September 16, 2026 – Surface Water Quality Committee – Video & Transcript
September 16, 2026 - Surface Water Quality Committee
Let's begin at 7.03, and again, since this is a Zoom meeting,
I'll have everyone announce their presence verbally, and I'll begin.
Tom Clem, present.
Tom Largy, present.
Steve Garone, present.
Thank you.
I have to fill it out.
All right.
So I'm going to skip over public comment boldly,
and then I'm going to go right into minutes.
So I circulated the minutes from our last meeting, which was August 11th,
if anybody has any comments, now is the opportunity to speak.
That looked fine to me.
Yeah, me too.
All right.
Then I make a motion to approve the minutes from the August 11th meeting.
I only have a second.
Second.
Steve jumping in there for the second.
All right.
And let's go around the room on a vote. Tom Clem, approve. Tom Largy, approve. Steve Garone, approve. Excellent. Thank you.
And actually, while we're here, let me jump ahead. There is one invoice that came in from Solitude for hand-pulling. I sent that in the package. Let me open it. It's for three days or four days. I forget which. Let me open it up here. Okay. I did not see that. You sent it as a package to us? Yeah, I sent you. I sent the agenda, a bunch of stuff. Allison's updates. Ah, okay. Well, I think I saw some of that, but I don't remember an invoice from Solitude. Okay. Well, let me use technology and share the screen to show you guys that so you know what we'll be voting on here.
Sales invoice.
Okay. So you should be able to see on the screen there this invoice dated August 31st from Solitude. And Tom, this is for four days of hand-pulling. So we approved three days previously. So this brings a total of seven with this invoice. Okay. I'm looking it over right now.
Okay. And you just. Okay. I have a problem with. I have no problem with the invoice, but what they don't have are the dates.
And I sent a note out, I think, on August 11th. Telling Jeff because I did a survey finally got, got my boat straightened out and there was a note and but at August 11th, they had not done the east end of the pond. He had sent a note earlier saying that and in the next week he's going to do it. But I, I simply don't know. The problem is that water chests that start dropping. I don't know. I don't know. dropping seeds around the middle of August. So if these were done in late August, it's possible that many more hundreds of seeds were dropped in the pond. You know, a water chestnut plant has rosettes. Each rosette may have several seeds. The rosettes are daisy-chained. And I've observed over the years that maybe around the middle of August, one or two seeds will have dropped. And later in August, more will have dropped. So if there was a late harvesting in August, and every one of those plants dropped one seed, then we're exactly where we were before. It's imperative that harvesting be done before the middle of August. And I have not received anything from Jeff. You know, outside of Outlook, I've left calls and texts and things like that. Okay. Let me then, what I'll do is, after we approve this, I know they always put the dates in the report, but let me write to him, find out when they're planning on coming out next, and then find out what the dates that pertain to this. Well, no. I think they've completed the, they've completed the harvesting. They use the remaining four days. Their contract, and I was just looking for it, but I looked at it a few days ago, and the contract says early August. And that's because the science says that seeds start dropping the middle of August. And if the harvesting were actually done on the 20th or 25th, my opinion is that's a breach of contract. It's not what they promised us. And if that happened, it likely means we're just treading water in the pond. As many seeds were dropped as plants were pulled. That's my problem. Well, let me, so this would be seven days, four days here plus three days before. Yeah. So we, was the contract for 85? Was it 3,400 this year then for the seven days? Because normally we do 9,900, I believe. Yeah, yeah. And then 1,500 for the report, making $9,900. So that's, you know, that's, that's right. There's no problem with that. My problem is I don't know the dates. And if it were late in August, then that's a breach of contract. It does, did not do the pond much good. That's all there is to it. Well, I agree with your point on the timing. You know, as you've been explaining to us about the longevity of these seeds, my thinking has come around to, we're not going to beat them. I'm just hoping that at some point, the pond is a saturated with these seeds and every year they can dump more and more, but they're just, there's, they plateaued out. You can't get any more. I think we've got to be at a point now or very soon where the pond is as bad as it's ever going to be. And then we just, that'll just probably be the new normal. And the solitude teams can pull whatever they can, but it won't get any worse because if we just saturate it with these seeds, that's kind of the, my thinking. Well, hard, hard to say, but I would certainly like the dates. And I presume when he gives a report, they'll, they'll be in the report, but the dates, but we don't have the report. I have not received a sense since sending that message. I, I copied and I, and I looked at it. I may have, may have been misleading. I, the subject was, the, the was looking at the, the treated portions, but then I went on, I copied Jeff on it and the last couple of paragraphs to say, please get out on the pond. So maybe he didn't read it. I don't know, but okay. But Tom, that you said you were, you were last on the pond, August 11th. Or you sent that email on August 11th. I, let me go back and outlook. Hold on. I'm going to, I, I sent the email on August 11th and I, I, you were all copied on the note. I simply forget which day it was, but it was before August 11th. Okay. But you haven't been, you haven't been out there since then. Well, it's, it's a big deal to get out in the pond. We, we had difficulty. The water was very low and it was, it was hard. Larry Kiernan came out with me. All right. Okay. Well, excuse me. Let me make a motion to approve payment of this invoice to solitude for four days of water chestnut harvesting on herd pond. Okay. I second. Thank you. And again, let's, let's go around the room. Tom, Clem. I Tom Largy. I Steve grown. I right. Thank you.
Stop trying this. And okay. Let me take a peek at the agenda here. Let's let's get back on. On order here. Okay. Going back to Dudley pond. I've got three items on the agenda here that we'll go through. First is the mechanical harvesting update from Alison, which I sent all of you, including the map with the, the colloquial name. So we all know where a turtle pond turtle C is and whatever else. And then we've got, we'll go over the, this quote that we received just before the meeting in August from aquatic restoration consulting for a nutrient feasibility study. And then an update on a grant that Steve's been working with on members of the Dudley pond association. So Steve, let me have it over to you first for any comment on the mechanical harvesting. Well, I, you know, the reports are there. I don't have the numbers in front of me as to how much, or how, I guess they measure it in pounds, how many pounds of weeds were collected. It's all in the reports. My I'm I'm, I go out there every couple of days and talk to Alison and tree. And I mean, I'm not, I don't want to be, a pessimist, but it almost it's starting to feel like a losing battle that we're just not, we're not keeping up with things. They tell me that, you know, they'll go out there and I'll say, well, we're going to, we're going to try to cut some channels so that people can get around more easily. Yep. And they come back the next day and they're pretty much filled in the change though. And, and, and I've noticed this in and being on my paddle board and also my pontoon boat is that there is, there is this weed called a loadia, which is really, really becoming very prevalent in the pond. And while it is a bit troublesome, it is actually looking like it may be keeping the tape grass down. And, and from, from a usage standard standpoint, tape grass is a bigger issue. So that's, that's a, I guess if you call that the positive side of things, that's positive. But tape grass is still there. It's still an issue and it's very hard to keep up with. I was looking at, um, Alison's report and last year the report she gave, they did six weeks and they pulled a little over a hundred thousand pounds of plants. And for this report, I was looking at it and for the same period, six weeks, it's over 200,000 pounds of plants. Right. Uh, does that seem, I mean, I, Alison and Shree are two people. Have they really just gotten that much more? That's they probably have gotten more efficient using that harvester, but does that seem like an exaggeration or do you think it's realistic? They've gotten that. I think, I think it's realistic. I do. And they're working really, really hard. Um, they, uh, you know, they've got a, I think one or two weeks left to go. And, um, I've noticed, um, I've been out there and I've noticed that the weather is, is starting to have an effect on the weeds. They're not as big a problem as they were a month ago. Um, but keeping up with it, as I said, is a real challenge and they're, they're working really, really hard. Do you know? So I, so the reports will say, you know, they did 35 dumpster loads. Uh, is the coordination that tie with DPW because that seems like a lot during the week. And so the DPW guys have to get that dumpster and they they're carting it to act and right. I mean, it's not like nearby. Yeah, I don't, I, yeah, they are. I mean, they are carting it away because almost every day, um, that dumpster is empty in the morning. Oh really? Okay. So they are, they are carting it away. Okay. And I assume everything's working out with acting. I haven't heard anything to the contrary. Um, you know, a more useful figure than pounds would be, uh, acres or some measurement of the space that's, uh, cleared. Uh, and, uh, because that's what, that's what really counts. Uh, they, um, lowered the, um, the cutter. Did they a year or so ago? I think they did. Yeah. And that probably, uh, means more pounds and more plants. On the other hand, uh, they might not grow up as quickly. Uh, hard to say. Uh, uh, well, you know, one of the, one of the, uh, uh, trying to find positives, you know, silver linings, but one of the positives about the pond is that it is very clean. Uh, it's very clean and it's very clear. And what happens when it's very clear and it's very clean? The sun gets all the way down and grows things. So I think that's part of the issue. Um, there's a lot of debate within the Dudley pond association about what to do about this. And, and, um, Tom, uh, Clem, you mentioned the grant that is being applied for. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, uh, uh, we're trying to get at, you know, how to, how to act, actually deal with this. And, and, the path that we're at least trying to exercise is getting a grant from the state. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and the project that you, Tom claim mentioned earlier. Um, to do, around the pond but that's got to include from the state's point of view they're the one they're the grantors of of the grant a very comprehensive view of what's going on so it needs to include stormwater runoff it needs to include an evaluation of aseptic systems and you know i don't i i don't think we're going to get all that data before the grant needs to be submitted in october but i think we're going to go through the exercise and see what's what's needed um i i know that we're not in a position to fund that study uh but the w pond association may be so for that and i was going to ask because you know separately or previously we received a report from from wendy and uh wendy gendron at uh aquatic restoration consults who set that proposal and is the plan because this obviously this grant is going to require um specialists. It can't be just a volunteer group putting this detailed information together. So is the idea that if we were to win the grant, it would be Wendy generating this, doing this study? Or are these two meant to be two independent things? I'm sorry, developing the grant? Yeah, so we're developing this grant. Wendy is not mentioned in there. And my question is, if we win the grant, is the idea that the money for that would go to Wendy to do that feasibility study? Or are these meant to be two independent efforts?
