish and wildlife territory. So, you can't treat that part of the pond. And so, we agreed. We got that okay. And then it went back down to the state. And the state said, fine. Then it went to Linda and the Conservation Commission. They said, fine. So, I had forgotten about that because when Solitude applied the herbicide last year, we were thinking, why didn't you treat the whole edge of the thing? So, it turns out they couldn't do that. And so, we're going to see if we can get further permission. But I think that's going to be unlikely in the time frame we need. So, I discussed this with Linda Hanson at Conservation a few weeks ago. And first of all, Herd Pond is what's called the Massachusetts Great Pond. And that designation goes back to colonial times, allowing free access for, quote, fishing and fouling. I don't know how many ducks are shot on Herd Pond. It's possible. But actually, I think hunters do go out in the Sudbury through the pond. And a great pond is owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If fish and wildlife has some boundaries that extend into the pond, and it's very unclear. We can't tell looking at a map versus a GPS point. If we had, you know, I'm not even certain that Solitude did that kind of thing. But from Linda's point of view, she put out a permit for Herd Pond, period. And that means for the entire pond. Now, the other thing, back to the feds, that's U.S. Fish and Wildlife. That's Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge. This year, you know, who knows what's going on, but there have been big cutbacks. So quite a while ago, I sent the report and a request to a woman by the name of Stephanie Koch, who we discussed this all with last year. And I've tried several times. In fact, just a couple of days ago. And it's always her voicemail box is full.
Great Meadows is something called the Eastern Massachusetts Refuge Complex. That includes, goes way down to Monomoy, out into the Nashua River, about eight different refuges. Assuming she still works for them, they may be overwhelmed. It may be just plain difficult. Right. So those are the two areas of not conflict, but areas of lack of clarity. Can we, you know, consult to go all the way to that border of Herd Pond? Or are we going to be restrained by the Fed? So to be determined how we go about managing that in practical terms. But what we've done in the meantime is, alongside that hand harvesting contract, we've asked Salter to put together a quote similar to what they provided us last year for that 13-acre part of Herd Pond. So we'll get that quote. We'll navigate these other details later on. But we're taking the same approach there. Last time when they gave us this quote, it was under that $10,000 barrier. The town last year when we did this, the town said, hey, you know, if you have one vendor and your two contracts are over $10,000, there has to be an RFP. And so similar to Tom's experience with Stephanie at U.S. Fish and Wildlife, I've not been able to get from the town any clarity on this. So we're just going ahead with the contracts. And hopefully they won't get hung up by a layer of bureaucracy. But the plan is, regardless of what happens with the town, and hopefully we can get some clarity with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, is to go ahead with the two prongs of attack on the water chestnut, the hand harvesting that we've been doing for decades now, and the herbicide treatment, which we tried first last year to unclear effectiveness. What is herbicide? It's called ClearCast. And Tom, is it specific for water chestnut, or is water chestnut just one of any number? Well, no, it's not specific. It applies to the surface of the plant. In other words, the water chestnuts, the leaves are floating on top, these rosettes, and there are little flotation sacks. So ClearCast, I think, is toxic to lots of plants, if not all of them. But it's been approved, and if it's not applied directly on a plant, then apparently it's not effective. So when they go in and they apply it, they apply it directly to the plants, which are very, very obvious. Yeah, I've seen them. Yeah. Yeah. So what's it called?
It's not amoxicillin. That's something for us. The chemical name is Amazamox, I-M-A-Z-A-M-O-X. Yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that. Anyway, it's approved. It's widely used. Fish and wildlife use it on the Sudbury River themselves. And actually, until it came along, there really wasn't anything for water chestnut except this, unlike, as an example, Dudley Pond with the milfoil over the years. There have been several herbicides that have been effective there. What's the latest one? Oh, Priscilla core. Priscilla core. Yeah, Priscilla core, which was effective on milfoil, and then had the virtue of a half-life of about a day or so, and just went away. And that's to be desired. So anyway, yeah, it's toxic to plants. I, you know, in all the, yeah, we've been applying herbicides in Dudley Pond, and they've also been applied in Lake Cachituit, the Sudbury River. My opinion is because I'm out in the water. The birds are thriving. The fish are thriving. I saw a guy today, I talked to him. He was putting a boat in the Sudbury River at Route 27. I said, aren't you rushing it? But who knows? It's, yeah. He's taking advantage of the 70-degree temperatures. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, so I mentioned the herbicide last year appeared to be ineffective. You know, when Tom and I were out there, you would see plants that were half dead but half green. And so I don't know how much of it was, you know, the timing is pretty critical on these. So was it a timing issue? Was it just not applied as strategically as it could have been? So we don't quite have a complete data set. So we want to try and hit them again, hit the plants again this year, see if we can get some more, a clearer picture of the effectiveness. And if effective, is this something we do every year? Or do we have to, like, you know, with fields, you have to sort of, like, wait a year so you're not building up resistance in the population? Well, my opinion is that we're going to be doing it every year, particularly if that so-called seed bank persists along the far, far shore. Who knows how many seeds? The seeds are viable for many, many years. They say it was effective. What Tom and I saw were plants that had browned, but they weren't entirely disintegrating or anything like that. If we had pulled up some plants and looked at the seeds, maybe we could tell what they're saying, you know, what the solitude is saying, that they've, the plant has degraded enough that the seeds are not going to mature. And so even if it was a good, you know, even if it was successful just by the appearances of all these brown plants, Tom talked about that seed bank. So, you know, you could still maybe see, expect a bumper crop of these plants just from the seeds that had fallen in previous years. So it's really, it's going to be hard to gauge effectiveness after even a few years. Well, you know, with the proviso that over the years, some years, there wasn't much of a water chestnut crop. And conditions are different every year. The Herd Pond is connected to the Sudbury River. The Sudbury is high. Herd Pond is essentially around Herd Pond is the extent of what you would call the ponded portion of the Sudbury River. Above Herd Pond, the Sudbury River is more free-flowing. It's, you know, but, so if the Sudbury is high, Herd Pond is high. If it's cold, Herd Pond is cold. So I've been out there in mid-June and not found any plants and other years, loads of plants. We'll find out. There was 18 to 20 inches of ice on Herd Pond. I stopped by and talked to the fisherman from, I gave my ice fishing tackle away this year, by the way, but I haven't used it in a few years. But 18 to 20 inches. So just, I think, two days ago, there were quite a few ice fishermen out in the pond. And we've had some warm weather. It's going to get cold again. We could have a cold April. Who knows? There may not be a big crop. Now, we also have Milfoil in Herd Pond. So in 2016, I had Solitude out and they felt we should treat for Milfoil. Astoundingly, in 2017, I observed Milfoil in the early part of the season. And by June, it was gone. And I mean, pond wide, no Milfoil, which, by the way, never happened in Dudley Pond. But it was just plain gone. And I, there's no explanation. I, through my, I actually haven't talked to them in years, but botanists, well-known botanists, I've discussed this with. And they, they really don't know. And it could have been that, because the, the water was so discolored that there wasn't enough sunlight and it just killed off the Milfoil. The Milfoil, by the way, has, was sparse for a couple of years and has been coming back strongly. So, well, it's just awfully hard to tell. So, we'll find out. So we'll see this year, but we want to have both of our approaches available to us, the hand harvesting and the herbicide. And so, absolutely. And so last month, we, we, the committee voted to approve these, these measures. So Tom and I are putting them into effect and I will, we'll update you guys as the, as the months go on. That is the, so that's the latest Unheard Pond. And Larry, I will forward you those old reports, or at least an old report and the most recent one, just so you can have those as, as references and see what kind of content's in there. And it's got figures and graphs from the, from the prior years. All right. All right. So moving on to, to Dudley Pond. And Steve, I only had one item, which is around water chemistry testing, which we had talked about last time, not only the spring testing, which I, I have to see if we voted on that. I think we did, but.
