August 11, 2026 – Surface Water Quality Committee – Video & Transcript
August 11, 2026 - Surface Water Quality Committee
All right, everybody. Well, it's 7.06 p.m. Let's go around the room. I will call the
Service Water Quality Committee meeting August 11th into session. Let's go around the virtual
room and announce our attendance. I will start. Tom Clem, present.
Tom Largay, present.
Steve Garone, present.
Larry Kiernan, present.
Great. Welcome, everybody. And like I said, hope everyone's having a good summer so far.
Got a few weeks left to Labor Day and then the drive into fall. Okay. So let's start. There's
no public comment. I won't even go through the theatrics of asking if there's any. But let's
begin with the minutes. I circulated the minutes from our June 30th meeting. Hang on, my dog is
barking. Can you guys hear my dog barking? No.
Okay, perfect. Excellent. Let's go. I circulated the minutes from our June 30th meeting,
a week.
A week or so ago. Does anybody have any comments on those? Did I miss any
key observation? Nothing? Okay. In that case, I will make a motion to approve the minutes of June
30th. Second.
Whoa. Oh, is that Steve? Yes.
Okay. Jumping right in there. Awesome. Thanks, Steve.
We sure heard me.
I sure did. Okay. Let's go around the room and vote to approve a motion to approve the minutes
from June 30th.
Tom Clem, aye.
Tom Murray, aye.
Larry Brown, aye.
Your name, yes.
Great. Business done.
Actually, speaking of business, I think I put it later on the agenda. There are some invoices that we need to have approved. Why don't we go through that now? Two of those of the three are clear, no pun intended. They're both from Solitude. One is for three days worth of hand harvesting for $3,600. The other one is for the ClearCast treatment. And in fact, let me open it up because Tom, do you recall, was that for both? I think it's only for the first treatment. Let me open it up. I believe it's for the first treatment, too. Okay. Well, let me just open it up and check.
Let's see here.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Let me share the screen here. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. One-time service. So, the other one is for $5,550, which is the first of the ClearCast treatments on Heard Pond. The third one is from Alpha Boats. You may recall that Alpha Boats is the company in upstate New York. Weedsport is the location, actually. And they are the place that built the mechanical harvester that is now currently working on data. And they are the place that is now currently working on data. And they are the place that has been for the past few seasons. And they also provided the conveyor that is now working in tandem with the harvester to help offload all the weeds. The invoice from Alpha Boats is for $173. Let me just confirm that again. It's for a nominal amount, really. But it was from the DPW. They ordered a few parts. And so, this invoice came in. It's for left and right rods and neckplates. you can make your jokes all you want there but it's for 173 dollars and that's all it says 173 32 i called alpha boats on monday and the guy there said yeah these are components for that are that are attached to the blade that's underneath the harvester and so i i didn't speak to anybody in dpw they're they're hard to get a hold of so uh it's a nominal amount it was for some components for the blade uh and so uh that's what that is for uh if anybody has any questions about that i can get the information but i would yeah steve yeah i just want to know because it was it was my understanding that those expenses and any expenses associated with the uh with the harvester were on the dpw not us is that am i wrong about that well so this i i will say you know steve to your point you know we as we know the harvester has broken down over the past couple of years and dpw is taking care of it and came out of their budget we never saw any bills for it so i don't know why this one came to us uh but i'm not going to sweat 173 bucks and in fact what i was thinking is you know the the doubly pond association is often asking me hey when can we make a contribution back to the town so you know this 173 could be the dpa paying us back or paying the town back so but you're right it's a good point uh i'm not going to sweat 173 bucks but i'm not going to sweat it's only 173 but yeah i don't know why this one came to us and the other ones haven't but good point yeah the amount you're right the amount is very small i'm just concerned about precedent because i i concur with that my thought as well that could be a ten thousand dollar part in the future who knows so yeah okay uh so we'll go ahead and uh well if the committee uh approves it's going to be a ten thousand dollar repair part uh that's a third of our budget which we've already pretty much allocated for all the work we're doing on the pond so um i'll take that as an action to follow up with tom holder or whoever's i don't know if tom is directly overseeing harvester and conveyor maintenance but i'll find out who is and just make make them aware that we can handle this one but we can't handle the big ones because i know they spent quite a bit repairing these things in the past when motors and pumps and whatever else yeah break down because yeah even in that case right if dpw pays for those repairs still some of that money should come should be reimbursed to the town through the dpa i just never get i can never get a list of those expenses so the dpa can make a contribution back to the town so i'll take that action right away all right um let's let's break these up into two let's uh i'll make a motion to approve the solitude invoice for these components and then we'll do the two uh solitude ones together which are more directly um yeah oh sorry the $5,500 one is there any surprise there is that the amount we were expecting uh yes um tom i don't know if you have any questions about that but i'm going to have it handy so there's um yeah is there a line i don't break down because i know the total expense is around nine thousand dollars uh i do not have that right now let me see if i can find that and and tom larkin if you have the the contract no that sounded to me about right i i don't i don't have anything uh available that's that's about what i expected uh although um when they actually get out on the pond um it may be uh as tom clem and i uh know uh there are areas uh where they skipped last year and my hope is that uh they um found those uh areas which may not have been originally mapped and and treated them and um so uh there could be some of that i i simply don't know um okay we haven't gotten any kind of report from them so uh to my knowledge so we really don't know what they did no uh yeah give me a moment so i found the contract that was signed between the town and solitude but this is in the town's format let me see if it breaks it down okay the total contract is ninety four hundred dollars i'll share this in a moment let me just see what's in here you know the scope of work is at the very end of this thing but unfortunately when the town when it goes to the town process yeah so this doesn't break it down um and this is insurance um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um Okay, this is not it. Okay, let me download this one here.
Okay, let me just find the breakdown and I'll share the screen and see if everyone can see this.
Okay, here we go. All right, let me share the screen here for you.
Okay, can everybody see this Schedule B pricing schedule? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. So this is for the work this year and you'll see three tasks, permitting, $300. And I don't recall if we approved this previously, I can't recall it, but you'll see here, task two, $55,550 is for that treatment. And then you'll see task three is the follow-up for $3550 because they'll do two treatments. And in fact, I believe they did the second treatment. So we'll get that invoice later. So Steve, to your point, and thank you. If we're asking, task two is that first bolus treatment of ClearCast on the pond. So that's what this invoice is for. For that first treatment, we'll be getting that second invoice probably sometime this month. But right now we have the invoice for the first treatment is that $55,550. And we'll expect the task three later on. Looks fine to me. Yep. Looks good. Okay. So, let me stop sharing. All right. So that's one invoice. And then let me show you, let's see.
Okay. Yeah. And so let me share this one too. So that's the first invoice from Solitude for that first treatment.