The grant is aimed at getting money to fund that feasibility study. Got it. Okay, so they are interconnected. But what confused me about what you were asking was what's Wendy's involvement in the development of the grant application? And she is involved. The DPA paid her for an hour and a half of her time. Yes, we all met, you know, the week the health, I think it's called the healthy bond committee. I should know this because I'm healthy Dudley Pond committee. Yeah. But healthy Dudley Pond committee met with her and she and it was a joint meeting with the committee, Wendy and the state reps, the representatives of the state regarding the grant. And you know, based on that, Andrui and Melissa Tom, Tom Clenn knows these people took on the role of developing the initial pass at the grant application based on help from Wendy and direction from the state. Tom, I believe you reviewed it. I'm still reviewing it. I've gone so we gotta go in in the next couple of weeks. So. Yeah. So just to get Tom Lurgan caught up. Tom Lurgan, you may recall that when we met last time, we had received just before our meeting in August, this quote from aquatic restoration consultants, Wendy Gendron. And she had worked with the Dudley Pond Association before doing flora and fauna surveys. And the Dudley Pond Association has concerns about algal blooms on the pond, whether they're toxic or not. They're more prevalent than they have been previously. They're concerned about weeds, as Steve alluded to, being more than we can handle with the harvester or every so often porcelain core treatment. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. They were interested in having a study done to see what the sources of nutrients were in the pond and how we might control them or ways we can mitigate all that phosphorus, nitrogen, everything else that's helping all these plants to grow. I remember that conversation. Yeah. So, yeah. So, one of the confusing things for us, I'm still not 100% clear on it. Right. But I think I get it, is that there are actually two grant paths. The first one is the 604B grant, which is what we're discussing. Right. And then there's the 319 grant. And as far as I can tell, based on what the state has told us, the 604B grant is really about figuring out, you know, what, what, where the sources of the problem are, identifying them. And figuring out magnitudes, timeframes, whatever. The 319 grant, 319 grant is a, is it, I guess you can call it an implementation grant. It's like, okay, now that you know what you need to do, this grant will help you fund that activity. Okay. That's my understanding of it. But it is confusing. It's from the state. What do you want? Yeah. So that's being worked. Again, that committee is, has taken on the task of doing, of developing that grant. Ann and Melissa are the, are the sort of at the forefront of doing that. Steve, let me ask you a question. I know that I, and Tom Largy and Larry's not here. I'm going to circulate this, this to you. So Ann Juillet put together a draft of this grant that Steve is looking at. I'm taking a look at, look at other committee, Healthy Dudley Pond committee members are taking a look at. One question I didn't ask, or Steve, is there, you know, Ann put this all together. There's tasks and deliverables and all this. Is that a, is there a template from the state for all that? I assume there's a template that Ann's filling in as best she can. Yeah, there is. If you could send me the link or that template, because then what I'll do is I'll circulate that to Tom, Largy, and Larry. So they can take a look at it. They can take a look at this and just be aware of it and weigh in as they wish to. But I don't want it to be just you and I being aware of it and Tom and Larry are not. So, but I just, you know, was reading through it and I was just curious what the, what the template was. And because I'm sure Ann, again, I'm sure Ann didn't craft all that herself, but that template would be helpful to know what she's trying to fill in with. Now, did you, did you see her references to reports that we're looking for? Her, her what? There are references to reports. Oh, yes. And I don't, I don't have them. I don't think I'd go back that far. So I. Yeah, that's another point too, because I don't know if these are going to be in, you know, are these going to be included as appendices? I mean, we can't just allude to these things. I assume we have to provide them or at least make sure we have these actual reports. We're not referring to some AI hallucination or something. Right. Okay. Yeah, I did make note of that. I will track those down. I assume that Ann has these. Otherwise she wouldn't have referred to them, but I know she's away until next week, but I will make sure that we have those documents and that we're referring to them correctly and extracting the correct information out of them. But I agree to your point that there's, there are things that I think we are not going to be able to do for this one, which will, you know, not help us win the grant. But I think it's, it's, it's a good exercise to go through. And we'll learn what we don't know and where we need support to fill those gaps. But if you could send me that template or just the link to it. I'm going to have to look for, you know, I didn't, I wasn't given the task of doing the initial draft of this. So I never actually got the template. Was it, was it Ann alone or was it Melissa? Because I can reach out to Melissa with Ann away. I can do that if you want me to. Okay. Please do it because I want to provide that, that framework so that not only for myself, but. For Tom and Larry to look at too. And again, not just so they can understand what we're trying to do here and take a look at it. Again, there's a lot of information being requested that's quite specialized in nature and. Right. You know, might be beyond this group. One of the, one of the things that people on that committee are trying to do. You know, it's, it's needed for getting a lot of the information, but it's viewed also, I think in a good way. As positive in terms of establishing long-term relationships that we're going to need within the town to actually address problems with the pond. So there's a lot of good activity going on in that regard. Let me ask you this question too. I know that Wendy's scope that she provided is 55,000, I believe beyond the, you know, I know that when these committees were formed as a charter and they have their own budget. Do you know what the budget of this healthy, deadly pond committee is? I don't think there is one. I think, I think the, the approach is figure out what we have to do. The DPA has a fund. Right. And so have there been discussions, you know, if we don't win this grant, I assume there's going to be desire to have this go forward. And has it gone to lay for whoever the president is to make them aware that, Hey, this may be $55,000 plus to do this study. Has that awareness? I don't think it's gotten that far. We're in discussion. Okay. So Tom, this is this grant. I've been at all the meetings. I haven't heard that. Okay. So Tom Largy, this, you know, this, we, we touched upon this part last time. This grant that Wendy drafted is, I believe it's 55, the range is 55 to 70,000, if I'm recalling correctly, obviously well beyond our, our budget, especially if next year is going to be a Procellicor year on Dudley Pond. So, you know, it would not be anything that this committee could fund, which is the reason why they're going for the grant. But if the grant is not successful. There's still a pathway here for the DPA to fund this. I know they're sitting on well over a hundred thousand dollars. This is a grant to do a study, right? Yes. Okay. This is a grant to do a grant to do a study. And Wendy drafted. Unless you want to do it for free, Tom Largy.
It's a dreaded feasibility. My private opinions are that. Even if you find all these nutrients and whatever is very difficult to stop them and it may not make much difference for the weeds. So, but anyway, But it'd be, I think probably if we're going to go down the state path, we have to do this one before we do the, what the 319. So it's bureaucratic processes. Okay. So we'll see where it goes. So many ways, Steve and I are working with this healthy Dudley. Thank you. The 10, and the 11, and the 21 year, right. And I think it will be really nice if it's in the. And I think it will be really nice if it's in the grant program. And I think it will be nice if it's in the grant program. Because it's one of the, it's a really nice work. Because we're talking about. Um, A project that we've been working on for, for a while now. And it's a project that. Which is really great. Because it's one of the great projects. And you're not just talking about the com commission. It's you know, you're talking about the relationship and the, you're talking about the trust and the way you work and what you're doing. And, and, so, um, Well, we have, we have a grant. plan so this 319 would be one year plus down the road okay correct and that timeline by the way is that the state's timeline or was Ann working with the subcommittee to because I don't know where one year came from because I don't know when these plans you know the the state you know I mean if they give us a grant to do this and we do this we would presumably get it done within a year and then we'll have the data and the information we need to move forward with actually trying to solve the problems so I'm yeah a year would make sense okay so uh anyways Tom Margie I'll share this this draft with uh you and Larry so you the whole committee will have it but but Steve and I are taking the lead working with this Dudley Pond subcommittee to get this thing off and it's October yeah it's the first week of October sometime I forgot I want to say the fourth but it's the fourth of the seventh it's the first week of October something like that yeah yeah all right uh that is all on Dudley Pond Steve unless there's anything you wanted to bring up well um I don't know if you saw the emails I sent you today oh yeah just before about the meter or of Ben Witherall let me explain what that's all about um uh in the in the spring we did one of our studies okay uh meaning you know getting samples sending them to the lab and so on so there's two parts to that um as you as Tom Klein might think you know one is to collect water samples send them to the PACE lab they do an analysis send us data back and I write a report the the second part is Ben Witherall uh who used to work for a company that we could work with us uh used to come with this YSL meter that he used to rent yes that would measure things like dissolved oxygen by depth and you know temperature and whatever um and that would be a second set of data that would then go into the report that I write starting um last at the last time we did it which was in May um Ben had moved on to another company he cannot work to to take those measurements himself because he can't be insured by the town so we said to him okay we'll take the measurements but we're going to send you the data you can do the analysis and that would actually save us money because we wouldn't be paying him for that entire thing so I think he came back and we approved paying him I think it was five hundred dollars for his role in the May measurements we never got a bill for that and so I reached out to him today well let me back up a second the person who did the measurements was Mer Merowitz right he wanted to do it he went and got the meter did a little training to figure out how to use it and he as far as I know he paid for himself it was a couple of hundred dollars and um so that's how we got that done I would really like to I would like to learn how to do it so I reached out to Ben to find out hey who do I rent this meter from how do I contact them and that's when he told me that he never finished the analysis for May because I forgot to send him some of the data from the lab okay that was my fault I I must have just some something I forgot to attach to the email I sent him although he never reminded me so he never billed us so I said well are you available to do it again in October when we do it again yes and he said well so when I do that one I'll bill you for both of them and it only it won't be a thousand dollars it'd be nine hundred dollars so that's what those emails said okay so that's that's so so I think we're actually getting a discount yeah and I was gonna I was gonna say when when he does that just have him send the invoice to the service water quality committee because that those tests that testing is still part of our budget so we can just pay that there's no having to go through the DPA or other layers of yeah so so they'll they'll be three components when we do this again they'll be the lab one which we always paid for pace lab they'll be the YSL meter rental and they'll be Ben's time okay but that should add up to less than what we used to pay for when Ben was doing it okay and for the meter are as normally do that again or you're going to rent this thing and I don't want to do it if Norm wants to do it again he can do it I you know I um no I'm not I'm not on Norm's uh friendly list at this point so I don't know why but all right well but yeah because I know he'll be he'll be he'll ask him if he wants to do it yeah because he'll be saying hey it's that time of year we didn't do the testing again so you can by the way I was I was on the site that report still is on top oh right so Jalen so this so Tom Largi this is a topic that's come up before the town revamped their their websites and for the surface water quality committee it was a bit of a hodge podge there was a on the surface water quality web page and it's still there now there's a a link that says document library and you can click on that link and it goes to this thing called issue issuu.com tony moore started years ago um mike lowry what's that mike lowry mike lowry mike lowry or tony uh i guarantee i didn't uh yeah sorry yeah mike or tony anyways um and i i managed it for a while but uh they don't give you anything for free on that it was quite expensive to pay for it was 21 a month and i paid for it for one year and i wasn't using it that much and so i anyway so if you go there now you can find what's been posted but you can't download anything and i find issue to be kind of a pain in the ass frankly it's not really user-friendly at all so what i i wrote to jaylen bradica in the town manager's office or clerk's i forget which office about either uh the town reimbursing me to pay for a year's subscription for this stupid thing or my preference would be because i looked at school committee dpw select board if you go to those pages there are nice sections for uh minutes or for the dpw there's water uh information and you click on those links and there are there are links to pdf documents right now this is fantastic so that's why i asked jaylen to do and uh just last week i sent her a handful of steve of the most recent uh water chemistry reports from the last fiscal year and and tom the last annual report from uh solitude so they haven't been posted yet so i'm keeping an eye on that so yeah steve they are not up yet but jaylen's going to do that and i i'll ping her to find out when that can happen okay i the reason why i brought it up is because there are actually two data reports from the may measurements up there the report that i wrote is not uh can you say that again there's two data reports from yeah the reports from the lab and they've been uploaded the macasac report which is what ben writes but the report that i wrote that i you and i were talking about with the um you know with the charts yes yes yes that report is not up there up where where where are you seeing them okay um because like i said they're not you mean on the town website for the document library yeah it's uh where am i here here we are uh because if that's through if that's the issue i can't upload anything else there because i don't have i'm not paying for it anymore so that's where we're i have i'm i'm in reports surface water quality reports and i go there and i look at dudley pond can you can you share your screen so i assume you're on the surface water quality web page you click on document library that takes you to issue um share