Yeah. So at the last meeting, I brought this up because we, we do testing in two different ways. We do. Well, there's a number we don't use it. I'm sorry.
Can you hear me, Steve? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay. Did you guys lose me? I'm going to. I can hear everybody. Yeah, we do. Okay. So Steve. And by the way, Tom Largy, if you ever figure out how that milfoil died, please let us know. Well, yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't want the, the water that dark in Dudley Pond. Well, no, but it's interesting because the, you know, the aquatic study that was done by aquatic research didn't find a lot of milfoil this year. And in the spring, when I was doing the, the Secchi depth, it, it was actually, the depth was actually quite high. It was like eight feet. And usually it's like 11 or 12 feet. So the pond may not have been quite as clear this year as it was in previous years. So there's some consistency between what you said and what we experienced this year. Interesting. Um, anyway, um, the issue we talked about was that we do testing in two ways. Um, uh, Ben Wetherill comes out and uses, I think what's called a YSI meter. Yep. To test certain parameters. And then I do, I grab some water and put them in the appropriate bottles and we send them to the lab. And, uh, we like to do that together, but we couldn't do it, um, at the same time. We did it on the same day, but not at the same time in the fall, because Ben went to work for a different company, which meant that he couldn't come out during the week to do it. But on his own time, he said, I'll, I'll do it once more, but it'll have to be on a weekend. So, uh, since the chemicals need to get to the lab on a weekday and some of them have to be, uh, gotten into the lab within 24 hours after they come out of the pond, um, I had to do the chemicals you know, filling the bottles with the water late in the day on a Sunday, but Ben could only come out early in the day on that Sunday. So they weren't done exactly at the same time, but Ben is not available to us anymore. And, uh, he gave me some instructions on how to use the YSI meter, but, you know, I'm, I'm really getting the sense that we're not getting a lot of value out of that. And the reason I say that is because first of all, numbers have been pretty consistent, um, over time last few years, number one. Number two, um, I wrote the report, uh, in the fall after all the testing was done. And we, we get these, um, somewhat high numbers in some cases that every time I do that, uh, Norm, who knows a lot about this, Norm Marowitz, uh, tells me, you gotta throw those numbers away. Well, if you throw those numbers away, I don't see a lot of value to the testing. So, um, we have a decision to make. I mean, I, I can make an attempt to do it myself. We can rent the meter. Um, I ran this by Mike Lowry, which is something I committed to do at the last meeting, explain the situation to him. And he said he thought service water quality had a YSI meter. Um, Tom, I haven't floated this by you, but are you aware of this?
in the past we bought some, uh, equipment. Um, uh, some of it may have been expensive, uh, equipment. Carol Plum, who recently departed, the, uh, committee, uh, had looked at, uh, some of this equipment. Uh, some of it, um, because it's, uh, antique, uh, equipment, uh, may need certain supplies that, uh, are expensive and or hard to get. Um, I, uh, my, my, my own, opinion is that, uh, uh, we, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, we on the committee should always have professionals do it. Uh, I, uh, I, I, I think it's too hard. Um, I've, uh, a long, long time ago there was something called acid rain monitoring. Um, I was, uh, my organization Trout Unlimited, uh, did it. We, uh, went through, uh, similar things. Uh, I got a grant from IBM for, oh, equipment for Mass Audubon and things like that. Um, but it's just hard. It's just very hard. and, uh, you might train yourself but, uh, the next person, um, may not be apt or willing to do the same kind of thing. Uh, but, uh, having said that, I, I think there's, uh, value to testing, um, and, uh, uh, what, what you have are, are, are, are benchmarks, which you've alluded to, but, uh, maybe, um, it doesn't have to be every year, maybe, uh, every several years, some, uh, some kind of, uh, thorough testing and, uh, you've got a benchmark and you could look at it from, uh, several years earlier. I think, uh, I think that's, uh, you know, might be a valid thing. Let's start with Steve's. I'm sorry, go ahead, Tom, Clint. No, Steve, finish your thought that I'll know something. So, so the only other thing Mike Lowry said was, and I don't know who this is or what he means by this, I should ask him. The last sentence he wrote was maybe ORS, O-A-R-S, all capital letters, would know someone who would do it. O-A-R-S? Yeah, ORS. Okay, well, let me discuss ORS. It was originally called OR, Organization for the Asibet River. My wife, Tanya, was the first executive director of OR back in the 1980s. It's essentially, uh, since become ORS, three rivers, and, uh, instead of OR, it's ORS, and, uh, they do have a professional staff. In fact, um, and, uh, astoundingly, again, to me, uh, they, uh, their director just left, and they posted a, uh, there's a posting for a replacement at a, uh, salary of $110,000 to $130,000 a year, which, uh, when Tanya was executive director, we had no money at all, but there, they must, uh, there must have been grants, uh, coming in there, but they do have a professional staff, and, um, a fundraiser, and, uh, somebody who's interested in water trestats, and, and a director, and, uh, so forth, so ORS, uh, uh, I, I think you could, uh, uh, certainly discuss, uh, that with them. I, uh, I, I've almost wondered if, uh, here you have an organization, uh, with, uh, apparently a several hundred thousand dollar budget now, and, uh, I'm not, uh, they run volunteer events and river cleanups and, and, uh, and, uh, do some lobbying. I, I just wonder, uh, uh, how much bang for the buck there is there.
Ridley Pond is in the, uh, Sudbury River watershed very definitely. It comes under their purview. They have a professional staff, so, uh, I would discuss that with them. Can, can you have a connection there? Can you, uh, yeah, yeah, I, uh, uh, I, I, there's, uh, somebody actually had a connection with the, uh, the director who just left, but, um, I'm really just asking, you know, if you can do an introduction, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, yeah, yeah, I'll, uh, there, there is, uh, and I forget her name, but, uh, she's, uh, interested in water chestnuts and, uh, things like that. So, um, in fact, uh, there's a meeting, uh, I might've taken, you know what, frankly, I used to, uh, attend or zoom into all the meetings, um, and I'm, uh, disheartened enough with, um, Herd Pond, I don't think it makes any difference. Uh, uh, flat doesn't make any difference, but, uh, anyway, what doesn't make any difference? Yeah, whether I attend a meeting and talk about Herd Pond, uh, uh, that, um, it's the same story every year. They think I'm a big expert, but, uh, it doesn't help the pond. Uh, okay, well, we're getting off on a tangent, but OARS has a professional staff. They're based in West Concord. And, um, uh, why do you shoot me an email? You or Tom Clem to remind me and I'll, uh, I'll see, uh, uh, they, uh, you know, Ben Weatherill, uh, by the way, formerly worked for OARS. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, he was, uh, he was the, um, he was, uh, the scientist, uh, or the water scientist, uh, for OARS. And, um, Was this while he was doing our measurements? Uh, several, several years ago. Oh, okay. Several years ago. Um, uh, an interesting, um, I'm good at, uh, coming into a little asides. Uh, Ben Weatherill, if, uh, ever, any of you have ever been out to, uh, uh, Mesa Verde National Park where the Indian ruins are, uh, Wetherill Mesa is, uh, which is out there, is named after relatives of his. Oh, really? In Colorado. Yeah. So, uh, I discussed that with him once. But, um, anyway. Uh, yeah, so he was, uh, the OARS, uh, a water scientist. And they may have somebody in that, uh, capacity right now. All right. I, I, let's do this then. I'll, I'll shoot you an email to remind you if you can make an introduction, uh, that would be really be helpful. Tom, Clem, um, you're probably going to laugh when you hear this, but I actually don't, I've never had any visibility into how much we're paying the lab and how much we paid Ben. Can I get those numbers? Oh, sure. Yeah. I can send the invoices. Yeah. It's about, uh, 1200 for the lab and maybe 1500 for Ben, but I'll send you the invoices, the last invoices that we got. I just want to know what we, what we might have to work with. Okay. I'm perfectly happy to continue doing what I do, uh, in terms of measurements, which is the portion of it that goes to the lab. That, that's fairly straightforward, but I don't have a meter. I don't know how to use the meter. I have some notes from Ben, but you know, I really would have to be trained. Uh, so, um, and of course, I don't know how much those meters cost, but well, I don't have one. So first of all, I would say, so I know for the, for the, for the TSI reading, for the TSI calculations, it's Secchi depth, it's chlorophyll, and I think phosphorus, right, is the other one. Yes. Right. And so for chlorophyll and phosphorus, those are the samples you're collecting that go off to the lab. Is that correct? Correct. Got it. All right. So now let's go back to the meter. So, and I, we, yes, the committee had a meter, uh, now outdated. I think Ben had his own meter that he was using for these.