This one here. is for the three days of hand-pulling. So they charge $1,200 a day. They've done three days. That's $3,600. So those are the two solitude invoices. And if we approve these, that's going to be a third of our budget for the year. And next time we meet, I will show the budget because these will be our first invoices paid for FY2027. So we're in that 2027 fiscal year. So these will be the first invoices paid against our $30,000 budget for this fiscal year. All right. So let me stop sharing. And I will make a motion to approve for payment the two invoices from solitude, one for three days of hand-pulling of water chestnuts for $3,600. The second one for the first clear cast treatment at Heard Pond for $5,550. And if I can get a second on that. I'll second it. Thank you, Tom. And let's go around the room. And I'll start with Tom Clem, aye. Oh, Tom, can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah, I think I found the problem. Oh, okay. I'm back to my system microphone now. Okay, yeah, you sound great. Okay, Steve Garone, aye. Tom Argy, aye. Harry Kooning, aye. Great. Thanks, everybody. Okay, I'll comment on that. I guess just, a couple of hours ago, I sent out an email that I had received from Jeff Castellani at Solitude, who is a mechanical, he is the manager of the mechanical division, which includes hand-pulling. So he, you all should have gotten that, but he mentioned that in July they did four days. So they've only invoiced us for three. So we'll likely be getting, an invoice, which includes an extra day in July. Okay, so these, so these, all of these days happened in July, but this invoice for the first three, and he's done since, he's done a fourth day, and maybe he'll do more before he invoices us again. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. All right. And we've got, I think, Tom, it's 12 days, right? That's our usual number of days. Well, no, that's, it's, he may be incorrect, incorrect. He said four additional days. We contracted for seven days at $1,200 a day, which is $8,400 plus $1,500 for a report, brings us to $9,900. A few years ago, it was $800 a day, and we got 12 days at $800 for $96. So times change, as they say. So it's possible that we, he really only did the, the three days which he invoiced us for, but in his email, he mentioned four days. I don't know. I just received it, but I'm sure it'll be straightened out. Yeah, they'll come when they come. Yeah, the price goes up and the boats get smaller. It's the way of the world. Okay. So those are the solitude invoices. I now am going to make a motion to approve payment of the invoice to Alpha Boats for those components for the harvester blade. If I could get a second on that one. Tom Largay, second. All right. And now we'll go around the room and vote. Tom Clem, aye to pay. Tom Largay, aye to pay. Steve Garone, aye to pay. Harry Kiernan, yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. And again, like I said, I will second with Tom or whoever's in charge of doing repair work to make sure that the DPW pays for this work. I don't know why this one was to the Service of Water Quality, because I don't know why this one was to the Service of Water Quality, but we managed it this time and we'll make sure there's a clear communication path between DPW and Alpha Boats and us. All right. Okay. So those are the... I jumped ahead into the invoices I had out later down the agenda here. So the mechanical harvesting update. I forwarded you... Well, Steve and I were on this, but Larry and Tom Largay. I forwarded you... Allison, look, LeClaire is one of the two main people on the harvester along with Jim Ogletree. They're the people who've lived on the pond a long time. They've got the local knowledge. They know where to get the most bang for the buck applying the harvester. Tom Largay has made the point before. You know, we don't... They're just neighbors and volunteers working on the pond. We don't get a formal report like with Solitude. So Allison does what you see in the email. So let's give the weekly updates. What I will take as an action, you know, she... Everyone who lives on Deadly Pond, they know all these local areas, the Turtle Sea and all this stuff. I don't know where these areas are. Steve, you may know, but I'm going to get from Allison a map. I may have one, but I'll get one from her. So that way for the committee members, when she gives his reports and talks about these different parts of the pond, you can have a map and sort of localize where these areas are because I don't even know all of them myself. So I will take that action and get that colloquial map of Deadly Pond. I probably know a lot of them, but not all of them. Allison has her own lingo. Yes. Well, she does. But I think in talking with DPA folks, they all know what these areas are. Yes, that's true. So I will get a map. So as we get those reports from Allison, everybody on the committee can say, ah, the Turtle Sea is over here, for example.
But I didn't have any comment on what Allison had done. And again, I sent it to everybody, or at least to Tom and Larry, just a short while ago. So the season is continuing on Deadly Pond. So you've got these surveys. I was out last week. So as Allison sends the updates, I'll pass them along. I can compile all, I will compile all this stuff at the end of the year so we have at least all of the information in one place. But you've got the first three weeks and as they come to the end of the year, they come in, I'll forward them to the committee. I'll get that colloquial map. And then if there are any comments or questions that come up, you guys can relay them to me. I can get the information from Allison or Steve can. So we have more, you can get more clarity where you would need it on Deadly Pond.
Steve, yeah. No, go ahead. I was gonna say, I'll pause there again, Tom and Larry. And I didn't even look at these in Allison's updates until just a moment ago. Steve, if you have any comments, but if there's any comments on Allison, and Tree's work so far, I'll be glad to pass them along to Allison or Tree. If not, again, you're up to date as of week three. And again, the work continues and there'll be more information coming as the season progresses. The only comment I was gonna make was that Allison and Tree start their work at Mansion Beach, which as you know, is about three houses away from me. So in the morning, I typically go down there and check out what's going on. And they are just saying that the volume of stuff that they are cutting is just absolutely incredible. And it's not, for the first couple of weeks, it was not tape grass, which is what usually they're after. Right. It's this, it's called Elodia, I believe. Which is- Oh, Elodia. Yeah, it's an aquarium plant. I used to have Elodia in my tank. So I can imagine that that's really taking up. So I used to say, you're saying that this Elodia is now, at least in the early part of the year, overtaking even the tape grass? It was, it's not anymore. But I think it was keeping the tape grass down, which, you know, presented some mild relief for people, especially people with motors on their boats. Yep. Elodia does, you know, get cut and hang around your, your umbrella blade, but it doesn't really, it doesn't cause a degree of problem that tape grass does. So it gave a little bit of relief, but now the tape grass has come back in full blast. Steve, can I ask you, when, when Alison says it was abundant, does she mean that the combination of Elodia and tape grass was more, or that the Elodia was abundant early on, which they hadn't seen? I'm giving you my view, which is that in looking around and examining the pond, I really didn't see, I didn't see any tape grass until like the last week. And we believe that the Elodia was keeping the tape grass down. So, but so is this abundance then, is it just, does she just, and I can ask Alison to get clarity. I don't know if she means that they've seen more Elodia than they had before, or just the cumulative mass was more than they had seen before. What does abundance mean in the context of what you're saying? The answer to both I think is yes. There was more, there was more, more stuff generally stuff than early leaf and Elodia Elodia has been the dominant thing in the early season. Okay. But that, that is different than what they have seen before. Cause it used to be correct. Yes. Okay. But now the tape grass is coming to the fore as we're expecting. Okay.
Now I just looked up curly leaf pondweed, which we've dealt with in the past. Is that Elodia? No different plant. I don't know. Elodia Elodia is spelled E. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a, I can't even pronounce it. Put a bug at on Christmas. And years past, it was always a curly leaf pondweed early in the season, followed by the milfoil. And so I have not heard about.
The Elodia in particular on Dudley pond. Last time we met. So Steve last in June, you were talking about curly leaf like that seemed to be coming up. So was that, was that not correct? Was it the Elodia and not curly leaf or was it curly leaf then Elodia and now tape grass? Well, I think my comment on tape on curly leaf might've come from talking with Alison. Okay. But I, I I'm just, every time anybody has pointed out the predominant weed up until about a week or two ago in the pond, the word Elodia has come up and, and that's been, that's been really present. But now again, as I said, tape grass is playing the role. It usually plays. Okay.