where am i here let's see it should be at the top of your screen the red square
is this it
am i sure this is it
okay can you see it i see this fiscal year oh can you okay and and there oh hang on can you okay can you go back because when i did this go go back to the surface water quality page because i clicked on something different it took me to issue which so surface water quality right and then you see oh there it is okay excellent okay can you click on that again yeah this is dudley oh nice okay okay and this is fiscal year 2026. yes okay this is great okay she has done it perfect okay i clicked on document library that took me to that issue thing which is awful i'll have her take it down okay so i'm sorry now i'm oriented so steve these two reports are are there from may yes but the report that i wrote which would have a title like this of it have the word final in the end well what's so the bottom one right dp water quality report may 2026 that's yours this this is oh it is did you rename it uh i i yes because i want them to be oh okay that i didn't open it i just saw the title and i said that's not that's not the yeah i i want to harmonize the naming so those two yeah your reports are all gonna like are gonna have that title structure so yeah those are up there and again that's fy26 uh and so i want to have documents uh correlating with their fiscal year maybe there's a better way to do it uh well i'll have to try because i know this is going to come up people are going to want to search for documents and i don't know i i think this is not a searchable function so i may have to think of a different way but i don't know what that solution is yet but anyways yeah your stuff is up there so so we're actually paying for that well no i'm not paying for that so because i just sent those documents i i sent them as attachments to jalen she's doing it or it's doing it on the back end and the town is i assume has an enterprise thing they're paying for i'm not paying for that well it just looks like it's a link on a website we own the website right the town owns the website what do you mean so why would why would we have to why would the town have to pay for it for the website i i didn't ask jaylen who's paying for i just said can you upload this stuff for me so i just assume that this is the town whoever was supporting the town website okay i was paying them and that may include this uploading function for me i just didn't want to pay and manage for managing myself i'd rather give it to jalen and have her upload this stuff oh absolutely yeah so this is good well i before i went to you i went to her but she said she she couldn't do it
that was the process i used i i went to because i always went to her first and i sent her reports and i said can you put those up on the website she goes i can't do that and that's when i went to you when did you when did you ask her to do this well and i finished the report in july so that's what i asked okay that's confusing to me because i didn't even I didn't even question that she couldn't do it because I can see that, again, Select Board and DPW and schools have this exact same thing you just showed us. So I don't know why she I don't know what she was thinking or why she said that. Well, it's like it's solved. So let's. Yeah. So and like I said, there's so much history, document history with the Service Water Quality Committee. I don't intend to go back 40 years. But what I will do is start going. So this is FY26. Maybe I will get some thought about searchability. We'll ask Jalen about that because people are going to want to look, for example, so Steve talking about that 1982 or 83, the IEP report that everyone calls it. You know, somebody's going to want that, but they're not going to find it by clicking through every fiscal year going back that far. So I've got to think about. If there's some searchability or something, but I'll ask Jalen about that. But at a basic functional level, we can upload documents now through Jalen. OK. Cool. And I'll let Norm know because he was asking about that, too. And also, Abby was asking for documents. But again, that's I'll send her that stuff directly because some of those are old. And I don't think that'll ever get up on the town's Web site just because it'll be too cumbersome. But there's a process now we can get stuff uploaded.
Cool. All right. Yeah. Like I said, when Ben does that report writing, just have him send the invoice to the Service Water Quality Committee. We'll get him taken care of. All right. OK. That's all for Dudley Pond. Tom, anything else to add on her? Any news on Clearcast that they've done the second treatment? Have you you've been out there? You know, I in my note on on August, I think it was a level August 11th. We went and we looked at it. We saw the treated areas and we also saw some patches, good sized patches. I am close included some photos. And that was in the request to Jeff to see if he could use some of those four days to get at those. However, treated is treated and it's identical to what you and I saw a year earlier. It's just a bunch of, you know, a vast area of. Plants that are hurting, but we don't know how how hurting they are. We have no idea, just no idea because the plants don't go away. They're they're just they're browned or whatever. And they look kind of bad. But they were there. They were treated as no doubt of that. OK, it's simply, I guess. The year before Clearcast came around when I heard of a. A chemical treatment. I envisioned a chemical treatment, the plants die off and you have open water and it's not that way at all, you really have acres of of bad looking plants. Yeah, so I think we need to make a decision if this is even worth the effort. I mean, if it's. Do you have a sense if it's even. Keeping that South. Move at like if we were if we were to stop doing this, do you think it would just expand out from where it is now or are we keeping it in check? Maybe I think it could expand. Yes, I think we have to keep doing it, at least in the near term. So, yeah. I'll look at. Pardon me. You know, going back historically, you know, we had about. A week from about 2003 to 2009, we were using mechanical harvesters. And after that, we started 2010, started hand pulling. And by golly, it was all clean. The South Cove, when they're when they're pulled, they're pulled. And there's no longer a plant there. But that mechanical harvesting over six or seven years. So. We need to do a pretty good job. We simply can't tell with the. With the the clear cast, we might be able to tell sometime in the future if there are fewer plants. But it certainly seems to me that there are an awful lot of seeds up there. Tom, I was in the settlement. You know, maybe we have to go back to mechanical harvesting. Do you know that's that's that's that's that's too hard to do. There are there are all kinds of problems. First of all, fish and wildlife owns the entire perimeter in front of Pelham Island Road. We I wouldn't want to go through that again. And now it's it's difficult to do. When when you were doing it the first time, was it similar to the way it is now where that South Cove was filled in or was it even more. Well, there's more coverage on the pond. You could use the harvester on the deeper parts of the pond. And that's just that South Cove. Yeah. And the South Cove at low water, the harvesters couldn't go out there. So the hydro rake was used. There were some one or more hydro rakes, which, by the way, is a very slow process. But what we did was if you look at Pelham Island Road, there's a kind of an area. Where you can see straight out in the pond, a hundred yards or so. And there's there are concrete blocks that have kind of been placed there because there was erosion and they repaired it. But we were doing it before the repair. And there was a bit of a beach and the weeds were dumped. By the harvester off the beach, and then every night a DPW would send down the front end loader and there was a container there. The front end loader would pick up the weeds and put them in the container. It was it's quite a mess. I can't see that happening again there. I just I just don't in particular sense, I would be a lot harder to do because of the road repair that they did there. OK. Yeah, if you go along Pelham Island Road, you can see that on the pond side, there is concrete. I think they're concrete blocks. They weren't there then.
So I have no problem with the. I think Priscilla core is terrific. We simply can't tell. How it's working, maybe we can and sometime in the future. OK. And I'm concerned, too, about, you know, that I assume at some point resistance is going to establish against clear cast. Yeah. So maybe. Yeah. And so then if you want to alternate and use different herbicides, but those herbicides are less effective than clear cash, which doesn't look like it's doing that great of a job, then what's even the point? Right. You can spend another ten thousand dollars on some lesser herbicide. Well, in the years leading up to 2016, of there were there were years when we only harvested like six or seven hundred plants from the entire pond, and then it blew up in 2016. You know, estimate of fifty thousand plants. Those seeds had been there for fifteen, twenty years. And and so and that year, two things, solitude was they did not harvest during the month of July. And when August came around, they were over. They were overwhelmed, not able to keep up with it ever since then. That South Cove has been a problem. And it wasn't 10 years ago, 11 years ago, just wasn't. So I'm fairly pessimistic about long term on Herd Pond. I, I, it's it's just a tough, tough, tough thing. I am also a little pessimistic on. All the hand harvesting, that's hard. I, I would not myself want to personally manage it or oversee it. You need somebody like a solitude. But are they doing the job? I'm not certain they have been the last several years. Right. Yeah. Because they've got as you as you explained, they've got their own limitation. And, you know, people scheduling them. OK. All right. So not not a happy story happening there. Yeah. By the way, as an aside, speaking of ponds, either of you ever hear of Willis Pond and Sudbury? Well, Willis Pond is near where Babe Ruth used to live. He used to live off Dutton Road. And legend has it that Babe Ruth was an extravagant kind of guy. And in the winter he had a big party and he had a piano brought out onto the ice. Yeah. Ice on the pond. So the piano was there somewhere. But and I don't know why it took me all these years. But twice recently I've launched my boat in Willis Pond. It's a smaller than Dudley or heard. Maybe it's 20 acres or so. And very shallow. I haven't found a park deeper than about seven feet. It's tannic. Tannic means it's discolored because there are a lot of swamps around it. And the weeds aren't that bad. Not only that, Larry Kiernan was out with me and we were catching small fish and all of a sudden. He hooked an enormous fish, which was bigger than any largemouth bass I ever caught in my life. Twenty two and a half inches, five or six pounds. It was a huge fish. So it's it's another pond. It's got a beach on it. It's got about four houses on it. Each one of those houses, it looks like they have a dock with a ski boat and otherwise little used. And a paucity of weeds. And maybe it's a tannic, the tannins. I don't know. Just just plain interesting. That's all the I thought you're going to say you found Babe Ruth's piano. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, just an interesting contrast. And I look at it and I say, huh, how come Herd Pond doesn't look like this? I mean, when Larry and I went out on Herd Pond, that was early first week in August, which, by the way, because I had that injury back in May, that was the first time I've done anything with the boat, it's been steadily getting better. So that was that was a big deal for me to go out there. But the visibility of Herd Pond periodically gets blooms. That could have been three inches of visibility in Herd Pond. That was just plain wretched. If if Deadly Pond were like that, people would be very upset indeed. So I don't know. I just don't understand why it's that way. But it certainly is. In this pond that you were at, do they do the thing they do like in reservoirs where they cut back the trees by a certain number of feet to try to keep the leaves out of the pond? They don't do anything. They don't do anything. OK. There's a there's a beach. I don't know who owns the beach. It's a nice beach. There are four houses on the South Shore and they each have a dock and it's all just swamp. And it's nobody does anything to that pond. But it seems to stay in pretty good shape. Do they wash boats at the beach? I don't think so. But actually what I've done in prior years is not very often, but if I was in saltwater. Then it was convenient for me and I didn't put the boat in the pond, but I backed my trailer into the pond so that I my axle would be covered with, you know, the fresh water. It didn't do me any good when the axle broke this year. But that's another story. OK, OK, Tom. Well, thanks. Thanks for that. That update.