Okay. Either way, it's a more current version. Uh, the committee had an old one that had been pretty much dormant since I think, uh, Tony Moores and Mike Lowry used it. In fact, Steve, I think you even said you had some kids laying around your house, but Carol was going to try and revivify this thing. And there's a pH meter that needed that was dried out needed to be recalibrated to Tom's point. It takes some specialized skill and I would rather just pay a professional to do it than have us monkeying around with some outdated thing that may not work properly. So, uh, I'm glad I forgot about the Orr's comment and Mike's email. So let's follow up on that because I agree that if we're going to do that and to Tom's point, maybe it doesn't need to be twice a year, maybe it could be once a year because we don't do that. We don't use anything. We don't use that information for anything. It's just $1,500 and some numbers on a page. So let's find out if we can have Orr's do it rather than anybody on this committee doing it. Um, and I agree with you that let's keep doing though twice a year, the chlorophyll, the secchi, the phosphorus because we use that information. Right. So let's see where the, uh, the Orr's connection goes. In the meantime, so getting back to our old meter, we did donate that. In fact, I think we ended up donating it to Ben and he used it as an educational device because it was not something that anybody on the committee bought. It was the town paid for it. And so I'll have to go back through all the emails because we wanted to figure out, okay, if the town owns it, how can we dispossess ourselves of this thing? And so I think that, Tom Norgie? Oh, you know, just just an aside, I was going to ask Larry if he knew what a secchi disc was. Uh, yep. I looked it up in Grock and know everything about it now. Yeah. Well, a secchi disc thankfully is something any of us could use. I see that. Yeah. Larry just signed up to help me with the measurement. It's now a two men's arm. Oh, there you go. Um, but anyway, actually I had to ask rock. I said, it's a test that sounds something like S I C K Y. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, because I couldn't figure out how to spell it. Nope. It's, uh, the, the, the, the, the great, the great Italian secchi S C C C H I. Yeah. Yeah. I think our, our, our, our, uh, page on the town website, I sent all the most recent reports to, um, what was her name again? I can't forget. Jalen. Jalen. Mostly she posted them. So if you want to take a look at those, Larry, uh, the secchi depth explanation is in there. Uh, the measurements are in there. Um, and that's in what, uh, Steve? It should be on the, uh, service water quality committee page. Yeah. We've, we've not found a good, if you, if you go on the service water quality page, I, I forget now, I haven't looked in a while, but there'll be, uh, documents. Yeah. You click on documents and it'll go to the Steve's reports. For example, it's an imperfect system. And, um, we haven't really added anything in a while. Cause I don't want there to be what, what there should be is some kind of a portal that you go into and you can go through the library and get all this stuff. We've not perfected this, but to Steve's point, you can go there now and you can see, um, some of the current, the recent water chemistry reports. So, um, let me just finish my thought here. So Steve, reach out to OARS. Uh, I'll go back through the, uh, the email history of what happened to our, our meter. But again, let's have a professional do with current equipment, not us sort of fumbling around with some outdated thing that may not work properly. Um, and then, uh, and, and Steve, last time we did vote on doing the chemistry testing. So let's see if we can get a professional from OARS to help or have OARS help out. And then we'll just continue as we have been. I just, but if it was going to be us, you know, the discussion last time was, if it's only us doing it, uh, maybe we save, you know, a couple thousand dollars a year and just don't do this stuff or do it infrequently because we, again, we don't use it beyond having, once we get the data.
We're still, if I remember correctly, we're still okay doing the lab portion of it in the spring. Uh, yes, but you're talking about not just, not just for the TSI, but for the whole suite of testing, the, the meter testing. And if we can't find anybody to do the meter testing, we will, as you said, save, save. And I would say too, for the meter testing, you know, let's see who, if we can find somebody, if we don't do it this year, maybe we, you know, I don't, I'm not worried if we don't get it done in the spring. If you take a look at the last two or three or four reports, the numbers don't change that much. Yeah. Including the, uh, psychodesk. Well, that, that, yeah, but that's not part of what, uh, Ben, I did that. Well, he did it too, but I, I did it. Yeah, well, you know, back to, uh, my talking about, uh, benchmarks. So I've been on the committee since about 2000 and I've, I've heard dozens of, and read dozens of reports and, uh, uh, Dudley Pond, uh, always had excellent, uh, psyched disc, uh, readings. I don't ever, uh, recollect until the, uh, last year or so that, um, it's been reduced and that may be, uh, I don't know, a precursor of something or there's gotta be some reason for that, uh, be, uh, something to watch. It was, it was only, it was only the spring, the fall reading was back to where we would expect. Okay. Yeah. Great. Okay. So those, that's the, those, the, that's the action for Dudley Pond. Uh, Steve, did you have anything else on Dudley? Um, uh, no, uh, you know, I think, um, uh, you, you probably read this report, right, Tom? The aquatics, aquatic restoration report. Uh, I, I'll have to, uh, admit my guilt. I have not read it other than making, getting the updates from, uh, you know, replacing Dudley Pond Association with Surface Water Quality Committee. Yeah. But is there something under the conclusions, uh, you know, talking about milfoil, um, says Eurasian milk, water milfoil remains present, but does not exhibit compensatory growth following harvesting. So they didn't make a big deal out of milfoil this year. No. And then Allison wanted to see the report because she wanted to hear their take, and I've not heard anything, because what I heard anecdotally from her earlier was that there didn't seem to be much milfoil this year. So I don't know if her think, if you've talked to her recently, if her opinion has changed, but it seems like this is not a, a milfoil, a year that's going to require Perselecar when it's in this kind of too late to get that going. Well, not necessarily. Probably not. And we've been doing it, listen, the first year was 2019, then we did it in 23. So we're kind of on this four-year cycle. So it looks like 27 would be the, possibly the earliest we need to think about doing this again. I, based on what the report said, I think I would concur with that. Okay. Very good. That was all on the agenda. Tom, do you have anything on, anything further on, on Pine Brook and the situation there with the, the trout? Well, not really, except I'll, I'll just reiterate, uh, um, last fall, I, uh, uh, well, first of all, uh, Pine Brook, um, has native brook trout in it. Um, I took Larry around and, uh, last fall and we looked at it. We didn't see any, but I've seen them before. Um, so I, uh, and I forgot Larry, whether this is, uh, before you and I went around, but, um, I had somebody, uh, there's, uh, a division of ecological restoration in Massachusetts. And I had somebody, uh, come and take a look at the culvert because the issue is, uh, we've got a Pine Brook below Pine Brook Road and, uh, Pine Brook above and, uh, whether there's, uh, the culvert, uh, which was repaired about 10 or 11 years ago, uh, uh, uh, whether it allows the fish to, uh, move up and down the stream. These fish, by the way, uh, Pine Brook, uh, Hayward Brook, which flows into it are classified as cold water. And those fish have likely been there since the last ice age. So that's, uh, you know, that's. Tom, I heard you mention that, um, do you know all the cold, uh, uh, streams, uh, in trout, but how many do we have? Well, you know, uh, trout, brook, and Sudbury, uh, which, uh, flows into Hotbrook, uh, uh, Pine Brook is the only one that we're aware of in, uh, Wayland, although upper Millbrook many years ago, um, there's a fellow who's, uh, lives right on it, Mike Patterson. Uh, Larry knows about Mike, uh, but I had, uh, you know, we, we felt we'd, uh, Mike had felt he'd observed a wild brook trout up there. I, I haven't been on there, uh, uh, years and years ago. Some of us, uh, stocked that area. We, uh, uh, all threw in $25 and stocked it with brick trout, for sure, in our little club. Um, but, uh, anyway, uh, streams with native brick trout are quite rare. I'm not certain there's an inventory. Uh, I would think that would be the kind of thing that, uh, oars would, uh, should probably do, uh, but, uh, uh, I'm most curious. All right.