Yeah. I, um, and that re that report of Alison's, uh, she was, uh, reporting and tens of thousands of pounds of, uh, material removed, um, which is, uh, reminiscent of water chest and harvest and years past enormous, uh, biomass. Yep. And, uh, hard to say, uh, uh, you know, what's missing from, uh, Alison's, uh, report. It's, uh, it mentions a couple of geographic areas and then, um, so many conditions, uh, containers and pounds of, uh, of, uh, biomass re removed. But, uh, what's not there is, uh, what, uh, Dudley ponds, about 85 acres. We don't know, uh, how many acres are involved. Uh, uh, you know, one of the things when you have a tremendous biomass, uh, the, uh, harvester, wherever it is, it could be a hundred yards out, or it could be half a mile away, but the harvester chugs, uh, the harvest. And if it, um, fills up in a hurry, then it chugs much more slowly back to, uh, be offloaded. So it would be interesting to know, um, uh, you know, how much, uh, area is actually cleared in the pond. Yeah. I, I've got that down as a question to ask cause you, cause you're right. Right. Because they always start in the, in the heavy areas and you're right. And when it fills up, you've got to take the harvester back to shore, unload the thing. And I know that, uh, you know, they were, I don't know if they're still doing this, but they hadn't started it last year. At least they were starting later because what they had found is if you start early and they harvest this stuff, it's just going to grow back again. So if there's a wait till later in the season, you knock it down is down at the expense of people being able to get their boats on the pond. So are they taking that later approach or are they just tackling it earlier and just dealing with the consequences of the plants coming back up? Well, no, I just based upon when they started, I can tell you that they started later. Okay. I mean, like the, not, you know, like the third week in July, that, that was late. It was much earlier last year. It was earlier last year because this is our, our week three report, which is, I guess it was as of last week. So, okay. That would be late July or at least mid July. Okay. Um, and that, by the way, just sorry to interrupt that, that approach, meaning starting later makes sense because what you just described, which was, you know, early, but early, and then it grows back happened last year. Yeah. Sorry, Larry. Uh, no problem. Um, so yeah, since you live there or near it, um, can you give some percentage of the weeds you think they're taking out? Is it 5%? Is it 50%? I, I can't do that. I'm not even sure. Alison can do that. No, no, no, no, no. Alison can do that. Yeah. It's she's, she's cutting it every day, but and is the goal to have channels where boats are fishing and swimming and uh, You know, are there tactical objectives? Mm-Hmm. That's a great question. Um, in past years, what they have endeavored to do was to, uh, To cut channels actually, and try to mark them. so that people understand where it's where it's safe to swim where you know they can get on a paddle board and if they fall in they won't fall in a bunch of weeds uh that kind of thing uh and i think they're going to try to do that this year um as well so that yeah that was a really good question because you know if they are never with this just this one harvester they are never going to be able to cover the whole pond it is not possible not in the number of weeks they have and again so even if you had that many weeks and you covered the whole pond by the time you get done you know it's kind of like you know painting your house and you you finish the whole house and you got to go back and do it again that's that's kind of what happens yeah that that example is way too close to home literally another comment by the way on the harvesting uh i had my i have a um slightly mentally handicapped son in his 50s so he was over for the weekend and um uh so i took him over to uh mansion beach to go swimming because it's a it's a great beach it's very gradual out there a long ways but my oh my um that equipment mansion beach is torn up and all summer long uh and i've mentioned this other years uh apparently um the uh the beach is almost close to unusable just because of equipment uh there so it's a small beach in the first place so i'm not too happy about that tom you you had mentioned that before and and you know with the dumpster and the harvester you've just got equipment that's taking up space is the beach also torn up from just the the wheels and the you know oh yeah yeah incredibly a little bit yeah i i would say it's more than a little bit i i thought it was uh quite torn up uh with the exception of uh you know the small areas that um where it doesn't go but it's just plain torn up it might it might be a little worse right now than it was in previous years because i was out there one morning and uh the dpw had their truck out and they had their truck out and they had their truck out and they had their truck out they're trying to better position the um conveyor and they will got stuck in in the sand and they made a really big ditch trying to spin out of there uh so i don't know how well they filled it in but that might be part of the problem but yeah you know this this conversation can open up a whole can of worms because one of the things that that um i know allison and tree have been advocating for is having other places around the pond where they might be able to do what they do now on mansion beach absolutely like the uh new area near the dudley chateau off of dudley road uh i haven't looked at it recently but uh that would be a great spot but um my understanding is that that's been examined and it's been determined that the way they constructed the ground and the gravel and etc i did not i have no expertise here but this is what i heard uh would not handle the the equipment that we're talking about so i don't hold a lot of hope for that but that's a whole can of worms because we're we're all we're all desirous of that uh steve you know to tom margie's point you know the the of course the problem is is great that we have the harvester and conveyor pulling weeds out of the pond but they're they're they're taking up space on mansion beach um what's uh is there any uh feedback that you're hearing secondhand from people near the pond that are akin to what tom margie said like you know why are you doing this i can't use mansion beach or i know and i have to tell you mansion beach still gets a lot of use there are still a lot of people out there people sitting there in their chairs people launching you know canoes and kayaks and paddle boards i don't really see that by the way tom uh tom largie yes the the ability to do this equipment thing somewhere else has another aspect to it which is you know we talked earlier about going out and you know cutting stuff and then having to bring it back to mansion beach on a very slow harvester which takes time wouldn't it be nice if we're working down the other end of the pond that we had a place to pull in there and dump off what is cut absolutely absolutely mansion beach so there's a couple of aspects to this one is cluttering up the beach and the other is being more efficient and how the harvest harvester is used yeah i i brought that up in the past one of my um this goes back a few years ago when it was um the harvester was uh acquired and in my opinion uh there was um no nobody really looked at um oh how fast a harvester could go and uh how wide is the uh the cutting edge and and uh uh there wasn't really any uh kind of study uh uh done on on that at all one point of view well might have been that uh the town had uh a larger harvester but it simply wasn't uh looked at it was just acquired because it was on the market and relatively inexpensive yep you're probably right
and we're learning
okay anyway i don't know where you want to go with this tom clem but well no so right now so i've got a few questions uh based on the discussion that i'll ask of uh alison you know first to get a map i'll see if i can get a sense of how many acres of coverage we're getting uh yeah i'll ask about the the about the plants you know is it uh curly leaf then elodie then tape grass alice has got a real eye for this stuff uh so i'll get some more information then we'll get the the updates from her on a weekly basis out forward to the committee and they can be basis for future discussion and questions and again i'll take all of this stuff at the end of the year i think i did this last year maybe in the last two years i'll put it together as a report if you will so we have all the information gathered in one place and not just through emails coming by on a weekly basis okay uh the last thing on doubly pond and we had talked about this last time last season we had arc aquatic restoration consultants do a flora and fauna survey on on the pond and we had a number of actions that were suggested by arc if we wanted to learn more about nutrients and what might be contributing to weed growth in the pond and a lot of the dpa folks were particularly interested in this and uh they uh you know they they went ahead and reached out to arc uh wendy and keith gendron is that his name um because they they first keith or ken actually but uh wendy and our partner had worked with the doubly pond association before the service of our quality committee so there's already some connections and communications there so they they uh were curious