I guess put our thinking caps on for Herd Pond. OK, but the last thing I had on the agenda was I had sent. Had circulated a draft of the committee's annual reports, so send me your comments as as just a reply, not a reply all because I know I sort of bent the rules by saying it's a little committee at once, but send me your comments by next. But let's see, next week is the 21st. By the end of next week, we're going to finalize this and get it to to the town. So this one only has Deadly Pond and Herd Pond. I didn't put anything for Lake Kachinshawood or Mill Pond in there because we didn't do anything on those ponds. So, Tom, any comments about figures or pictures you want to put in there? Well, you know what, Tom? Back to this outlook, I have an iPad. It's got iOS. And. I just looked at Outlook before this meeting and I looked at it. I don't know how many days ago, but I did not spot anything from you. It seems hard for me to find things on this outlook. I don't know why, but I somehow got buried. Yeah, you did send it on Outlook on the town through the town email. Let me take a look. I know with. Yeah, one thing I don't like about Outlook and my work uses it. So if I send an email to somebody, or actually, no, I take it back because my work outlook is fine. The one that the town has, Tom, to your point, if I send an email and somebody sends an email in response, what you see is that latest email. It's very difficult to track this down. So, Tom, let's see. This one that I sent that has the report, nobody said any sent any reply to it. Well, hang on. Maybe the maybe I did, because I think I sent. No, because I followed up with the Dudley Pond harvesting update. But that was a separate email. So let me if you don't mind, I'll make let the screen go blank and take a look at my outlook right at this minute, I'll be out. The Zoom will stay up. I'm just off of it for the minute. OK, OK. I said it. So, Tom, when you're looking, it was a Sunday. Sunday morning, the 13th. OK, all right, hold on. You're going away, but not the Zoom sessions. All right. OK. And I'll look here. Oh, and while Tom's looking, Steve, same for you. Any any comments on the formatting or content that maybe I overlooked? I will. I will take a look. OK, and if there's a nice, sexy picture of Dudley Pond you want to know, I try and put a picture of the pond. It could be a winter scene. It could be whatever. But I try and like have a nice picture of Dudley Pond as the at the top of the section and went for Herd Pond. So if you have anything current that looks good, I'll be glad to put that at the. OK, I'm looking at it right now. And there's something on Dudley Sunday, Dudley Pond Harvesting for use. No, not so that that's that's the and the next one is Agenda and Files. Yes, that one. OK. OK, I see all of those attachments. OK, I. You want to say a draft? OK, I see. No, I see. OK, somehow I. I guess I glanced at it and I thought it was the agenda. And all right, I'll take a closer look. Yeah, the agenda is the one that shows first. There's a bunch of other stuff there. We could go through it now, actually, if you want to. But I didn't want to. You know, if you haven't looked at it yet, I don't want to spend. You know, I don't want to do it live in real time. Not efficient now. Yeah. OK, I see it. So, yeah, if you guys could look at it, you're welcome to look at the whole thing, as is Larry, but if you want to focus on your sections, that's fine. I just need to have all the documents by the end of next Friday, the twenty fifth. So I can finalize this thing and get it off to the town the week after. OK, hold on. Deadly DF study invoice. OK, fiscal year twenty twenty. OK, I just brought it up from. OK, I went through it looks all fine to me, but I'll take a look at it. Yeah. By the way, I'm a week from Sunday, I'm leaving on a major fishing trip out to the state of Washington. And I hope my arms up to it and I'll be preparing for that. That's where we go out every day. We're out there for a week with guides and down the river and drift boats. And you've given yourself a deadline. Then, Tom, you've got to get your review done by next Friday. You know, yeah. So anyway, I just I just. I got a note from the fellow who runs a guide service as a river called the Klickitat. It drains a mountain called Mount Adams, which named after John Adams. But I'm sure neither of it's a remote mountain, but it's the third most third highest mountain in the Cascade Range from California up to Washington State, heavily glaciated and because they've had a lot of cool weather, the glaciers are not melting. Therefore, the river is clear when there's warm weather. The river is silty from a glacial silt. And it's a whole different thing. So anyway, so I'm looking forward to clear water from a glaciated mountain. Tom, when you on this trip, are you are you camping and fishing in one spot? Are you working your way up or down the river? No, no, we're we're staying at a call of the resort fishing, a steelhead ranch. And we'll be taken care of and go out in the boat every day. And and then you have sumptuous meals, I hope, with free booze. And which I may partake of only sparingly. I think my limits one drink a night in recent years. But anyway. Yeah, no, no, no camping. I'm 86 years old now. I'm feeling my age. So anyway. OK, well, OK, I'm going to go back to Zoom, I I did see it. I apologize for not seeing it somehow. I I don't know. I can't maybe I didn't look at it since Sunday. It's possible I felt I'd seen some reports from Allison. There were some that came out earlier. Maybe Steve had sent something. Did you, Steve? No, not recently. OK, so the reports that I was talking to Tom about, I usually send those out to the committee, but I was waiting for them to be posted. So now, OK, well, now you can look at them. Yeah, yeah. OK. OK, so let me see. Are we going to schedule our next meeting? Yes. Hang on a second.
Just making completely a note here. Yeah. Before we adjourn, let's schedule for October. So this is the 16th. So I'm looking at the week of maybe the 20s, the 25th, which is a Sunday or the 18th. Or we can even do early November. But I'd probably like I'd like to have one maybe later in October. So Tuesdays are Wednesdays. Or Wednesdays are open. I'll see your schedule is changing. So let me well, in October. Yeah, Wednesdays don't work. Tuesdays. Like the 13th would not work because I have a conflict the second Tuesday, so the 20th would work, it does not work for me. We're up in New Hampshire that for several days, the 27th works for me. Twenty. Twenty seven. Yeah. OK, let's lock that one in. It's October 27th will be our next. Next meeting. And that is that's a that's a Tuesday, is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, that's a Tuesday. Tuesday. OK, very good. All right. Very good. All right. I will then if there's nothing else. Well, that's the agenda. So there is nothing else. I'm going to make a motion to adjourn at 8 0 5 p.m. I just I just mentioned something before we go. We were talking about weeds and Dudley and one of the things I am hearing and I'm going to follow up on this is that the milfoil levels look way down. And it is almost as if the milfoil is being crowded out by the Elodia and the tape grass and the Elodia didn't say, Steve, that that Elodia pops up early, then it goes down. So I thought the Elodia was no longer really a factor. It was it comes up early and then it gets taken over by the tape. Yeah, it was. It was affected through the entire summer. OK, so both the Elodia and the tape grass. Right. OK. You know, I'm not hearing a lot about milfoil. Well, yeah, well, I know we've just adjourned our meeting. We haven't adjourned yet. Oh, we haven't. But back to Elodia.
What else should we know about it? You felt it's not as severe a problem as tape grass. The milfoil is getting somehow. Suppressed, which may be good news for next year. There's no point putting in. Yeah. Don't don't hold me to it. Yeah, that's that's a good observation. Yeah. Well, I think we have to depend on Allison and company for the other ones out there doing the observing and see what they say. Perhaps ask them about that. That tells me that that's what I'm talking to. But I got to get I got to get updated. So. Yeah, and the Elodia is getting cut. Does it go to the surface or is it? Yeah, it comes up pretty high. It comes up. So there are a couple of pounds in the deepest part of the pond. No, nothing comes up. But. In the deepest part of the. Yeah, yeah. OK, I understand. Yeah, it's always been that way. So if you were to look at the container, is there a lot of Elodia in it or is it mostly tape? Yeah, they tell me there is. They're cutting into. OK, and the Elodia is still a problem for swimmers and yeah, not as bad as it's not as bad a problem as tape grass, but. It's OK, there's a lot of it. And I didn't want to I didn't want to take us down a rat hole, I just wanted to. Well, no, that's not a rabbit hole. I think that's potentially interesting. Yeah, this is this. We're now we're hearing about Elodia, which we hadn't heard of because it was first was the milfoil and the tape grass, now Elodia is emerging again as an aquarium plant, so easy to imagine how that got in the pond over the course of years. Anyway, and then Tom had a question, as long as I have you here, are you planning to be at the Dudley Pond semiannual meeting on the 25th? Of October? Uh, yes. OK, yeah, I can't make it. Oh, yeah, then I'll be there. So it's for the it's on the 25th. Yes. All right. The fall dinner, right? Yeah, I'll be there. I might I might be able to show up later on, but not at the beginning. OK. Just want to make sure we're covered. Yeah, I'll be there. All right. OK. Now, now I'm done now at 8 0 8 p.m. I will make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Can I get a second? I second. Thank you. And then let's let's go around on roll call vote. Tom Clam, I. Tom Largy, I. Steve Varone, I. Great. Thanks, gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of the evening and we'll meet on the 27th. Yep. All right, guys. Good night.