So anyway, uh, uh, back to Pinebrook. Uh, so this, uh, representative, this person who came out, Amber Carr, who, by the way, um, worked with, uh, Mass Audubon years ago and, uh, the, and some other, uh, you know, she's been in this area. So I asked her, uh, uh, she felt the cover was, um, substandard and coverts by the way are being repaired all over the country. Washington state is spending billions on coverts. Um, on the other hand, they have salmon coming up the stream and not, uh, six inch brook trout. Uh, but, um, it's, it's a big deal. So, uh, her estimate was, uh, a million dollars and, uh, to fix it. Um, and, um, there are grants out there and, uh, although I'm worried about, uh, Pine Brook, I'm not worried enough that, um, I personally want to get into an effort like that. That's, uh, that's a big deal. So, uh, uh, uh, the fish are still there. I'm sure they're very happy. Okay, great. Thank you, Tom. Uh, that was, uh, that was all on the agenda, uh, barring, uh, picking a date for the next meeting in April. And so, Steve, I will give you dibs to set the date because I know your schedule is quite complicated. Oh, yeah. So, um, it, it's, um, you know, the other, the other thing that keeps happening is, um, I'm on the energy and climate committee and they schedule their meetings and they, they put them on the calendar like two days before. So I've, I've been talking to them about it. Um, let me see where we are here. Two, Tuesdays generally work well. Um.
So how about Tuesday the 14th?
14th. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Tuesdays except for the second Tuesday of the month. Well, hold on, hold on. Yes, that's right. That does not work. And Wednesday the 15th is probably too early in the month, right? Because you were saying you'd like the third or fourth Wednesday was good for you. No, no. When available Wednesdays are random, uh, generally not available on Wednesdays and Thursdays don't work. So how about like, um, April 7th? Uh, I can do April 7th. Tom Largy? Yeah, I can do April 7th. Hey, Larry. Uh, hold it, hold it, hold it. No, I have a play that night. Ah.
April 21st? Uh, let's see. Today is the 10th. So a little bit later than I, well, you know, there's not really anything urgent. Um. That works for me.
Um, it's a month and yeah, let's, let's do that Tom Largy, April 21st. It's a Tuesday. April 21st works for me. All right. So Steve confirming April 21st, Tuesday? Uh, yep. All right. I'm locking it in. All right. That'll be, we'll meet on, we'll meet April 21st. Perfect. Okay. Put it in right now. All right. And then, uh, barring anything else, I'm going to make a motion to adjourn at 7.55 p.m. I second, uh. My, uh, yep. Um, my, uh, laptop is dying, so best if we end soon. Yeah. Let's, uh, what we've, Tom Largy has seconded, so, uh, Steve Garone? Uh, aye. In favor, yes. Larry Kiernan? Yes. Tom Largy, aye. It's unanimous with Tom Clem voting in favor, so we will adjourn at 7.55. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much.
First item on the X, let me ask, I don't know, Robbie, somebody on the town, is there any public comment?
I haven't asked in a while. There never has been, but I should probably check in occasionally. Okay, there's not. First item on the agenda will be to approve the minutes from last month. Larry, you could abstain. You weren't here for that one. So whatever's in the minutes, true or false, you can just, you know, stand by. So we still have a quorum with Steve and Tom and myself. So motion to approve the minutes from February 3rd.
So moved. As submitted. Okay. Okay, I'll second.
All right. And then let's go around the room and vote. So Steve? Steve, yes. Tom Largy, yes. Tom Klem, aye. And then Larry, I'll just have you as abstain since you weren't here for that. Abstain, yeah. All right. Well, since Steve, since you have, I was going to reverse the order of our two agenda items, but since you've got plenty of time, I'll keep the order as on the agenda, which is Herd Pond. And Larry, the regular thing that Tom Largy has been overseeing on Herd Pond for 20 plus years is the annual hand harvesting of water chestnut. The plants are invasive. They're a perennial problem. It's ebbed and flowed over the decades. But in recent years, it's gotten so bad. And we have so few options as for hand harvesting that our one vendor solitude, every year it's a struggle for them to get people to pull the stuff and the boats get smaller and smaller. They had kayaks last year. So we go through the exercise anyways, but to complement that, we hope, we got approval last year to do herbicide application to try and maintain some kind of equal footing with the plants here. And so the hand harvesting, we've done every year for decades now. And Tom just got the contract, which I'm looking forward to you guys, you and Steve, a short while ago. We got it on Monday, but you can take a look later on. It's the usual thing. We cap it at $9,900. If you go over $10K, you've got to go through an RFP process. So Tom has craftily requested these to be $9,900. And then we do have, we always need a few more days of hand harvesting. So you can go up to 25% over that contracted amount. So it's a way to just keep under that ceiling. And so what you're seeing there is the typical thing that solitude provides us. And what they'll do is they'll do a pre-survey and then they'll go out. In fact, Larry, I'll make a note. I'll send you some prior reports that we get from them. Yeah, that'd be great. Actually, Tom, the contract says that the cost will be $0 for the pre-survey, and I will do it, which I've done every year. So we do a pre-survey. Okay. So it's always been, Tom, you've been the one to do it. I know they always rely on your survey. So that's been the standing practice for a long time where you do the survey and just give them the information. Yes, yes. Okay. So anyways, Larry. Tom, are we looking at a document now? Is there a contract? No. All right. I didn't call it up. If you'd like to see it, I can, but I did not call it up. I'll look at it later. Okay. That's fine. Yeah, and if you have any questions, you can write to, well, me, and then I can answer any questions. But what you'll see in there is the same old thing that we've done since time immemorial, basically. Yeah. Yeah, well, let me discuss that a little bit. Sure. Herd Pond is about 85 acres. And historically, the far southwest corner, which at low water time is mucky bottom, one to two, three feet of depth. And that's been the hot spot. The rest of the pond, depending on the depth, has been a problem. But Herd Pond, unlike other water bodies like Lake Cachichwood or Dudley Pond, for whatever reason is, and I don't quite understand it, it's, I don't know if the term is turbid, but there are blooms in the summer and so forth. So, at certain depths, and the pond is, at low water is only about eight feet deep at its deepest. We don't tend to have weed problems where it's eight feet deep. Apparently, the sunlight doesn't get down there. Right now, it's probably 11 to 12 feet deep. So, about 70 acres of the pond, we've been hand harvesting. And actually, we mechanical harvested until 2009, and then hand harvested for a number of years. And actually, we're doing great. And up until 2016, when the pond just exploded. And apparently, these water chestnut seeds, I estimated that over the years, we've pulled over 3 million plants. These water chestnut seeds just are in the sediment, and they're viable for many, many years. So, when we started the project, they said seven years viability, then 10, then 10 to 12, then 15, and so forth. So, that's what we're fighting against. So, it blew up on us in 2016, and ever since then, several blow-ups, quite large the last three seasons or so. So, Tom and I, I've taken Tom out a couple times on the pond. And when the hand harvesters, when it blows up in the southwestern cove area, hand harvesting is, it just doesn't work. I've got photos, I think you may have all seen them of Tom and I on the boat, in a boat full of weeds. And, and I'll be 86 tomorrow. That's my birthday. And I'm wearying of it. I don't have the energy to go out. I have energy to go fishing, by the way. I'm planning a big trip to Washington State in September. But, that's different. We'll have a guide rowing our boat down the river. So, if Tom and I had done that intensively for a