about how much it would cost to do a full-scale nutrient survey of the pond and i just forwarded that to the whole committee a moment you know minutes before we met so we're not going to go into it in great detail here we'll talk about it next time because there's no action for us right now the upshot is you can take a look at this report but wendy's estimate is five figures probably 50 likely more than that right this is not anything that this committee would be able to afford certainly not on our regular 30k and if next year is going to be a priscilla core year that's going to already double our budget effectively and so to double it further for this is not going to happen so take a look at what i afforded you from wendy uh at the doubly pond association yeah steve no no go keep going but when you're done i want to okay now this is nothing that this committee could uh could pursue financially the doubly pond association may choose to um we can offer any guidance and suggestions but financially it's not something that we are likely going to be able to do the doubly pond association may have the resources to do it that'll have to be you know we'll we'll interact more with them uh perhaps through andrew yay who was at our meeting last time but just take a look at that estimate from wendy and arc just for you you know just so you understand where they're how they base how wendy based what what ben wendy had based her estimates on and so we could have a more full discussion when we meet in september uh but that was all i didn't want to go in depth because again larry and tom only got it moments ago uh so steve i'll turn it over to you for any comments sure okay so um just to elaborate on what tom is saying uh i've been in regular contact with wendy uh we kind of in a situation with her where we're extracting as much um insight and support as we can from her given the fact that we are paying her zilch right now yes which is why she generated that proposal it was requested by a committee that is part of the um doubly pond association called the healthy pond something i forget what the name is i am on the committee and joy is on the committee i believe norm is on the committee uh the dpa unfortunately likes to have committees that have a lot of people on them which i'm not really all that in favor of but there are a lot of people involved anyway um we have been i and uh bob smith and anne were on a two-hour call with the state about a month ago which was the goal of the meeting was to inform people about the schedule and the requirements to get both six over four b grants and 319 grants which could potentially pay for not only evaluating what's going on in dudley pond but also pay for some of the implementation steps to mitigate them this morning we had a follow-up call i was on the call and was on the call and melissa roberts was on the call melissa is a member of the dpa and on the committee i just mentioned and knows a lot about pond chemistry and weeds and chemicals and all the stuff that's really important in terms of figuring all this out and our goal in meeting with the state people this morning was to follow up on that session that they had and get more specificity around the requirements that we would have to supply in order to get those grants one of those grants it was the 604 b grant is something and let me just step back and address tom clem what you said you are absolutely right we do not have the budget for this the the i think the dpa is assuming that whatever we do in this regard the dpa is going to pay for however the 604 b grants which are oh i'm about to get interrupted hold on
let me make an an aside i'm looking at the screen all four of us i have the least expensive uh ipad you can buy and I bought it at some kind of discount. I think my resolution is much better than any one of you. I don't know what you're using. Well, so Tom, I've got a blurry background. I can unblur it. So it's not a resolution issue. It is. Let's see if I can change it here. Okay. So sorry about that. I'm at my son's house and he and my wife, and his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter just came in the house and created a lot of noise. So I had to leave. So anyway, the 604B grant, which we found out today, really is about doing the evaluation of what's going on with the pond. Much more expansive than just chemicals. I don't really want to go into the details now. But that's... That grant is only granted to municipalities. So no matter how much work the DPA does in putting the grant proposal together, regardless of whether they're paying for it or not, that grant is going to have to be worked through us. So we need to be intimately involved with that. The 319 grant, which is really an implementation grant, which is, okay, you want to solve these problems that you've uncovered in your evaluation, here's the steps you're going to take. We can help you pay for that. That can be applied for and go directly to the DPA. So we are involved in all of that through me. I'm kind of this committee's liaison to that committee. So I just wanted to fill you in on what we did with the state today. All this stuff, all these proposals are going to be due somewhere around early to mid-October. So there's a lot of work to be done. And we think that one of the grants that we're going to try to get is the one that will either pay for or help pay for the one that you, Tom Clem, just sent out to everybody, hiring Clark to do those evaluations. By the way, Wendy is really pretty knowledgeable on what this state is looking at. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a rundown. Because she is trying to expand beyond just, well, how much phosphorus is in the pond? And more about how's it getting there? What are all the sources where it's coming from? Septic tanks, cesspools, even down to things like driveways that people might want to redo that will reduce the amount of phosphorus. And then, of course, the flow that goes into the pond, that kind of thing. Can I interject here? Because I've been on this committee over 25 years. We already did some of that. I know. And we paid for it. And there are reports around. Yeah, it's about 40 years old, the last round. Well, not that old. No, I think in the odds. You're talking about the IEP stuff? The IEP stuff?
You know, Mike Lowry might have a... Yeah. A handle on some of that. I know. But we spent money already on some of that. Yeah. Tom, if you could let us know what that is. Because Wendy referenced the IEP report from 82, 83. So that's what's... It's old. Yeah. So if there's something more recent... And I've got the files. I'll look. But Tom, if it comes to mind, let me know. Because, you know, 40 years, yes, it's like that's a good time to get another report done. But if it's been more recently, maybe in 20 years? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. By the way, the state... The state was pretty impressed with the ARC proposal. They made some suggestions as to what she might want to add, which we're going to relay to her. And again, I want to emphasize that from the cost point of view, the assumption right now is that this is all going to be paid for by the DPA. Because we don't have... We don't have a budget for it. But if we get these grants, then we may have... Then we may get all or... For total relief. We'll see. We'll see. Question for you. Because I know we talked about the 319B and the 604B. I may not have my letters or numbers correct. But doesn't one come before the other one? You said these were due October 4th. I thought one was the dreaded feasibility study. And then you have one afterwards, which is... Exactly. But they're granted at different times. But they really want to see. What the state wants to see is the entire plan. They want to know... You know, what you need... What you think you need to evaluate. And you also want to know... And I kind of wondered about this myself. Because I'm not sure whether there's a chicken or the egg thing going on here. They want to know, you know, what implementation steps do you think you need to take to alleviate the issues? Well, if you haven't evaluated the issues yet, how do you know that? But they kind of want, you know... To be thinking about and talking to them about what you might want to do as a result of what comes out of the studies. But we still... We do have a fair amount of data anyway. But, you know, we want to see if we can get a grant to take that a step further. One of the things we've never done, like, you know, I go out... You may remember this. I go out on a biannual basis and do measurements of things like dissolved oxygen, phosphorus, chlorophyll, et cetera. By the way, I just finished the report for the spring. It took a little longer than I wanted, but it's been a busy summer. I'll send that around in the next day or two. But the state also has that report. But what that doesn't look at is where does it come from? You know, what issues do we have in terms of stormwater runoff and septic tanks and cesspools? They really have a strong interest in understanding... That bigger picture, which we're going to try to give them. Sorry, Tom, I think I interrupted you. Yeah, what I wanted to ask... So right now, Anne Drouillet is putting together then the 319B and the 604B for October 4th. So the whole... So she's applying for both of these things for October 4th, because the state wants to see the whole picture. They want to see... They call it the plan.