And let's go around the room on a vote. Tom Clem, approve. Tom Largy, approve. Steve Garone, approve. Excellent. Thank you.
And actually, while we're here, let me jump ahead. There is one invoice that came in from Solitude for hand-pulling. I sent that in the package. Let me open it. It's for three days or four days. I forget which. Let me open it up here. Okay. I did not see that. You sent it as a package to us? Yeah, I sent you. I sent the agenda, a bunch of stuff. Allison's updates. Ah, okay. Well, I think I saw some of that, but I don't remember an invoice from Solitude. Okay. Well, let me use technology and share the screen to show you guys that so you know what we'll be voting on here.
Sales invoice.
Okay. So you should be able to see on the screen there this invoice dated August 31st from Solitude. And Tom, this is for four days of hand-pulling. So we approved three days previously. So this brings a total of seven with this invoice. Okay. I'm looking it over right now.
Okay. And you just. Okay. I have a problem with. I have no problem with the invoice, but what they don't have are the dates.
And I sent a note out, I think, on August 11th. Telling Jeff because I did a survey finally got, got my boat straightened out and there was a note and but at August 11th, they had not done the east end of the pond. He had sent a note earlier saying that and in the next week he's going to do it. But I, I simply don't know. The problem is that water chests that start dropping. I don't know. I don't know. dropping seeds around the middle of August. So if these were done in late August, it's possible that many more hundreds of seeds were dropped in the pond. You know, a water chestnut plant has rosettes. Each rosette may have several seeds. The rosettes are daisy-chained. And I've observed over the years that maybe around the middle of August, one or two seeds will have dropped. And later in August, more will have dropped. So if there was a late harvesting in August, and every one of those plants dropped one seed, then we're exactly where we were before. It's imperative that harvesting be done before the middle of August. And I have not received anything from Jeff. You know, outside of Outlook, I've left calls and texts and things like that. Okay. Let me then, what I'll do is, after we approve this, I know they always put the dates in the report, but let me write to him, find out when they're planning on coming out next, and then find out what the dates that pertain to this. Well, no. I think they've completed the, they've completed the harvesting. They use the remaining four days. Their contract, and I was just looking for it, but I looked at it a few days ago, and the contract says early August. And that's because the science says that seeds start dropping the middle of August. And if the harvesting were actually done on the 20th or 25th, my opinion is that's a breach of contract. It's not what they promised us. And if that happened, it likely means we're just treading water in the pond. As many seeds were dropped as plants were pulled. That's my problem. Well, let me, so this would be seven days, four days here plus three days before. Yeah. So we, was the contract for 85? Was it 3,400 this year then for the seven days? Because normally we do 9,900, I believe. Yeah, yeah. And then 1,500 for the report, making $9,900. So that's, you know, that's, that's right. There's no problem with that. My problem is I don't know the dates. And if it were late in August, then that's a breach of contract. It does, did not do the pond much good. That's all there is to it. Well, I agree with your point on the timing. You know, as you've been explaining to us about the longevity of these seeds, my thinking has come around to, we're not going to beat them. I'm just hoping that at some point, the pond is a saturated with these seeds and every year they can dump more and more, but they're just, there's, they plateaued out. You can't get any more. I think we've got to be at a point now or very soon where the pond is as bad as it's ever going to be. And then we just, that'll just probably be the new normal. And the solitude teams can pull whatever they can, but it won't get any worse because if we just saturate it with these seeds, that's kind of the, my thinking. Well, hard, hard to say, but I would certainly like the dates. And I presume when he gives a report, they'll, they'll be in the report, but the dates, but we don't have the report. I have not received a sense since sending that message. I, I copied and I, and I looked at it. I may have, may have been misleading. I, the subject was, the, the was looking at the, the treated portions, but then I went on, I copied Jeff on it and the last couple of paragraphs to say, please get out on the pond. So maybe he didn't read it. I don't know, but okay. But Tom, that you said you were, you were last on the pond, August 11th. Or you sent that email on August 11th. I, let me go back and outlook. Hold on. I'm going to, I, I sent the email on August 11th and I, I, you were all copied on the note. I simply forget which day it was, but it was before August 11th. Okay. But you haven't been, you haven't been out there since then. Well, it's, it's a big deal to get out in the pond. We, we had difficulty. The water was very low and it was, it was hard. Larry Kiernan came out with me. All right. Okay. Well, excuse me. Let me make a motion to approve payment of this invoice to solitude for four days of water chestnut harvesting on herd pond. Okay. I second. Thank you. And again, let's, let's go around the room. Tom, Clem. I Tom Largy. I Steve grown. I right. Thank you.
Stop trying this. And okay. Let me take a peek at the agenda here. Let's let's get back on. On order here. Okay. Going back to Dudley pond. I've got three items on the agenda here that we'll go through. First is the mechanical harvesting update from Alison, which I sent all of you, including the map with the, the colloquial name. So we all know where a turtle pond turtle C is and whatever else. And then we've got, we'll go over the, this quote that we received just before the meeting in August from aquatic restoration consulting for a nutrient feasibility study. And then an update on a grant that Steve's been working with on members of the Dudley pond association. So Steve, let me have it over to you first for any comment on the mechanical harvesting. Well, I, you know, the reports are there. I don't have the numbers in front of me as to how much, or how, I guess they measure it in pounds, how many pounds of weeds were collected. It's all in the reports. My I'm I'm, I go out there every couple of days and talk to Alison and tree. And I mean, I'm not, I don't want to be, a pessimist, but it almost it's starting to feel like a losing battle that we're just not, we're not keeping up with things. They tell me that, you know, they'll go out there and I'll say, well, we're going to, we're going to try to cut some channels so that people can get around more easily. Yep. And they come back the next day and they're pretty much filled in the change though. And, and, and I've noticed this in and being on my paddle board and also my pontoon boat is that there is, there is this weed called a loadia, which is really, really becoming very prevalent in the pond. And while it is a bit troublesome, it is actually looking like it may be keeping the tape grass down. And, and from, from a usage standard standpoint, tape grass is a bigger issue. So that's, that's a, I guess if you call that the positive side of things, that's positive. But tape grass is still there. It's still an issue and it's very hard to keep up with. I was looking at, um, Alison's report and last year the report she gave, they did six weeks and they pulled a little over a hundred thousand pounds of plants. And for this report, I was looking at it and for the same period, six weeks, it's over 200,000 pounds of plants. Right. Uh, does that seem, I mean, I, Alison and Shree are two people. Have they really just gotten that much more? That's they probably have gotten more efficient using that harvester, but does that seem like an exaggeration or do you think it's realistic? They've gotten that. I think, I think it's realistic. I do. And they're working really, really hard. Um, they, uh, you know, they've got a, I think one or two weeks left to go. And, um, I've noticed, um, I've been out there and I've noticed that the weather is, is starting to have an effect on the weeds. They're not as big a problem as they were a month ago. Um, but keeping up with it, as I said, is a real challenge and they're, they're working really, really hard. Do you know? So I, so the reports will say, you know, they did 35 dumpster loads. Uh, is the coordination that tie with DPW because that seems like a lot during the week. And so the DPW guys have to get that dumpster and they they're carting it to act and right. I mean, it's not like nearby. Yeah, I don't, I, yeah, they are. I mean, they are carting it away because almost every day, um, that dumpster is empty in the morning. Oh really? Okay. So they are, they are carting it away. Okay. And I assume everything's working out with acting. I haven't heard anything to the contrary. Um, you know, a more useful figure than pounds would be, uh, acres or some measurement of the space that's, uh, cleared. Uh, and, uh, because that's what, that's what really counts. Uh, they, um, lowered the, um, the cutter. Did they a year or so ago? I think they did. Yeah. And that probably, uh, means more pounds and more plants. On the other hand, uh, they might not grow up as quickly. Uh, hard to say. Uh, uh, well, you know, one of the, one of the, uh, uh, trying to find positives, you know, silver linings, but one of the positives about the pond is that it is very clean. Uh, it's very clean and it's very clear. And what happens when it's very clear and it's very clean? The sun gets all the way down and grows things. So I think that's part of the issue. Um, there's a lot of debate within the Dudley pond association about what to do about this. And, and, um, Tom, uh, Clem, you mentioned the grant that is being applied for. Yeah. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, uh, uh, we're trying to get at, you know, how to, how to act, actually deal with this. And, and, the path that we're at least trying to exercise is getting a grant from the state. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and the project that you, Tom claim mentioned earlier. Um, to do, around the pond but that's got to include from the state's point of view they're the one they're the grantors of of the grant a very comprehensive view of what's going on so it needs to include stormwater runoff it needs to include an evaluation of aseptic systems and you know i don't i i don't think we're going to get all that data before the grant needs to be submitted in october but i think we're going to go through the exercise and see what's what's needed um i i know that we're not in a position to fund that study uh but the w pond association may be so for that and i was going to ask because you know separately or previously we received a report from from wendy and uh wendy gendron at uh aquatic restoration consults who set that proposal and is the plan because this obviously this grant is going to require um specialists. It can't be just a volunteer group putting this detailed information together. So is the idea that if we were to win the grant, it would be Wendy generating this, doing this study? Or are these two meant to be two independent things? I'm sorry, developing the grant? Yeah, so we're developing this grant. Wendy is not mentioned in there. And my question is, if we win the grant, is the idea that the money for that would go to Wendy to do that feasibility study? Or are these meant to be two independent efforts?