couple of days, I guess we could have cleaned it up. But, we didn't. So, the herbicide seems to be about the only thing we do. There is a glitch, a major glitch or problem. And that is that last year, when we were going through the permitting, fish and wildlife raised, it was, they had maps showing that Herd Pond was that far southern area, southwestern area. Some of that was fish and wildlife property. Anyway, therefore, the, and Tom Klem and I went, there was quite a bit of discussion around that. Therefore, the applicators last year left a, an untreated band around the perimeter of the pond. And, so, in the report, and you may not have gotten it, Larry, or I may have said it to you, but there is a photo of Tom and I were out in the pond late last August. And, you can see this green band. Now, water chests, that's, a single plant will drop anywhere from three or four to a dozen to a few dozen seeds. It's a kind of plant that sends out something called a rosette. And then the rosette will, in turn, send out another rosette. There may be seven, eight, nine seeds per plant. They drop down. So, by virtue of that untreated area, what that's done is it's added to what's called a, quote, seed bank, a seed bank of viable seeds in the sediment, which are going to be good for many, many years and will tend to drift further into the pond. So, to me, it's, it's fairly discouraging. I've thought a few times this winter that we just give up on the pond. When, around 2000, when we started the project, the pond, a large part of it was, in the summertime, was a 100% monoculture on top of water chestnut plants. So, there was no boating or fishing or anything else there. It's pretty tough. It's a very, very, a herd pond apparently is unique. It's just tough. That's, that's all there is to it. But, back to the hand-pulling, the hand-pulling is for the 70 or so acres that are not big problems and haven't been for a number of years, whereas the herbicide is for that 13 or so acre portion of the Southwest Cove, which has been a huge problem for many years. So, that's, that's what it amounts to. Another point of view, looking at it, is that from a recreational point of view and maybe a waterfowl point of view and so forth, if we can keep that 70 or so acres open, then that means the pond is open for recreation and fishermen. And I've even seen sailboats out there, canoes, kayaks, whatever. Whereas, that Southwestern Cove area is so difficult that hardly anybody goes in there. It's just plain difficult. That's all there is to it. So, we're, we're, we're doing our best to keep at least some kind of a equilibrium and we might have, we might be losing that South Cove area. And to get back to a point that Tom was making, 2016, it looked like we were making, Tom, I should say, before I joined, was making good progress. And in 2016, the plant spiked. And it went down again. And we hadn't seen this once before previously. So, we thought, okay, it's just one of those things where conditions came together in a way that the plant spiked. And they went down to manageable levels for the next maybe about five years. But in the past three or so, it's just been wild growth of these plants that we've not been able to contain just by hand pulling. So, almost two years ago, Tom and I worked with Solitude to get permitting to apply herbicide to herd pond. And we got that early last year. And so, last season was our first attempt at applying herbicide to the pond. Not quite clear how successful it was. So, I'll try again this year. To the point that Tom was making about the boundaries. And Tom, I sent a bunch of information this morning that was a good refresher for me. Yeah, I saw that. I saw that. Thank you. So, what Tom was talking about was, you know, when we went through the process of Solitude, we had to get permit approved from the state. So, we went to CONCOM. And before CONCOM could approve it, they said, go to the state. We went to the state. And the state said, well, this is a national wildlife refuge. You have to go to the federal government. So, we went all the way to the top, if you will. And the feds, the federal government said, okay, you can do this. But the boundaries of the pond are somewhat in U.S. fish and wildlife territory. So, you can't treat that part of the pond. And so, we agreed. We got that okay. And then it went back down to the state. And the state said, fine. Then it went to Linda and the Conservation Commission. They said, fine. So, I had forgotten about that because when Solitude applied the herbicide last year, we were thinking, why didn't you treat the whole edge of the thing? So, it turns out they couldn't do that. And so, we're going to see if we can get further permission. But I think that's going to be unlikely in the time frame we need. So, I discussed this with Linda Hanson at Conservation a few weeks ago. And first of all, Herd Pond is what's called the Massachusetts Great Pond. And that designation goes back to colonial times, allowing free access for, quote, fishing and fouling. I don't know how many ducks are shot on Herd Pond. It's possible. But actually, I think hunters do go out in the Sudbury through the pond. And a great pond is owned by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. If fish and wildlife has some boundaries that extend into the pond, and it's very unclear. We can't tell looking at a map versus a GPS point. If we had, you know, I'm not even certain that Solitude did that kind of thing. But from Linda's point of view, she put out a permit for Herd Pond, period. And that means for the entire pond. Now, the other thing, back to the feds, that's U.S. Fish and Wildlife. That's Great Meadows Wildlife Refuge. This year, you know, who knows what's going on, but there have been big cutbacks. So quite a while ago, I sent the report and a request to a woman by the name of Stephanie Koch, who we discussed this all with last year. And I've tried several times. In fact, just a couple of days ago. And it's always her voicemail box is full.
Great Meadows is something called the Eastern Massachusetts Refuge Complex. That includes, goes way down to Monomoy, out into the Nashua River, about eight different refuges. Assuming she still works for them, they may be overwhelmed. It may be just plain difficult. Right. So those are the two areas of not conflict, but areas of lack of clarity. Can we, you know, consult to go all the way to that border of Herd Pond? Or are we going to be restrained by the Fed? So to be determined how we go about managing that in practical terms. But what we've done in the meantime is, alongside that hand harvesting contract, we've asked Salter to put together a quote similar to what they provided us last year for that 13-acre part of Herd Pond. So we'll get that quote. We'll navigate these other details later on. But we're taking the same approach there. Last time when they gave us this quote, it was under that $10,000 barrier. The town last year when we did this, the town said, hey, you know, if you have one vendor and your two contracts are over $10,000, there has to be an RFP. And so similar to Tom's experience with Stephanie at U.S. Fish and Wildlife, I've not been able to get from the town any clarity on this. So we're just going ahead with the contracts. And hopefully they won't get hung up by a layer of bureaucracy. But the plan is, regardless of what happens with the town, and hopefully we can get some clarity with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, is to go ahead with the two prongs of attack on the water chestnut, the hand harvesting that we've been doing for decades now, and the herbicide treatment, which we tried first last year to unclear effectiveness. What is herbicide? It's called ClearCast. And Tom, is it specific for water chestnut, or is water chestnut just one of any number? Well, no, it's not specific. It applies to the surface of the plant. In other words, the water chestnuts, the leaves are floating on top, these rosettes, and there are little flotation sacks. So ClearCast, I think, is toxic to lots of plants, if not all of them. But it's been approved, and if it's not applied directly on a plant, then apparently it's not effective. So when they go in and they apply it, they apply it directly to the plants, which are very, very obvious. Yeah, I've seen them. Yeah. Yeah. So what's it called?