Yeah, it's Anne, me... Melissa, and other people will be involved as well. Okay, so... Because I thought these were not due until next year. So that's obviously incorrect. But you're submitting both of these things for October 4th, but they're funded sequentially. We'll get the 319B, if I recall. That's what it sounds like, yes. Okay. You know, you get on the call with these DEP employees, and they're really informative, and they're really smart, and they're really knowledgeable. But they do... The way you speak their own language. So you walk away, and you go, oh, that's clear. And then you think of 40 questions afterwards. And we have a window over which we can always ask questions. But the grant umbrella, if you will, is going to be finalized and approved, they believe, on September 19th. After that point... We could not have a call like we did this morning. Okay, so... They just can't do it. Okay, so there's like a... What do they call it? A window where you can't communicate with them. Exactly. You can always ask a question, but you can't get on the phone with them and go, well, what do you think we should do here? You know, that's off limits. Okay.
Okay, so that'll be... So if those are successful, then those can be avenues to pay for this. So if there's a survey that Wendy gave us a draft of, or the DPA could choose, the membership could choose to use their funds to pay for it. So there are a couple avenues here if this goes forward. Yeah, I don't really think realistically that anybody on the DPA, on that committee of the DPA, is thinking that we are going to fund any of this. Which is good, because we've told them that, and, you know, they get it. Yeah, okay, great. Thank you, Steve. Okay, so we'll see what happens. So Tom, Larry, you've got Wendy's draft just to consider, and we can discuss further. So I guess if we meet in September, it'll be before... Well, we can get a update from Steve in September on progress. But you've got the Wendy's draft proposal. No action needed by us right now. There's no action we could take. Is there an action to see when the last study was done? Oh, yeah. Let me take that. Yeah, I'll see what I can find, because I've got all the historical files. So in that document from Wendy, she talks about the 1982 report. I can circulate that to everybody here. But yeah, Tom Largay, if you can recall what that one is. I can write to Mike Lowry, too, if there was something that was done. Yeah, Tony Moore's was also instrumental. He was our technical guy. But as an example, we had a study done, and it had to do with... It had to do with a runoff and measurement of what happens with runoff. And it turns out if in July or August you have a torrential rainstorm, then in the first half hour, and they actually measured it, you have to wait for a torrential rainstorm, running down Simpson Road or whatever, all kinds of stuff come in. And then it clears up after a while. I mean, we paid money for that. I don't know that... I'm certain... There were no actions that ever came out of it. But that kind of thing has been done. But I certainly don't... I would absolutely not have any of those documents. They weren't in my purview at all. So I will search my thumb drive. I can reach out to Tony and Mike. And then what I'll do, Steve, if I find this, I'll circulate that and the IEP report to the committee members. Seriously, we have it. But Steve, if I do find this more recent report, I'll have you pass that along to Wendy. I don't know if that would change her scope of work, but it'd be good for you and the committee working on these grants to have that information. So I'll take the action to track this document down and then share it with this committee. And then we can share it externally with the relevant parties. Yeah, the only... Other than the IEP report, the only reports I'm familiar with are the ones that Wendy and Art did last year, I believe. They... There was last year and it was in 2020. Yeah. But, okay, so... But those were just Flora surveys. So what Tom is talking about sounds like it's more comprehensive. Okay. It doesn't ring a bell, but let me, you know, let me dig around for that because if we spend money on it and we have this body of information that can inform any work we may do now, we want to get that out to certainly the experts like Wendy so she can adjust her quote accordingly. Sure. Okay. So that's my action. All right. That is it for Dudley Pond. We talked a little bit about her... But Tom Largy, I'll open the floor to you. I don't know if you've been able to get out there or if you've communicated with... Yeah, well... Well, first of all, I have not been out unheard this summer. You know, I took a bad fall about three months ago now and tore my rotator cuff badly. Went in to see the surgeon. I thought he was going to put me under the knife, but he said, live with it. And it's getting better. So as an example, next month, I have a big fly fishing trip to Washington State planned. Also, I had a mishap with both my outboard motor and my trailer. That's a long story. I ended up spending $7,000 that I didn't think I was going to spend this year. But I did it. So I've... My boat is...
Set to go with a new motor and a new trailer. And my shoulder's a lot better. And if I can find somebody like Larry or Tom, we can launch unheard pond. It's going to be a mucky. The pond's very low. I think my truck will go halfway into the water, launch my boat with a new trailer and take a cruise around the pond and see what should be seen. I'm willing to do that any time this weekend, possibly some days next week, Friday morning. So... That works for me. Yeah, I could do this weekend. All three of us could go on. Well, there is a problem of the quorum.
We won't talk about... We can't have an unofficial meeting. Is that it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, George Harris, who some of you may know. Oh, yeah. George was hot on that years ago. He's quite elderly now. You might say I'm elderly. I'm 86. But I think George is more elderly, but he'd have been all over that. So realistically, actually, I'd like to get Larry out on the pond. And so... And maybe we could make a couple of trips, but I don't want to get into this quorum business. Yeah. Okay. I would love to trek around, take a trek around Herd Pond. I've never done it. I will not be around this weekend. Yeah. Well, anything's arrangeable. It has to do with my energy. And the forecast is for not so hot weather. I don't want to go out in the pond. I don't want to be on the water when it's 90 degrees or anything. I just won't do it. Well, we'll find a way. We'll make it work. Yeah. So that's why I'm making arrangements for saltwater fishing trips in September. That's when the fish are running anyway, but not now. My friend who went out with me, he's got a bass boat. He lives down at the end of Pelham Island Road, and he's on the pond 100 days a year. He's the one who gave me... The report of sporadic weeds. But he also injured himself grievously in trying to push his boat. He's got a big boat in very shallow water, and he's done quite a number... I think he's going in for surgery on that. So he's out of business. So that happens to us. Otherwise, for Herd Pond, I sent Jeff Campbell... Castellani, who I've mentioned for years, has done the pulling and also some mechanical harvesting. He sent me a report today and said they'd spent four days on the pond. It could be they've only spent three. And they pulled 3,500 plants, which is dismaying because... Hmm. Around 2013 or 14, after... We had run mechanical harvesters on the pond up until 2009. And then one year, we may have had 10,000 plants and 6,000, then 2,000, then several hundred. And the pond has blown up on me several times since then. And apparently those seeds, you know, sit in the sediment for 15, 20, 25 years. We'd been told back in 2002 that there was a seven-year viability. That's not true. It's 10 years, it's 12, it's 15, it's 20. They don't really know. So anyway, he pulled the plants and they're going to come back very shortly. I... I cautioned them since water chestnuts tend to drop their seeds starting about the middle of August. And I also asked him to check with the clear cast, meaning Tanner and such. What happened last year, Tom, Clem and I were out on the pond. And as we get toward the South Cove where the severe infestation has been, there were patches that going in towards it
that had not been treated. And we spent, you know, if I'd done it all day for a couple of days, we could have done it, but we just couldn't do it. So I don't know if they treated those, some of those patches or not. There's also the issue that, you know, at the far end of the pond on the perimeter, there's this issue with fish and wild, purported fish and wildlife property under the pond, which I still don't understand, given that the, it's a great pond controlled by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And proper, unless it's a, some kind of an impoundment like Farrah Pond, and Lincoln is private because it was dammed up. It was, it was property before it was dammed, but nothing like that happened on Heard Pond. So anyway, the weeds have been pulled.