The grant is aimed at getting money to fund that feasibility study. Got it. Okay, so they are interconnected. But what confused me about what you were asking was what's Wendy's involvement in the development of the grant application? And she is involved. The DPA paid her for an hour and a half of her time. Yes, we all met, you know, the week the health, I think it's called the healthy bond committee. I should know this because I'm healthy Dudley Pond committee. Yeah. But healthy Dudley Pond committee met with her and she and it was a joint meeting with the committee, Wendy and the state reps, the representatives of the state regarding the grant. And you know, based on that, Andrui and Melissa Tom, Tom Clenn knows these people took on the role of developing the initial pass at the grant application based on help from Wendy and direction from the state. Tom, I believe you reviewed it. I'm still reviewing it. I've gone so we gotta go in in the next couple of weeks. So. Yeah. So just to get Tom Lurgan caught up. Tom Lurgan, you may recall that when we met last time, we had received just before our meeting in August, this quote from aquatic restoration consultants, Wendy Gendron. And she had worked with the Dudley Pond Association before doing flora and fauna surveys. And the Dudley Pond Association has concerns about algal blooms on the pond, whether they're toxic or not. They're more prevalent than they have been previously. They're concerned about weeds, as Steve alluded to, being more than we can handle with the harvester or every so often porcelain core treatment. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. They were interested in having a study done to see what the sources of nutrients were in the pond and how we might control them or ways we can mitigate all that phosphorus, nitrogen, everything else that's helping all these plants to grow. I remember that conversation. Yeah. So, yeah. So, one of the confusing things for us, I'm still not 100% clear on it. Right. But I think I get it, is that there are actually two grant paths. The first one is the 604B grant, which is what we're discussing. Right. And then there's the 319 grant. And as far as I can tell, based on what the state has told us, the 604B grant is really about figuring out, you know, what, what, where the sources of the problem are, identifying them. And figuring out magnitudes, timeframes, whatever. The 319 grant, 319 grant is a, is it, I guess you can call it an implementation grant. It's like, okay, now that you know what you need to do, this grant will help you fund that activity. Okay. That's my understanding of it. But it is confusing. It's from the state. What do you want? Yeah. So that's being worked. Again, that committee is, has taken on the task of doing, of developing that grant. Ann and Melissa are the, are the sort of at the forefront of doing that. Steve, let me ask you a question. I know that I, and Tom Largy and Larry's not here. I'm going to circulate this, this to you. So Ann Juillet put together a draft of this grant that Steve is looking at. I'm taking a look at, look at other committee, Healthy Dudley Pond committee members are taking a look at. One question I didn't ask, or Steve, is there, you know, Ann put this all together. There's tasks and deliverables and all this. Is that a, is there a template from the state for all that? I assume there's a template that Ann's filling in as best she can. Yeah, there is. If you could send me the link or that template, because then what I'll do is I'll circulate that to Tom, Largy, and Larry. So they can take a look at it. They can take a look at this and just be aware of it and weigh in as they wish to. But I don't want it to be just you and I being aware of it and Tom and Larry are not. So, but I just, you know, was reading through it and I was just curious what the, what the template was. And because I'm sure Ann, again, I'm sure Ann didn't craft all that herself, but that template would be helpful to know what she's trying to fill in with. Now, did you, did you see her references to reports that we're looking for? Her, her what? There are references to reports. Oh, yes. And I don't, I don't have them. I don't think I'd go back that far. So I. Yeah, that's another point too, because I don't know if these are going to be in, you know, are these going to be included as appendices? I mean, we can't just allude to these things. I assume we have to provide them or at least make sure we have these actual reports. We're not referring to some AI hallucination or something. Right. Okay. Yeah, I did make note of that. I will track those down. I assume that Ann has these. Otherwise she wouldn't have referred to them, but I know she's away until next week, but I will make sure that we have those documents and that we're referring to them correctly and extracting the correct information out of them. But I agree to your point that there's, there are things that I think we are not going to be able to do for this one, which will, you know, not help us win the grant. But I think it's, it's, it's a good exercise to go through. And we'll learn what we don't know and where we need support to fill those gaps. But if you could send me that template or just the link to it. I'm going to have to look for, you know, I didn't, I wasn't given the task of doing the initial draft of this. So I never actually got the template. Was it, was it Ann alone or was it Melissa? Because I can reach out to Melissa with Ann away. I can do that if you want me to. Okay. Please do it because I want to provide that, that framework so that not only for myself, but. For Tom and Larry to look at too. And again, not just so they can understand what we're trying to do here and take a look at it. Again, there's a lot of information being requested that's quite specialized in nature and. Right. You know, might be beyond this group. One of the, one of the things that people on that committee are trying to do. You know, it's, it's needed for getting a lot of the information, but it's viewed also, I think in a good way. As positive in terms of establishing long-term relationships that we're going to need within the town to actually address problems with the pond. So there's a lot of good activity going on in that regard. Let me ask you this question too. I know that Wendy's scope that she provided is 55,000, I believe beyond the, you know, I know that when these committees were formed as a charter and they have their own budget. Do you know what the budget of this healthy, deadly pond committee is? I don't think there is one. I think, I think the, the approach is figure out what we have to do. The DPA has a fund. Right. And so have there been discussions, you know, if we don't win this grant, I assume there's going to be desire to have this go forward. And has it gone to lay for whoever the president is to make them aware that, Hey, this may be $55,000 plus to do this study. Has that awareness? I don't think it's gotten that far. We're in discussion. Okay. So Tom, this is this grant. I've been at all the meetings. I haven't heard that. Okay. So Tom Largy, this, you know, this, we, we touched upon this part last time. This grant that Wendy drafted is, I believe it's 55, the range is 55 to 70,000, if I'm recalling correctly, obviously well beyond our, our budget, especially if next year is going to be a Procellicor year on Dudley Pond. So, you know, it would not be anything that this committee could fund, which is the reason why they're going for the grant. But if the grant is not successful. There's still a pathway here for the DPA to fund this. I know they're sitting on well over a hundred thousand dollars. This is a grant to do a study, right? Yes. Okay. This is a grant to do a grant to do a study. And Wendy drafted. Unless you want to do it for free, Tom Largy.
It's a dreaded feasibility. My private opinions are that. Even if you find all these nutrients and whatever is very difficult to stop them and it may not make much difference for the weeds. So, but anyway, But it'd be, I think probably if we're going to go down the state path, we have to do this one before we do the, what the 319. So it's bureaucratic processes. Okay. So we'll see where it goes. So many ways, Steve and I are working with this healthy Dudley. Thank you. The 10, and the 11, and the 21 year, right. And I think it will be really nice if it's in the. And I think it will be really nice if it's in the grant program. And I think it will be nice if it's in the grant program. Because it's one of the, it's a really nice work. Because we're talking about. Um, A project that we've been working on for, for a while now. And it's a project that. Which is really great. Because it's one of the great projects. And you're not just talking about the com commission. It's you know, you're talking about the relationship and the, you're talking about the trust and the way you work and what you're doing. And, and, so, um, Well, we have, we have a grant. plan so this 319 would be one year plus down the road okay correct and that timeline by the way is that the state's timeline or was Ann working with the subcommittee to because I don't know where one year came from because I don't know when these plans you know the the state you know I mean if they give us a grant to do this and we do this we would presumably get it done within a year and then we'll have the data and the information we need to move forward with actually trying to solve the problems so I'm yeah a year would make sense okay so uh anyways Tom Margie I'll share this this draft with uh you and Larry so you the whole committee will have it but but Steve and I are taking the lead working with this Dudley Pond subcommittee to get this thing off and it's October yeah it's the first week of October sometime I forgot I want to say the fourth but it's the fourth of the seventh it's the first week of October something like that yeah yeah all right uh that is all on Dudley Pond Steve unless there's anything you wanted to bring up well um I don't know if you saw the emails I sent you today oh yeah just before about the meter or of Ben Witherall let me explain what that's all about um uh in the in the spring we did one of our studies okay uh meaning you know getting samples sending them to the lab and so on so there's two parts to that um as you as Tom Klein might think you know one is to collect water samples send them to the PACE lab they do an analysis send us data back and I write a report the the second part is Ben Witherall uh who used to work for a company that we could work with us uh used to come with this YSL meter that he used to rent yes that would measure things like dissolved oxygen by depth and you know temperature and whatever um and that would be a second set of data that would then go into the report that I write starting um last at the last time we did it which was in May um Ben had moved on to another company he cannot work to to take those measurements himself because he can't be insured by the town so we said to him okay we'll take the measurements but we're going to send you the data you can do the analysis and that would actually save us money because we wouldn't be paying him for that entire thing so I think he came back and we approved paying him I think it was five hundred dollars for his role in the May measurements we never got a bill for that and so I reached out to him today well let me back up a second the person who did the measurements was Mer Merowitz right he wanted to do it he went and got the meter did a little training to figure out how to use it and he as far as I know he paid for himself it was a couple of hundred dollars and um so that's how we got that done I would really like to I would like to learn how to do it so I reached out to Ben to find out hey who do I rent this meter from how do I contact them and that's when he told me that he never finished the analysis for May because I forgot to send him some of the data from the lab okay that was my fault I I must have just some something I forgot to attach to the email I sent him although he never reminded me so he never billed us so I said well are you available to do it again in October when we do it again yes and he said well so when I do that one I'll bill you for both of them and it only it won't be a thousand dollars it'd be nine hundred dollars so that's what those emails said okay so that's that's so so I think we're actually getting a discount yeah and I was gonna I was gonna say when when he does that just have him send the invoice to the service water quality committee because that those tests that testing is still part of our budget so we can just pay that there's no having to go through the DPA or other layers of yeah so so they'll they'll be three components when we do this again they'll be the lab one which we always paid for pace lab they'll be the YSL meter rental and they'll be Ben's time okay but that should add up to less than what we used to pay for when Ben was doing it okay and for the meter are as normally do that again or you're going to rent this thing and I don't want to do it if Norm wants to do it again he can do it I you know I um no I'm not I'm not on Norm's uh friendly list at this point so I don't know why but all right well but yeah because I know he'll be he'll be he'll ask him if he wants to do it yeah because he'll be saying hey it's that time of year we didn't do the testing again so you can by the way I was I was on the site that report still is on top oh right so Jalen so this so Tom Largi this is a topic that's come up before the town revamped their their websites and for the surface water quality committee it was a bit of a hodge podge there was a on the surface water quality web page and it's still there now there's a a link that says document library and you can click on that link and it goes to this thing called issue issuu.com tony moore started years ago um mike lowry what's that mike lowry mike lowry mike lowry or tony uh i guarantee i didn't uh yeah sorry yeah mike or tony anyways um and i i managed it for a while but uh they don't give you anything for free on that it was quite expensive to pay for it was 21 a month and i paid for it for one year and i wasn't using it that much and so i anyway so if you go there now you can find what's been posted but you can't download anything and i find issue to be kind of a pain in the ass frankly it's not really user-friendly at all so what i i wrote to jaylen bradica in the town manager's office or clerk's i forget which office about either uh the town reimbursing me to pay for a year's subscription for this stupid thing or my preference would be because i looked at school committee dpw select board if you go to those pages there are nice sections for uh minutes or for the dpw there's water uh information and you click on those links and there are there are links to pdf documents right now this is fantastic so that's why i asked jaylen to do and uh just last week i sent her a handful of steve of the most recent uh water chemistry reports from the last fiscal year and and tom the last annual report from uh solitude so they haven't been posted yet so i'm keeping an eye on that so yeah steve they are not up yet but jaylen's going to do that and i i'll ping her to find out when that can happen okay i the reason why i brought it up is because there are actually two data reports from the may measurements up there the report that i wrote is not uh can you say that again there's two data reports from yeah the reports from the lab and they've been uploaded the macasac report which is what ben writes but the report that i wrote that i you and i were talking about with the um you know with the charts yes yes yes that report is not up there up where where where are you seeing them okay um because like i said they're not you mean on the town website for the document library yeah it's uh where am i here here we are uh because if that's through if that's the issue i can't upload anything else there because i don't have i'm not paying for it anymore so that's where we're i have i'm i'm in reports surface water quality reports and i go there and i look at dudley pond can you can you share your screen so i assume you're on the surface water quality web page you click on document library that takes you to issue um share