It's not amoxicillin. That's something for us. The chemical name is Amazamox, I-M-A-Z-A-M-O-X. Yeah, yeah, yeah, something like that. Anyway, it's approved. It's widely used. Fish and wildlife use it on the Sudbury River themselves. And actually, until it came along, there really wasn't anything for water chestnut except this, unlike, as an example, Dudley Pond with the milfoil over the years. There have been several herbicides that have been effective there. What's the latest one? Oh, Priscilla core. Priscilla core. Yeah, Priscilla core, which was effective on milfoil, and then had the virtue of a half-life of about a day or so, and just went away. And that's to be desired. So anyway, yeah, it's toxic to plants. I, you know, in all the, yeah, we've been applying herbicides in Dudley Pond, and they've also been applied in Lake Cachituit, the Sudbury River. My opinion is because I'm out in the water. The birds are thriving. The fish are thriving. I saw a guy today, I talked to him. He was putting a boat in the Sudbury River at Route 27. I said, aren't you rushing it? But who knows? It's, yeah. He's taking advantage of the 70-degree temperatures. Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, so I mentioned the herbicide last year appeared to be ineffective. You know, when Tom and I were out there, you would see plants that were half dead but half green. And so I don't know how much of it was, you know, the timing is pretty critical on these. So was it a timing issue? Was it just not applied as strategically as it could have been? So we don't quite have a complete data set. So we want to try and hit them again, hit the plants again this year, see if we can get some more, a clearer picture of the effectiveness. And if effective, is this something we do every year? Or do we have to, like, you know, with fields, you have to sort of, like, wait a year so you're not building up resistance in the population? Well, my opinion is that we're going to be doing it every year, particularly if that so-called seed bank persists along the far, far shore. Who knows how many seeds? The seeds are viable for many, many years. They say it was effective. What Tom and I saw were plants that had browned, but they weren't entirely disintegrating or anything like that. If we had pulled up some plants and looked at the seeds, maybe we could tell what they're saying, you know, what the solitude is saying, that they've, the plant has degraded enough that the seeds are not going to mature. And so even if it was a good, you know, even if it was successful just by the appearances of all these brown plants, Tom talked about that seed bank. So, you know, you could still maybe see, expect a bumper crop of these plants just from the seeds that had fallen in previous years. So it's really, it's going to be hard to gauge effectiveness after even a few years. Well, you know, with the proviso that over the years, some years, there wasn't much of a water chestnut crop. And conditions are different every year. The Herd Pond is connected to the Sudbury River. The Sudbury is high. Herd Pond is essentially around Herd Pond is the extent of what you would call the ponded portion of the Sudbury River. Above Herd Pond, the Sudbury River is more free-flowing. It's, you know, but, so if the Sudbury is high, Herd Pond is high. If it's cold, Herd Pond is cold. So I've been out there in mid-June and not found any plants and other years, loads of plants. We'll find out. There was 18 to 20 inches of ice on Herd Pond. I stopped by and talked to the fisherman from, I gave my ice fishing tackle away this year, by the way, but I haven't used it in a few years. But 18 to 20 inches. So just, I think, two days ago, there were quite a few ice fishermen out in the pond. And we've had some warm weather. It's going to get cold again. We could have a cold April. Who knows? There may not be a big crop. Now, we also have Milfoil in Herd Pond. So in 2016, I had Solitude out and they felt we should treat for Milfoil. Astoundingly, in 2017, I observed Milfoil in the early part of the season. And by June, it was gone. And I mean, pond wide, no Milfoil, which, by the way, never happened in Dudley Pond. But it was just plain gone. And I, there's no explanation. I, through my, I actually haven't talked to them in years, but botanists, well-known botanists, I've discussed this with. And they, they really don't know. And it could have been that, because the, the water was so discolored that there wasn't enough sunlight and it just killed off the Milfoil. The Milfoil, by the way, has, was sparse for a couple of years and has been coming back strongly. So, well, it's just awfully hard to tell. So, we'll find out. So we'll see this year, but we want to have both of our approaches available to us, the hand harvesting and the herbicide. And so, absolutely. And so last month, we, we, the committee voted to approve these, these measures. So Tom and I are putting them into effect and I will, we'll update you guys as the, as the months go on. That is the, so that's the latest Unheard Pond. And Larry, I will forward you those old reports, or at least an old report and the most recent one, just so you can have those as, as references and see what kind of content's in there. And it's got figures and graphs from the, from the prior years. All right. All right. So moving on to, to Dudley Pond. And Steve, I only had one item, which is around water chemistry testing, which we had talked about last time, not only the spring testing, which I, I have to see if we voted on that. I think we did, but.
Yeah. So at the last meeting, I brought this up because we, we do testing in two different ways. We do. Well, there's a number we don't use it. I'm sorry.
Can you hear me, Steve? Can you hear me? I can hear you. Okay. Did you guys lose me? I'm going to. I can hear everybody. Yeah, we do. Okay. So Steve. And by the way, Tom Largy, if you ever figure out how that milfoil died, please let us know. Well, yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't want the, the water that dark in Dudley Pond. Well, no, but it's interesting because the, you know, the aquatic study that was done by aquatic research didn't find a lot of milfoil this year. And in the spring, when I was doing the, the Secchi depth, it, it was actually, the depth was actually quite high. It was like eight feet. And usually it's like 11 or 12 feet. So the pond may not have been quite as clear this year as it was in previous years. So there's some consistency between what you said and what we experienced this year. Interesting. Um, anyway, um, the issue we talked about was that we do testing in two ways. Um, uh, Ben Wetherill comes out and uses, I think what's called a YSI meter. Yep. To test certain parameters. And then I do, I grab some water and put them in the appropriate bottles and we send them to the lab. And, uh, we like to do that together, but we couldn't do it, um, at the same time. We did it on the same day, but not at the same time in the fall, because Ben went to work for a different company, which meant that he couldn't come out during the week to do it. But on his own time, he said, I'll, I'll do it once more, but it'll have to be on a weekend. So, uh, since the chemicals need to get to the lab on a weekday and some of them have to be, uh, gotten into the lab within 24 hours after they come out of the pond, um, I had to do the chemicals you know, filling the bottles with the water late in the day on a Sunday, but Ben could only come out early in the day on that Sunday. So they weren't done exactly at the same time, but Ben is not available to us anymore. And, uh, he gave me some instructions on how to use the YSI meter, but, you know, I'm, I'm really getting the sense that we're not getting a lot of value out of that. And the reason I say that is because first of all, numbers have been pretty consistent, um, over time last few years, number one. Number two, um, I wrote the report, uh, in the fall after all the testing was done. And we, we get these, um, somewhat high numbers in some cases that every time I do that, uh, Norm, who knows a lot about this, Norm Marowitz, uh, tells me, you gotta throw those numbers away. Well, if you throw those numbers away, I don't see a lot of value to the testing. So, um, we have a decision to make. I mean, I, I can make an attempt to do it myself. We can rent the meter. Um, I ran this by Mike Lowry, which is something I committed to do at the last meeting, explain the situation to him. And he said he thought service water quality had a YSI meter. Um, Tom, I haven't floated this by you, but are you aware of this?