The treatment's been done. Thanks to Tom Clem, because he put all that paperwork and such through, and I simply don't have a taste for it anymore. I'm through with all of it. All of that. I don't mind going on a boat ride and commenting on things and using what institutional memory I have, but. For better or worse, that's a large part of my day job. So I'm used to, you know, emailing, calling, pushing, pushing the paper around where it needs to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just. Tom, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you, so you were talking about the boundary. So, you know, that was my misunderstanding. I thought it was some kind of a fluid boundary, but it sounds like the boundary of course is fixed. And it was just that, Tanner last season solitude couldn't get to that boundary because I guess the water depth was too low for their boat to get out there. Well, I thought it was a boundary, the actual boundary, but anyway, that's, you know, we don't talk to those guys very much. They haven't given you a report. We have no idea. So. Yeah, there's the, yeah, certainly no, no in progress report, right? We get Jeff Castellani puts one report together. It has everything, but it's that it's after the fact, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay. I'll see if I, let me reach out to Tanner and see if I can get some more real time information. So we have a sense of, of progress. I mean, they did the second treatment, so I assume he can see if that first treatment was effective or ineffective or whatever the case may be. Yeah, right, right, right. And Larry, maybe you and I can get out on the pond and then, and you all the guys as well. It all boils down to my energy and time, but what I really, when you go into the pond, unlike Mansion Beach, which was a nice gradual, sandy herd pond is muck, muck, muck. So, and you got wet and maybe muddy and somebody has to go in and push out the boat and so forth. And. So, yeah, Friday possibly, or Sunday. Saturday's not good for me. Yeah, well, it would have to be Friday morning or Sunday. Maybe Sunday would be good. As an example, Sunday morning, I have to take my wife to an appointment Friday afternoon. So, yeah, that could work.
Okay. But text me when you get a, sense what yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right the last agenda item is just for the committee's awareness uh every year the town puts together an annual report and each committee and the town has to contribute their summary of the year's activities i'll put that together from uh all the information that we've all the activities we've done over the year so just for the committee's awareness i've got all the information that i need i'll put it together they've gotten you know the town only needs so few words from each committee i used to worry about compiling it all now they need such a high level overview and there's no time at all so just for your awareness i will put that report together for the committee's report together for the town's annual report which is due september 30th so i'll take care of that so just for the for awareness we will get we will get to review it uh yes you will i will send it around to people to yeah i will do that okay yeah i also have a comment uh we got larry uh onto the committee uh because he has an interest in the mill pond which uh about 10 years ago actually um 2013 and 2015 i uh had a uh what did they call that uh thing well it was not a dredger but uh we did the the hydro rake the hydro rake we did the shoreline and that was a very uh mucky uh experience pure chocolate water um but uh larry's got an interest in the pond and and uh at least the upper third um is um heavily silted and maybe sometime in the future uh it was last done in 1972 there's a possibility of uh maybe some uh kind of dredging project but uh it occurred to me with steve garone talking about uh these grants and such that um maybe um there's some kind of experience that comes out of that that you larry might just yeah that's a good point um because most of the feedback i've gotten is that in new england uh often they're trying to remove these ponds um like mill pond and it's a um a uh losing game trying to dredge it's very expensive however i will say that i walk by every day and there are always kids and families absolutely uh all the time out there it is so good to see um so yeah i think um yeah we'll see what uh steve and the dunley pond association go through i hope down from it larry can you can you uh explain that you said they're for small ponds like mill pond they're being filled so i used to be on conservation in uh whalen and um um one of the things that uh i was surprised they redid the dam down um off rice road there yes yeah like five years ago whatever it was yeah um but there's a discussion that one of those ponds like mill pond are disrupting the natural habitat that is there before the falls was put in so um there's a general uh the only thing combating that is that when you put up a dam it actually increases the wetland area and grows conservation's footprint if you will um but uh there is movement to remove some falls uh from small ponds okay so mill pond only exists because they put that dam down yeah well actually i'm uh fairly familiar with that uh as a as a trout fisherman and also many years ago i was a past president of the uh boston chapter of trout unlimited a national conservation organization so there um uh is a big push to uh get rid of uh dams but um there are dams and there are dams and uh yeah so uh uh in particular uh on the cape uh south shore and north shore where you have uh anadromous fish coming up herring um and in some cases brook trout then um there are pushes to get rid of dams um out and uh if you go out 117 out to bolton and just before you come to i-190 off to the side um it's kind of a meadow area and uh that used to um be a pond and in fact um uh there's a guy uh has a truck there he uh sells hot dogs nice guy uh i uh have my son tom i've when we're skiing out at wachusett we'd um stop at the uh and get a hot dog there or no we got ice cream no hot dogs ice cream 50 cents each he uh i think he increased his price but uh anyway the pond uh uh from time to time i'd be out there and um and i caught some bass out there and then um one fine day i found the pond was gone and um so i i looked into it and um in that case um uh the brook there is probably has or had native brook trout and uh uh and the thinking was that by getting rid of the pond because there's something called thermal pollution. If you back up a stream, then it's subject to the sun and all of a sudden the water coming over the spillway in July and August is too warm for trout. That was the rationale there. I don't think that kind of rationale exists for the Mill Pond. And by the way, I think there have been native brook trout further up in Upper Mill Brook. I'm not certain that they're still there. There are native brook trout in Pine Brook and Haywood Brook in Wayland, which are fairly well known. Anyway, back to the Mill Pond. It was deeded, the land around the Mill Pond and possibly the pond itself were deeded to the town as a park. So from a DPW, a selectman's point of view, it was accepted way back in, I don't know, the 30s and 40s as a town park. And that's what it is and should be maintained as. Larry, I might, I may have sent you some material. I don't know if I've sent you any of that or not, but it is a park. It is. It's not conservation land. It is not conservation land. No, it's not. It's a town park and it's suitable to have a trash can there and a picnic table and so forth. And use of lights and yeah. Yeah, that's what it should be used for. Recreation, yeah. Right, right. Well, anyway. All right. Yeah. So, yeah. So that'll be, so Steve, your experience with the grants can be maybe help Larry and, you know, and Larry, maybe there's even, we can even have something not like Wendy, but, you know, if we want to even get a set, well, so if getting rid of Mill Pond is one option, fine. You know, what is that going to cost? But if the option is to maintain the pond, but maybe we have to remove the silt, maybe at some point getting an estimate of what that's going to cost. Cause that's definitely gonna be more than $50,000, but maybe what Steve is going through now can be of use for Mill Pond at some future point. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks Tom, for bringing that up. And yeah, Larry, thank you for having that interest in Mill Pond. Anything you want to, and we don't, we rarely talk about Mill Pond, but there's something that, you know, even beyond the hydro raking that you want to bring up that this committee can aid in some way, please, please let me know and we'll put on the agenda and discuss. All right. The last thing is to set a meeting date for September and Steve, are you going to say something? No, I just, I was talking to myself. I have to open my calendar. Okay. Yes. So I'll throw out to get the discussion going. A month from now the first, I guess it's the second Tuesday. September 8th is a Tuesday, but you know, Mondays, are options wednesdays are options so i'm looking at the week of the 7th which is a monday so 7th 8th 9th or 14th 15th and 16th any preferences on those for those weeks well i i can i for me i have to eliminate the 8th because that's the second tuesday and i have another commitment okay but and usually wednesdays don't work but that won't start until the 23rd so for me 7 9 14 15 16 are okay okay so that is september 9 15 or 16 any uh preferences tom largy or larry uh the 15th won't work for me so doing it uh 9 10 looks good well it won't be that it won't be the 10th because i can't do that yeah as i've learned from hard experience on thursday for whatever reason you can only have a zoom meeting until 4 p.m and that's not going to work for me so we have september 9th or 16th our wednesdays uh tom largy any preference yeah no the the ninth cell and uh the 16th either one is good with the uh but as i said i mentioned i'm actually scheduling some trips but not on those days yet uh so and actually it occurs to me that this is the uh i want to tell you today is the 11th let's make it this i'll propose the 16th for our next meeting wednesday sounds good okay september 16th wednesday all right and with that then that concludes the agenda so at 8 20 i will make a motion to adjourn is there a second everyone's jumping in there i'll give that one to tom largy all right and uh let's go around the room uh tom clem i tom largy i steve groan i mary cunin i great thank you guys i'll see you on september 16th
Actually, speaking of business, I think I put it later on the agenda. There are some invoices that we need to have approved. Why don't we go through that now? Two of those of the three are clear, no pun intended. They're both from Solitude. One is for three days worth of hand harvesting for $3,600. The other one is for the ClearCast treatment. And in fact, let me open it up because Tom, do you recall, was that for both? I think it's only for the first treatment. Let me open it up. I believe it's for the first treatment, too. Okay. Well, let me just open it up and check.