where am i here let's see it should be at the top of your screen the red square
is this it
am i sure this is it
okay can you see it i see this fiscal year oh can you okay and and there oh hang on can you okay can you go back because when i did this go go back to the surface water quality page because i clicked on something different it took me to issue which so surface water quality right and then you see oh there it is okay excellent okay can you click on that again yeah this is dudley oh nice okay okay and this is fiscal year 2026. yes okay this is great okay she has done it perfect okay i clicked on document library that took me to that issue thing which is awful i'll have her take it down okay so i'm sorry now i'm oriented so steve these two reports are are there from may yes but the report that i wrote which would have a title like this of it have the word final in the end well what's so the bottom one right dp water quality report may 2026 that's yours this this is oh it is did you rename it uh i i yes because i want them to be oh okay that i didn't open it i just saw the title and i said that's not that's not the yeah i i want to harmonize the naming so those two yeah your reports are all gonna like are gonna have that title structure so yeah those are up there and again that's fy26 uh and so i want to have documents uh correlating with their fiscal year maybe there's a better way to do it uh well i'll have to try because i know this is going to come up people are going to want to search for documents and i don't know i i think this is not a searchable function so i may have to think of a different way but i don't know what that solution is yet but anyways yeah your stuff is up there so so we're actually paying for that well no i'm not paying for that so because i just sent those documents i i sent them as attachments to jalen she's doing it or it's doing it on the back end and the town is i assume has an enterprise thing they're paying for i'm not paying for that well it just looks like it's a link on a website we own the website right the town owns the website what do you mean so why would why would we have to why would the town have to pay for it for the website i i didn't ask jaylen who's paying for i just said can you upload this stuff for me so i just assume that this is the town whoever was supporting the town website okay i was paying them and that may include this uploading function for me i just didn't want to pay and manage for managing myself i'd rather give it to jalen and have her upload this stuff oh absolutely yeah so this is good well i before i went to you i went to her but she said she she couldn't do it
that was the process i used i i went to because i always went to her first and i sent her reports and i said can you put those up on the website she goes i can't do that and that's when i went to you when did you when did you ask her to do this well and i finished the report in july so that's what i asked okay that's confusing to me because i didn't even I didn't even question that she couldn't do it because I can see that, again, Select Board and DPW and schools have this exact same thing you just showed us. So I don't know why she I don't know what she was thinking or why she said that. Well, it's like it's solved. So let's. Yeah. So and like I said, there's so much history, document history with the Service Water Quality Committee. I don't intend to go back 40 years. But what I will do is start going. So this is FY26. Maybe I will get some thought about searchability. We'll ask Jalen about that because people are going to want to look, for example, so Steve talking about that 1982 or 83, the IEP report that everyone calls it. You know, somebody's going to want that, but they're not going to find it by clicking through every fiscal year going back that far. So I've got to think about. If there's some searchability or something, but I'll ask Jalen about that. But at a basic functional level, we can upload documents now through Jalen. OK. Cool. And I'll let Norm know because he was asking about that, too. And also, Abby was asking for documents. But again, that's I'll send her that stuff directly because some of those are old. And I don't think that'll ever get up on the town's Web site just because it'll be too cumbersome. But there's a process now we can get stuff uploaded.
Cool. All right. Yeah. Like I said, when Ben does that report writing, just have him send the invoice to the Service Water Quality Committee. We'll get him taken care of. All right. OK. That's all for Dudley Pond. Tom, anything else to add on her? Any news on Clearcast that they've done the second treatment? Have you you've been out there? You know, I in my note on on August, I think it was a level August 11th. We went and we looked at it. We saw the treated areas and we also saw some patches, good sized patches. I am close included some photos. And that was in the request to Jeff to see if he could use some of those four days to get at those. However, treated is treated and it's identical to what you and I saw a year earlier. It's just a bunch of, you know, a vast area of. Plants that are hurting, but we don't know how how hurting they are. We have no idea, just no idea because the plants don't go away. They're they're just they're browned or whatever. And they look kind of bad. But they were there. They were treated as no doubt of that. OK, it's simply, I guess. The year before Clearcast came around when I heard of a. A chemical treatment. I envisioned a chemical treatment, the plants die off and you have open water and it's not that way at all, you really have acres of of bad looking plants. Yeah, so I think we need to make a decision if this is even worth the effort. I mean, if it's. Do you have a sense if it's even. Keeping that South. Move at like if we were if we were to stop doing this, do you think it would just expand out from where it is now or are we keeping it in check? Maybe I think it could expand. Yes, I think we have to keep doing it, at least in the near term. So, yeah. I'll look at. Pardon me. You know, going back historically, you know, we had about. A week from about 2003 to 2009, we were using mechanical harvesters. And after that, we started 2010, started hand pulling. And by golly, it was all clean. The South Cove, when they're when they're pulled, they're pulled. And there's no longer a plant there. But that mechanical harvesting over six or seven years. So. We need to do a pretty good job. We simply can't tell with the. With the the clear cast, we might be able to tell sometime in the future if there are fewer plants. But it certainly seems to me that there are an awful lot of seeds up there. Tom, I was in the settlement. You know, maybe we have to go back to mechanical harvesting. Do you know that's that's that's that's that's too hard to do. There are there are all kinds of problems. First of all, fish and wildlife owns the entire perimeter in front of Pelham Island Road. We I wouldn't want to go through that again. And now it's it's difficult to do. When when you were doing it the first time, was it similar to the way it is now where that South Cove was filled in or was it even more. Well, there's more coverage on the pond. You could use the harvester on the deeper parts of the pond. And that's just that South Cove. Yeah. And the South Cove at low water, the harvesters couldn't go out there. So the hydro rake was used. There were some one or more hydro rakes, which, by the way, is a very slow process. But what we did was if you look at Pelham Island Road, there's a kind of an area. Where you can see straight out in the pond, a hundred yards or so. And there's there are concrete blocks that have kind of been placed there because there was erosion and they repaired it. But we were doing it before the repair. And there was a bit of a beach and the weeds were dumped. By the harvester off the beach, and then every night a DPW would send down the front end loader and there was a container there. The front end loader would pick up the weeds and put them in the container. It was it's quite a mess. I can't see that happening again there. I just I just don't in particular sense, I would be a lot harder to do because of the road repair that they did there. OK. Yeah, if you go along Pelham Island Road, you can see that on the pond side, there is concrete. I think they're concrete blocks. They weren't there then.
So I have no problem with the. I think Priscilla core is terrific. We simply can't tell. How it's working, maybe we can and sometime in the future. OK. And I'm concerned, too, about, you know, that I assume at some point resistance is going to establish against clear cast. Yeah. So maybe. Yeah. And so then if you want to alternate and use different herbicides, but those herbicides are less effective than clear cash, which doesn't look like it's doing that great of a job, then what's even the point? Right. You can spend another ten thousand dollars on some lesser herbicide. Well, in the years leading up to 2016, of there were there were years when we only harvested like six or seven hundred plants from the entire pond, and then it blew up in 2016. You know, estimate of fifty thousand plants. Those seeds had been there for fifteen, twenty years. And and so and that year, two things, solitude was they did not harvest during the month of July. And when August came around, they were over. They were overwhelmed, not able to keep up with it ever since then. That South Cove has been a problem. And it wasn't 10 years ago, 11 years ago, just wasn't. So I'm fairly pessimistic about long term on Herd Pond. I, I, it's it's just a tough, tough, tough thing. I am also a little pessimistic on. All the hand harvesting, that's hard. I, I would not myself want to personally manage it or oversee it. You need somebody like a solitude. But are they doing the job? I'm not certain they have been the last several years. Right. Yeah. Because they've got as you as you explained, they've got their own limitation. And, you know, people scheduling them. OK. All right. So not not a happy story happening there. Yeah. By the way, as an aside, speaking of ponds, either of you ever hear of Willis Pond and Sudbury? Well, Willis Pond is near where Babe Ruth used to live. He used to live off Dutton Road. And legend has it that Babe Ruth was an extravagant kind of guy. And in the winter he had a big party and he had a piano brought out onto the ice. Yeah. Ice on the pond. So the piano was there somewhere. But and I don't know why it took me all these years. But twice recently I've launched my boat in Willis Pond. It's a smaller than Dudley or heard. Maybe it's 20 acres or so. And very shallow. I haven't found a park deeper than about seven feet. It's tannic. Tannic means it's discolored because there are a lot of swamps around it. And the weeds aren't that bad. Not only that, Larry Kiernan was out with me and we were catching small fish and all of a sudden. He hooked an enormous fish, which was bigger than any largemouth bass I ever caught in my life. Twenty two and a half inches, five or six pounds. It was a huge fish. So it's it's another pond. It's got a beach on it. It's got about four houses on it. Each one of those houses, it looks like they have a dock with a ski boat and otherwise little used. And a paucity of weeds. And maybe it's a tannic, the tannins. I don't know. Just just plain interesting. That's all the I thought you're going to say you found Babe Ruth's piano. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, anyway, just an interesting contrast. And I look at it and I say, huh, how come Herd Pond doesn't look like this? I mean, when Larry and I went out on Herd Pond, that was early first week in August, which, by the way, because I had that injury back in May, that was the first time I've done anything with the boat, it's been steadily getting better. So that was that was a big deal for me to go out there. But the visibility of Herd Pond periodically gets blooms. That could have been three inches of visibility in Herd Pond. That was just plain wretched. If if Deadly Pond were like that, people would be very upset indeed. So I don't know. I just don't understand why it's that way. But it certainly is. In this pond that you were at, do they do the thing they do like in reservoirs where they cut back the trees by a certain number of feet to try to keep the leaves out of the pond? They don't do anything. They don't do anything. OK. There's a there's a beach. I don't know who owns the beach. It's a nice beach. There are four houses on the South Shore and they each have a dock and it's all just swamp. And it's nobody does anything to that pond. But it seems to stay in pretty good shape. Do they wash boats at the beach? I don't think so. But actually what I've done in prior years is not very often, but if I was in saltwater. Then it was convenient for me and I didn't put the boat in the pond, but I backed my trailer into the pond so that I my axle would be covered with, you know, the fresh water. It didn't do me any good when the axle broke this year. But that's another story. OK, OK, Tom. Well, thanks. Thanks for that. That update.