in the past we bought some, uh, equipment. Um, uh, some of it may have been expensive, uh, equipment. Carol Plum, who recently departed, the, uh, committee, uh, had looked at, uh, some of this equipment. Uh, some of it, um, because it's, uh, antique, uh, equipment, uh, may need certain supplies that, uh, are expensive and or hard to get. Um, I, uh, my, my, my own, opinion is that, uh, uh, we, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, we on the committee should always have professionals do it. Uh, I, uh, I, I, I think it's too hard. Um, I've, uh, a long, long time ago there was something called acid rain monitoring. Um, I was, uh, my organization Trout Unlimited, uh, did it. We, uh, went through, uh, similar things. Uh, I got a grant from IBM for, oh, equipment for Mass Audubon and things like that. Um, but it's just hard. It's just very hard. and, uh, you might train yourself but, uh, the next person, um, may not be apt or willing to do the same kind of thing. Uh, but, uh, having said that, I, I think there's, uh, value to testing, um, and, uh, uh, what, what you have are, are, are, are benchmarks, which you've alluded to, but, uh, maybe, um, it doesn't have to be every year, maybe, uh, every several years, some, uh, some kind of, uh, thorough testing and, uh, you've got a benchmark and you could look at it from, uh, several years earlier. I think, uh, I think that's, uh, you know, might be a valid thing. Let's start with Steve's. I'm sorry, go ahead, Tom, Clint. No, Steve, finish your thought that I'll know something. So, so the only other thing Mike Lowry said was, and I don't know who this is or what he means by this, I should ask him. The last sentence he wrote was maybe ORS, O-A-R-S, all capital letters, would know someone who would do it. O-A-R-S? Yeah, ORS. Okay, well, let me discuss ORS. It was originally called OR, Organization for the Asibet River. My wife, Tanya, was the first executive director of OR back in the 1980s. It's essentially, uh, since become ORS, three rivers, and, uh, instead of OR, it's ORS, and, uh, they do have a professional staff. In fact, um, and, uh, astoundingly, again, to me, uh, they, uh, their director just left, and they posted a, uh, there's a posting for a replacement at a, uh, salary of $110,000 to $130,000 a year, which, uh, when Tanya was executive director, we had no money at all, but there, they must, uh, there must have been grants, uh, coming in there, but they do have a professional staff, and, um, a fundraiser, and, uh, somebody who's interested in water trestats, and, and a director, and, uh, so forth, so ORS, uh, uh, I, I think you could, uh, uh, certainly discuss, uh, that with them. I, uh, I, I've almost wondered if, uh, here you have an organization, uh, with, uh, apparently a several hundred thousand dollar budget now, and, uh, I'm not, uh, they run volunteer events and river cleanups and, and, uh, and, uh, do some lobbying. I, I just wonder, uh, uh, how much bang for the buck there is there.
Ridley Pond is in the, uh, Sudbury River watershed very definitely. It comes under their purview. They have a professional staff, so, uh, I would discuss that with them. Can, can you have a connection there? Can you, uh, yeah, yeah, I, uh, uh, I, I, there's, uh, somebody actually had a connection with the, uh, the director who just left, but, um, I'm really just asking, you know, if you can do an introduction, I'll, I'll, I'll, I'll, yeah, yeah, I'll, uh, there, there is, uh, and I forget her name, but, uh, she's, uh, interested in water chestnuts and, uh, things like that. So, um, in fact, uh, there's a meeting, uh, I might've taken, you know what, frankly, I used to, uh, attend or zoom into all the meetings, um, and I'm, uh, disheartened enough with, um, Herd Pond, I don't think it makes any difference. Uh, uh, flat doesn't make any difference, but, uh, anyway, what doesn't make any difference? Yeah, whether I attend a meeting and talk about Herd Pond, uh, uh, that, um, it's the same story every year. They think I'm a big expert, but, uh, it doesn't help the pond. Uh, okay, well, we're getting off on a tangent, but OARS has a professional staff. They're based in West Concord. And, um, uh, why do you shoot me an email? You or Tom Clem to remind me and I'll, uh, I'll see, uh, uh, they, uh, you know, Ben Weatherill, uh, by the way, formerly worked for OARS. Oh, I didn't know that. Okay. Yeah, yeah, he was, uh, he was the, um, he was, uh, the scientist, uh, or the water scientist, uh, for OARS. And, um, Was this while he was doing our measurements? Uh, several, several years ago. Oh, okay. Several years ago. Um, uh, an interesting, um, I'm good at, uh, coming into a little asides. Uh, Ben Weatherill, if, uh, ever, any of you have ever been out to, uh, uh, Mesa Verde National Park where the Indian ruins are, uh, Wetherill Mesa is, uh, which is out there, is named after relatives of his. Oh, really? In Colorado. Yeah. So, uh, I discussed that with him once. But, um, anyway. Uh, yeah, so he was, uh, the OARS, uh, a water scientist. And they may have somebody in that, uh, capacity right now. All right. I, I, let's do this then. I'll, I'll shoot you an email to remind you if you can make an introduction, uh, that would be really be helpful. Tom, Clem, um, you're probably going to laugh when you hear this, but I actually don't, I've never had any visibility into how much we're paying the lab and how much we paid Ben. Can I get those numbers? Oh, sure. Yeah. I can send the invoices. Yeah. It's about, uh, 1200 for the lab and maybe 1500 for Ben, but I'll send you the invoices, the last invoices that we got. I just want to know what we, what we might have to work with. Okay. I'm perfectly happy to continue doing what I do, uh, in terms of measurements, which is the portion of it that goes to the lab. That, that's fairly straightforward, but I don't have a meter. I don't know how to use the meter. I have some notes from Ben, but you know, I really would have to be trained. Uh, so, um, and of course, I don't know how much those meters cost, but well, I don't have one. So first of all, I would say, so I know for the, for the, for the TSI reading, for the TSI calculations, it's Secchi depth, it's chlorophyll, and I think phosphorus, right, is the other one. Yes. Right. And so for chlorophyll and phosphorus, those are the samples you're collecting that go off to the lab. Is that correct? Correct. Got it. All right. So now let's go back to the meter. So, and I, we, yes, the committee had a meter, uh, now outdated. I think Ben had his own meter that he was using for these.
Okay. Either way, it's a more current version. Uh, the committee had an old one that had been pretty much dormant since I think, uh, Tony Moores and Mike Lowry used it. In fact, Steve, I think you even said you had some kids laying around your house, but Carol was going to try and revivify this thing. And there's a pH meter that needed that was dried out needed to be recalibrated to Tom's point. It takes some specialized skill and I would rather just pay a professional to do it than have us monkeying around with some outdated thing that may not work properly. So, uh, I'm glad I forgot about the Orr's comment and Mike's email. So let's follow up on that because I agree that if we're going to do that and to Tom's point, maybe it doesn't need to be twice a year, maybe it could be once a year because we don't do that. We don't use anything. We don't use that information for anything. It's just $1,500 and some numbers on a page. So let's find out if we can have Orr's do it rather than anybody on this committee doing it. Um, and I agree with you that let's keep doing though twice a year, the chlorophyll, the secchi, the phosphorus because we use that information. Right. So let's see where the, uh, the Orr's connection goes. In the meantime, so getting back to our old meter, we did donate that. In fact, I think we ended up donating it to Ben and he used it as an educational device because it was not something that anybody on the committee bought. It was the town paid for it. And so I'll have to go back through all the emails because we wanted to figure out, okay, if the town owns it, how can we dispossess ourselves of this thing? And so I think that, Tom Norgie? Oh, you know, just just an aside, I was going to ask Larry if he knew what a secchi disc was. Uh, yep. I looked it up in Grock and know everything about it now. Yeah. Well, a secchi disc thankfully is something any of us could use. I see that. Yeah. Larry just signed up to help me with the measurement. It's now a two men's arm. Oh, there you go. Um, but anyway, actually I had to ask rock. I said, it's a test that sounds something like S I C K Y. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, because I couldn't figure out how to spell it. Nope. It's, uh, the, the, the, the, the great, the great Italian secchi S C C C H I. Yeah. Yeah. I think our, our, our, our, uh, page on the town website, I sent all the most recent reports to, um, what was her name again? I can't forget. Jalen. Jalen. Mostly she posted them. So if you want to take a look at those, Larry, uh, the secchi depth explanation is in there. Uh, the measurements are in there. Um, and that's in what, uh, Steve? It should be on the, uh, service water quality committee page. Yeah. We've, we've not found a good, if you, if you go on the service water quality page, I, I forget now, I haven't looked in a while, but there'll be, uh, documents. Yeah. You click on documents and it'll go to the Steve's reports. For example, it's an imperfect system. And, um, we haven't really added anything in a while. Cause I don't want there to be what, what there should be is some kind of a portal that you go into and you can go through the library and get all this stuff. We've not perfected this, but to Steve's point, you can go there now and you can see, um, some of the current, the recent water chemistry reports. So, um, let me just finish my thought here. So Steve, reach out to OARS. Uh, I'll go back through the, uh, the email history of what happened to our, our meter. But again, let's have a professional do with current equipment, not us sort of fumbling around with some outdated thing that may not work properly. Um, and then, uh, and, and Steve, last time we did vote on doing the chemistry testing. So let's see if we can get a professional from OARS to help or have OARS help out. And then we'll just continue as we have been. I just, but if it was going to be us, you know, the discussion last time was, if it's only us doing it, uh, maybe we save, you know, a couple thousand dollars a year and just don't do this stuff or do it infrequently because we, again, we don't use it beyond having, once we get the data.