Let's see here.
Oh, yeah. Okay. Let me share the screen here. Oh, no. Okay. Yeah. One-time service. So, the other one is for $5,550, which is the first of the ClearCast treatments on Heard Pond. The third one is from Alpha Boats. You may recall that Alpha Boats is the company in upstate New York. Weedsport is the location, actually. And they are the place that built the mechanical harvester that is now currently working on data. And they are the place that is now currently working on data. And they are the place that has been for the past few seasons. And they also provided the conveyor that is now working in tandem with the harvester to help offload all the weeds. The invoice from Alpha Boats is for $173. Let me just confirm that again. It's for a nominal amount, really. But it was from the DPW. They ordered a few parts. And so, this invoice came in. It's for left and right rods and neckplates. you can make your jokes all you want there but it's for 173 dollars and that's all it says 173 32 i called alpha boats on monday and the guy there said yeah these are components for that are that are attached to the blade that's underneath the harvester and so i i didn't speak to anybody in dpw they're they're hard to get a hold of so uh it's a nominal amount it was for some components for the blade uh and so uh that's what that is for uh if anybody has any questions about that i can get the information but i would yeah steve yeah i just want to know because it was it was my understanding that those expenses and any expenses associated with the uh with the harvester were on the dpw not us is that am i wrong about that well so this i i will say you know steve to your point you know we as we know the harvester has broken down over the past couple of years and dpw is taking care of it and came out of their budget we never saw any bills for it so i don't know why this one came to us uh but i'm not going to sweat 173 bucks and in fact what i was thinking is you know the the doubly pond association is often asking me hey when can we make a contribution back to the town so you know this 173 could be the dpa paying us back or paying the town back so but you're right it's a good point uh i'm not going to sweat 173 bucks but i'm not going to sweat it's only 173 but yeah i don't know why this one came to us and the other ones haven't but good point yeah the amount you're right the amount is very small i'm just concerned about precedent because i i concur with that my thought as well that could be a ten thousand dollar part in the future who knows so yeah okay uh so we'll go ahead and uh well if the committee uh approves it's going to be a ten thousand dollar repair part uh that's a third of our budget which we've already pretty much allocated for all the work we're doing on the pond so um i'll take that as an action to follow up with tom holder or whoever's i don't know if tom is directly overseeing harvester and conveyor maintenance but i'll find out who is and just make make them aware that we can handle this one but we can't handle the big ones because i know they spent quite a bit repairing these things in the past when motors and pumps and whatever else yeah break down because yeah even in that case right if dpw pays for those repairs still some of that money should come should be reimbursed to the town through the dpa i just never get i can never get a list of those expenses so the dpa can make a contribution back to the town so i'll take that action right away all right um let's let's break these up into two let's uh i'll make a motion to approve the solitude invoice for these components and then we'll do the two uh solitude ones together which are more directly um yeah oh sorry the $5,500 one is there any surprise there is that the amount we were expecting uh yes um tom i don't know if you have any questions about that but i'm going to have it handy so there's um yeah is there a line i don't break down because i know the total expense is around nine thousand dollars uh i do not have that right now let me see if i can find that and and tom larkin if you have the the contract no that sounded to me about right i i don't i don't have anything uh available that's that's about what i expected uh although um when they actually get out on the pond um it may be uh as tom clem and i uh know uh there are areas uh where they skipped last year and my hope is that uh they um found those uh areas which may not have been originally mapped and and treated them and um so uh there could be some of that i i simply don't know um okay we haven't gotten any kind of report from them so uh to my knowledge so we really don't know what they did no uh yeah give me a moment so i found the contract that was signed between the town and solitude but this is in the town's format let me see if it breaks it down okay the total contract is ninety four hundred dollars i'll share this in a moment let me just see what's in here you know the scope of work is at the very end of this thing but unfortunately when the town when it goes to the town process yeah so this doesn't break it down um and this is insurance um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um um Okay, this is not it. Okay, let me download this one here.
Okay, let me just find the breakdown and I'll share the screen and see if everyone can see this.
Okay, here we go. All right, let me share the screen here for you.
Okay, can everybody see this Schedule B pricing schedule? Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. So this is for the work this year and you'll see three tasks, permitting, $300. And I don't recall if we approved this previously, I can't recall it, but you'll see here, task two, $55,550 is for that treatment. And then you'll see task three is the follow-up for $3550 because they'll do two treatments. And in fact, I believe they did the second treatment. So we'll get that invoice later. So Steve, to your point, and thank you. If we're asking, task two is that first bolus treatment of ClearCast on the pond. So that's what this invoice is for. For that first treatment, we'll be getting that second invoice probably sometime this month. But right now we have the invoice for the first treatment is that $55,550. And we'll expect the task three later on. Looks fine to me. Yep. Looks good. Okay. So, let me stop sharing. All right. So that's one invoice. And then let me show you, let's see.
Okay. Yeah. And so let me share this one too. So that's the first invoice from Solitude for that first treatment.