I guess put our thinking caps on for Herd Pond. OK, but the last thing I had on the agenda was I had sent. Had circulated a draft of the committee's annual reports, so send me your comments as as just a reply, not a reply all because I know I sort of bent the rules by saying it's a little committee at once, but send me your comments by next. But let's see, next week is the 21st. By the end of next week, we're going to finalize this and get it to to the town. So this one only has Deadly Pond and Herd Pond. I didn't put anything for Lake Kachinshawood or Mill Pond in there because we didn't do anything on those ponds. So, Tom, any comments about figures or pictures you want to put in there? Well, you know what, Tom? Back to this outlook, I have an iPad. It's got iOS. And. I just looked at Outlook before this meeting and I looked at it. I don't know how many days ago, but I did not spot anything from you. It seems hard for me to find things on this outlook. I don't know why, but I somehow got buried. Yeah, you did send it on Outlook on the town through the town email. Let me take a look. I know with. Yeah, one thing I don't like about Outlook and my work uses it. So if I send an email to somebody, or actually, no, I take it back because my work outlook is fine. The one that the town has, Tom, to your point, if I send an email and somebody sends an email in response, what you see is that latest email. It's very difficult to track this down. So, Tom, let's see. This one that I sent that has the report, nobody said any sent any reply to it. Well, hang on. Maybe the maybe I did, because I think I sent. No, because I followed up with the Dudley Pond harvesting update. But that was a separate email. So let me if you don't mind, I'll make let the screen go blank and take a look at my outlook right at this minute, I'll be out. The Zoom will stay up. I'm just off of it for the minute. OK, OK. I said it. So, Tom, when you're looking, it was a Sunday. Sunday morning, the 13th. OK, all right, hold on. You're going away, but not the Zoom sessions. All right. OK. And I'll look here. Oh, and while Tom's looking, Steve, same for you. Any any comments on the formatting or content that maybe I overlooked? I will. I will take a look. OK, and if there's a nice, sexy picture of Dudley Pond you want to know, I try and put a picture of the pond. It could be a winter scene. It could be whatever. But I try and like have a nice picture of Dudley Pond as the at the top of the section and went for Herd Pond. So if you have anything current that looks good, I'll be glad to put that at the. OK, I'm looking at it right now. And there's something on Dudley Sunday, Dudley Pond Harvesting for use. No, not so that that's that's the and the next one is Agenda and Files. Yes, that one. OK. OK, I see all of those attachments. OK, I. You want to say a draft? OK, I see. No, I see. OK, somehow I. I guess I glanced at it and I thought it was the agenda. And all right, I'll take a closer look. Yeah, the agenda is the one that shows first. There's a bunch of other stuff there. We could go through it now, actually, if you want to. But I didn't want to. You know, if you haven't looked at it yet, I don't want to spend. You know, I don't want to do it live in real time. Not efficient now. Yeah. OK, I see it. So, yeah, if you guys could look at it, you're welcome to look at the whole thing, as is Larry, but if you want to focus on your sections, that's fine. I just need to have all the documents by the end of next Friday, the twenty fifth. So I can finalize this thing and get it off to the town the week after. OK, hold on. Deadly DF study invoice. OK, fiscal year twenty twenty. OK, I just brought it up from. OK, I went through it looks all fine to me, but I'll take a look at it. Yeah. By the way, I'm a week from Sunday, I'm leaving on a major fishing trip out to the state of Washington. And I hope my arms up to it and I'll be preparing for that. That's where we go out every day. We're out there for a week with guides and down the river and drift boats. And you've given yourself a deadline. Then, Tom, you've got to get your review done by next Friday. You know, yeah. So anyway, I just I just. I got a note from the fellow who runs a guide service as a river called the Klickitat. It drains a mountain called Mount Adams, which named after John Adams. But I'm sure neither of it's a remote mountain, but it's the third most third highest mountain in the Cascade Range from California up to Washington State, heavily glaciated and because they've had a lot of cool weather, the glaciers are not melting. Therefore, the river is clear when there's warm weather. The river is silty from a glacial silt. And it's a whole different thing. So anyway, so I'm looking forward to clear water from a glaciated mountain. Tom, when you on this trip, are you are you camping and fishing in one spot? Are you working your way up or down the river? No, no, we're we're staying at a call of the resort fishing, a steelhead ranch. And we'll be taken care of and go out in the boat every day. And and then you have sumptuous meals, I hope, with free booze. And which I may partake of only sparingly. I think my limits one drink a night in recent years. But anyway. Yeah, no, no, no camping. I'm 86 years old now. I'm feeling my age. So anyway. OK, well, OK, I'm going to go back to Zoom, I I did see it. I apologize for not seeing it somehow. I I don't know. I can't maybe I didn't look at it since Sunday. It's possible I felt I'd seen some reports from Allison. There were some that came out earlier. Maybe Steve had sent something. Did you, Steve? No, not recently. OK, so the reports that I was talking to Tom about, I usually send those out to the committee, but I was waiting for them to be posted. So now, OK, well, now you can look at them. Yeah, yeah. OK. OK, so let me see. Are we going to schedule our next meeting? Yes. Hang on a second.
Just making completely a note here. Yeah. Before we adjourn, let's schedule for October. So this is the 16th. So I'm looking at the week of maybe the 20s, the 25th, which is a Sunday or the 18th. Or we can even do early November. But I'd probably like I'd like to have one maybe later in October. So Tuesdays are Wednesdays. Or Wednesdays are open. I'll see your schedule is changing. So let me well, in October. Yeah, Wednesdays don't work. Tuesdays. Like the 13th would not work because I have a conflict the second Tuesday, so the 20th would work, it does not work for me. We're up in New Hampshire that for several days, the 27th works for me. Twenty. Twenty seven. Yeah. OK, let's lock that one in. It's October 27th will be our next. Next meeting. And that is that's a that's a Tuesday, is that correct? Yeah. Yeah, that's a Tuesday. Tuesday. OK, very good. All right. Very good. All right. I will then if there's nothing else. Well, that's the agenda. So there is nothing else. I'm going to make a motion to adjourn at 8 0 5 p.m. I just I just mentioned something before we go. We were talking about weeds and Dudley and one of the things I am hearing and I'm going to follow up on this is that the milfoil levels look way down. And it is almost as if the milfoil is being crowded out by the Elodia and the tape grass and the Elodia didn't say, Steve, that that Elodia pops up early, then it goes down. So I thought the Elodia was no longer really a factor. It was it comes up early and then it gets taken over by the tape. Yeah, it was. It was affected through the entire summer. OK, so both the Elodia and the tape grass. Right. OK. You know, I'm not hearing a lot about milfoil. Well, yeah, well, I know we've just adjourned our meeting. We haven't adjourned yet. Oh, we haven't. But back to Elodia.
What else should we know about it? You felt it's not as severe a problem as tape grass. The milfoil is getting somehow. Suppressed, which may be good news for next year. There's no point putting in. Yeah. Don't don't hold me to it. Yeah, that's that's a good observation. Yeah. Well, I think we have to depend on Allison and company for the other ones out there doing the observing and see what they say. Perhaps ask them about that. That tells me that that's what I'm talking to. But I got to get I got to get updated. So. Yeah, and the Elodia is getting cut. Does it go to the surface or is it? Yeah, it comes up pretty high. It comes up. So there are a couple of pounds in the deepest part of the pond. No, nothing comes up. But. In the deepest part of the. Yeah, yeah. OK, I understand. Yeah, it's always been that way. So if you were to look at the container, is there a lot of Elodia in it or is it mostly tape? Yeah, they tell me there is. They're cutting into. OK, and the Elodia is still a problem for swimmers and yeah, not as bad as it's not as bad a problem as tape grass, but. It's OK, there's a lot of it. And I didn't want to I didn't want to take us down a rat hole, I just wanted to. Well, no, that's not a rabbit hole. I think that's potentially interesting. Yeah, this is this. We're now we're hearing about Elodia, which we hadn't heard of because it was first was the milfoil and the tape grass, now Elodia is emerging again as an aquarium plant, so easy to imagine how that got in the pond over the course of years. Anyway, and then Tom had a question, as long as I have you here, are you planning to be at the Dudley Pond semiannual meeting on the 25th? Of October? Uh, yes. OK, yeah, I can't make it. Oh, yeah, then I'll be there. So it's for the it's on the 25th. Yes. All right. The fall dinner, right? Yeah, I'll be there. I might I might be able to show up later on, but not at the beginning. OK. Just want to make sure we're covered. Yeah, I'll be there. All right. OK. Now, now I'm done now at 8 0 8 p.m. I will make a motion to adjourn the meeting. Can I get a second? I second. Thank you. And then let's let's go around on roll call vote. Tom Clam, I. Tom Largy, I. Steve Varone, I. Great. Thanks, gentlemen. Enjoy the rest of the evening and we'll meet on the 27th. Yep. All right, guys. Good night.