We're still, if I remember correctly, we're still okay doing the lab portion of it in the spring. Uh, yes, but you're talking about not just, not just for the TSI, but for the whole suite of testing, the, the meter testing. And if we can't find anybody to do the meter testing, we will, as you said, save, save. And I would say too, for the meter testing, you know, let's see who, if we can find somebody, if we don't do it this year, maybe we, you know, I don't, I'm not worried if we don't get it done in the spring. If you take a look at the last two or three or four reports, the numbers don't change that much. Yeah. Including the, uh, psychodesk. Well, that, that, yeah, but that's not part of what, uh, Ben, I did that. Well, he did it too, but I, I did it. Yeah, well, you know, back to, uh, my talking about, uh, benchmarks. So I've been on the committee since about 2000 and I've, I've heard dozens of, and read dozens of reports and, uh, uh, Dudley Pond, uh, always had excellent, uh, psyched disc, uh, readings. I don't ever, uh, recollect until the, uh, last year or so that, um, it's been reduced and that may be, uh, I don't know, a precursor of something or there's gotta be some reason for that, uh, be, uh, something to watch. It was, it was only, it was only the spring, the fall reading was back to where we would expect. Okay. Yeah. Great. Okay. So those, that's the, those, the, that's the action for Dudley Pond. Uh, Steve, did you have anything else on Dudley? Um, uh, no, uh, you know, I think, um, uh, you, you probably read this report, right, Tom? The aquatics, aquatic restoration report. Uh, I, I'll have to, uh, admit my guilt. I have not read it other than making, getting the updates from, uh, you know, replacing Dudley Pond Association with Surface Water Quality Committee. Yeah. But is there something under the conclusions, uh, you know, talking about milfoil, um, says Eurasian milk, water milfoil remains present, but does not exhibit compensatory growth following harvesting. So they didn't make a big deal out of milfoil this year. No. And then Allison wanted to see the report because she wanted to hear their take, and I've not heard anything, because what I heard anecdotally from her earlier was that there didn't seem to be much milfoil this year. So I don't know if her think, if you've talked to her recently, if her opinion has changed, but it seems like this is not a, a milfoil, a year that's going to require Perselecar when it's in this kind of too late to get that going. Well, not necessarily. Probably not. And we've been doing it, listen, the first year was 2019, then we did it in 23. So we're kind of on this four-year cycle. So it looks like 27 would be the, possibly the earliest we need to think about doing this again. I, based on what the report said, I think I would concur with that. Okay. Very good. That was all on the agenda. Tom, do you have anything on, anything further on, on Pine Brook and the situation there with the, the trout? Well, not really, except I'll, I'll just reiterate, uh, um, last fall, I, uh, uh, well, first of all, uh, Pine Brook, um, has native brook trout in it. Um, I took Larry around and, uh, last fall and we looked at it. We didn't see any, but I've seen them before. Um, so I, uh, and I forgot Larry, whether this is, uh, before you and I went around, but, um, I had somebody, uh, there's, uh, a division of ecological restoration in Massachusetts. And I had somebody, uh, come and take a look at the culvert because the issue is, uh, we've got a Pine Brook below Pine Brook Road and, uh, Pine Brook above and, uh, whether there's, uh, the culvert, uh, which was repaired about 10 or 11 years ago, uh, uh, uh, whether it allows the fish to, uh, move up and down the stream. These fish, by the way, uh, Pine Brook, uh, Hayward Brook, which flows into it are classified as cold water. And those fish have likely been there since the last ice age. So that's, uh, you know, that's. Tom, I heard you mention that, um, do you know all the cold, uh, uh, streams, uh, in trout, but how many do we have? Well, you know, uh, trout, brook, and Sudbury, uh, which, uh, flows into Hotbrook, uh, uh, Pine Brook is the only one that we're aware of in, uh, Wayland, although upper Millbrook many years ago, um, there's a fellow who's, uh, lives right on it, Mike Patterson. Uh, Larry knows about Mike, uh, but I had, uh, you know, we, we felt we'd, uh, Mike had felt he'd observed a wild brook trout up there. I, I haven't been on there, uh, uh, years and years ago. Some of us, uh, stocked that area. We, uh, uh, all threw in $25 and stocked it with brick trout, for sure, in our little club. Um, but, uh, anyway, uh, streams with native brick trout are quite rare. I'm not certain there's an inventory. Uh, I would think that would be the kind of thing that, uh, oars would, uh, should probably do, uh, but, uh, uh, I'm most curious. All right.
So anyway, uh, uh, back to Pinebrook. Uh, so this, uh, representative, this person who came out, Amber Carr, who, by the way, um, worked with, uh, Mass Audubon years ago and, uh, the, and some other, uh, you know, she's been in this area. So I asked her, uh, uh, she felt the cover was, um, substandard and coverts by the way are being repaired all over the country. Washington state is spending billions on coverts. Um, on the other hand, they have salmon coming up the stream and not, uh, six inch brook trout. Uh, but, um, it's, it's a big deal. So, uh, her estimate was, uh, a million dollars and, uh, to fix it. Um, and, um, there are grants out there and, uh, although I'm worried about, uh, Pine Brook, I'm not worried enough that, um, I personally want to get into an effort like that. That's, uh, that's a big deal. So, uh, uh, uh, the fish are still there. I'm sure they're very happy. Okay, great. Thank you, Tom. Uh, that was, uh, that was all on the agenda, uh, barring, uh, picking a date for the next meeting in April. And so, Steve, I will give you dibs to set the date because I know your schedule is quite complicated. Oh, yeah. So, um, it, it's, um, you know, the other, the other thing that keeps happening is, um, I'm on the energy and climate committee and they schedule their meetings and they, they put them on the calendar like two days before. So I've, I've been talking to them about it. Um, let me see where we are here. Two, Tuesdays generally work well. Um.
So how about Tuesday the 14th?
14th. Oh, no, I'm sorry. Tuesdays except for the second Tuesday of the month. Well, hold on, hold on. Yes, that's right. That does not work. And Wednesday the 15th is probably too early in the month, right? Because you were saying you'd like the third or fourth Wednesday was good for you. No, no. When available Wednesdays are random, uh, generally not available on Wednesdays and Thursdays don't work. So how about like, um, April 7th? Uh, I can do April 7th. Tom Largy? Yeah, I can do April 7th. Hey, Larry. Uh, hold it, hold it, hold it. No, I have a play that night. Ah.
April 21st? Uh, let's see. Today is the 10th. So a little bit later than I, well, you know, there's not really anything urgent. Um. That works for me.
Um, it's a month and yeah, let's, let's do that Tom Largy, April 21st. It's a Tuesday. April 21st works for me. All right. So Steve confirming April 21st, Tuesday? Uh, yep. All right. I'm locking it in. All right. That'll be, we'll meet on, we'll meet April 21st. Perfect. Okay. Put it in right now. All right. And then, uh, barring anything else, I'm going to make a motion to adjourn at 7.55 p.m. I second, uh. My, uh, yep. Um, my, uh, laptop is dying, so best if we end soon. Yeah. Let's, uh, what we've, Tom Largy has seconded, so, uh, Steve Garone? Uh, aye. In favor, yes. Larry Kiernan? Yes. Tom Largy, aye. It's unanimous with Tom Clem voting in favor, so we will adjourn at 7.55. All right, gentlemen, thank you so much.