This one here. is for the three days of hand-pulling. So they charge $1,200 a day. They've done three days. That's $3,600. So those are the two solitude invoices. And if we approve these, that's going to be a third of our budget for the year. And next time we meet, I will show the budget because these will be our first invoices paid for FY2027. So we're in that 2027 fiscal year. So these will be the first invoices paid against our $30,000 budget for this fiscal year. All right. So let me stop sharing. And I will make a motion to approve for payment the two invoices from solitude, one for three days of hand-pulling of water chestnuts for $3,600. The second one for the first clear cast treatment at Heard Pond for $5,550. And if I can get a second on that. I'll second it. Thank you, Tom. And let's go around the room. And I'll start with Tom Clem, aye. Oh, Tom, can you hear me now? Yes. Yeah, I think I found the problem. Oh, okay. I'm back to my system microphone now. Okay, yeah, you sound great. Okay, Steve Garone, aye. Tom Argy, aye. Harry Kooning, aye. Great. Thanks, everybody. Okay, I'll comment on that. I guess just, a couple of hours ago, I sent out an email that I had received from Jeff Castellani at Solitude, who is a mechanical, he is the manager of the mechanical division, which includes hand-pulling. So he, you all should have gotten that, but he mentioned that in July they did four days. So they've only invoiced us for three. So we'll likely be getting, an invoice, which includes an extra day in July. Okay, so these, so these, all of these days happened in July, but this invoice for the first three, and he's done since, he's done a fourth day, and maybe he'll do more before he invoices us again. Yeah, we'll see. We'll see. All right. And we've got, I think, Tom, it's 12 days, right? That's our usual number of days. Well, no, that's, it's, he may be incorrect, incorrect. He said four additional days. We contracted for seven days at $1,200 a day, which is $8,400 plus $1,500 for a report, brings us to $9,900. A few years ago, it was $800 a day, and we got 12 days at $800 for $96. So times change, as they say. So it's possible that we, he really only did the, the three days which he invoiced us for, but in his email, he mentioned four days. I don't know. I just received it, but I'm sure it'll be straightened out. Yeah, they'll come when they come. Yeah, the price goes up and the boats get smaller. It's the way of the world. Okay. So those are the solitude invoices. I now am going to make a motion to approve payment of the invoice to Alpha Boats for those components for the harvester blade. If I could get a second on that one. Tom Largay, second. All right. And now we'll go around the room and vote. Tom Clem, aye to pay. Tom Largay, aye to pay. Steve Garone, aye to pay. Harry Kiernan, yes. Okay. Thank you. All right. And again, like I said, I will second with Tom or whoever's in charge of doing repair work to make sure that the DPW pays for this work. I don't know why this one was to the Service of Water Quality, because I don't know why this one was to the Service of Water Quality, but we managed it this time and we'll make sure there's a clear communication path between DPW and Alpha Boats and us. All right. Okay. So those are the... I jumped ahead into the invoices I had out later down the agenda here. So the mechanical harvesting update. I forwarded you... Well, Steve and I were on this, but Larry and Tom Largay. I forwarded you... Allison, look, LeClaire is one of the two main people on the harvester along with Jim Ogletree. They're the people who've lived on the pond a long time. They've got the local knowledge. They know where to get the most bang for the buck applying the harvester. Tom Largay has made the point before. You know, we don't... They're just neighbors and volunteers working on the pond. We don't get a formal report like with Solitude. So Allison does what you see in the email. So let's give the weekly updates. What I will take as an action, you know, she... Everyone who lives on Deadly Pond, they know all these local areas, the Turtle Sea and all this stuff. I don't know where these areas are. Steve, you may know, but I'm going to get from Allison a map. I may have one, but I'll get one from her. So that way for the committee members, when she gives his reports and talks about these different parts of the pond, you can have a map and sort of localize where these areas are because I don't even know all of them myself. So I will take that action and get that colloquial map of Deadly Pond. I probably know a lot of them, but not all of them. Allison has her own lingo. Yes. Well, she does. But I think in talking with DPA folks, they all know what these areas are. Yes, that's true. So I will get a map. So as we get those reports from Allison, everybody on the committee can say, ah, the Turtle Sea is over here, for example.
But I didn't have any comment on what Allison had done. And again, I sent it to everybody, or at least to Tom and Larry, just a short while ago. So the season is continuing on Deadly Pond. So you've got these surveys. I was out last week. So as Allison sends the updates, I'll pass them along. I can compile all, I will compile all this stuff at the end of the year so we have at least all of the information in one place. But you've got the first three weeks and as they come to the end of the year, they come in, I'll forward them to the committee. I'll get that colloquial map. And then if there are any comments or questions that come up, you guys can relay them to me. I can get the information from Allison or Steve can. So we have more, you can get more clarity where you would need it on Deadly Pond.
Steve, yeah. No, go ahead. I was gonna say, I'll pause there again, Tom and Larry. And I didn't even look at these in Allison's updates until just a moment ago. Steve, if you have any comments, but if there's any comments on Allison, and Tree's work so far, I'll be glad to pass them along to Allison or Tree. If not, again, you're up to date as of week three. And again, the work continues and there'll be more information coming as the season progresses. The only comment I was gonna make was that Allison and Tree start their work at Mansion Beach, which as you know, is about three houses away from me. So in the morning, I typically go down there and check out what's going on. And they are just saying that the volume of stuff that they are cutting is just absolutely incredible. And it's not, for the first couple of weeks, it was not tape grass, which is what usually they're after. Right. It's this, it's called Elodia, I believe. Which is- Oh, Elodia. Yeah, it's an aquarium plant. I used to have Elodia in my tank. So I can imagine that that's really taking up. So I used to say, you're saying that this Elodia is now, at least in the early part of the year, overtaking even the tape grass? It was, it's not anymore. But I think it was keeping the tape grass down, which, you know, presented some mild relief for people, especially people with motors on their boats. Yep. Elodia does, you know, get cut and hang around your, your umbrella blade, but it doesn't really, it doesn't cause a degree of problem that tape grass does. So it gave a little bit of relief, but now the tape grass has come back in full blast. Steve, can I ask you, when, when Alison says it was abundant, does she mean that the combination of Elodia and tape grass was more, or that the Elodia was abundant early on, which they hadn't seen? I'm giving you my view, which is that in looking around and examining the pond, I really didn't see, I didn't see any tape grass until like the last week. And we believe that the Elodia was keeping the tape grass down. So, but so is this abundance then, is it just, does she just, and I can ask Alison to get clarity. I don't know if she means that they've seen more Elodia than they had before, or just the cumulative mass was more than they had seen before. What does abundance mean in the context of what you're saying? The answer to both I think is yes. There was more, there was more, more stuff generally stuff than early leaf and Elodia Elodia has been the dominant thing in the early season. Okay. But that, that is different than what they have seen before. Cause it used to be correct. Yes. Okay. But now the tape grass is coming to the fore as we're expecting. Okay.
Now I just looked up curly leaf pondweed, which we've dealt with in the past. Is that Elodia? No different plant. I don't know. Elodia Elodia is spelled E. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a, I can't even pronounce it. Put a bug at on Christmas. And years past, it was always a curly leaf pondweed early in the season, followed by the milfoil. And so I have not heard about.
The Elodia in particular on Dudley pond. Last time we met. So Steve last in June, you were talking about curly leaf like that seemed to be coming up. So was that, was that not correct? Was it the Elodia and not curly leaf or was it curly leaf then Elodia and now tape grass? Well, I think my comment on tape on curly leaf might've come from talking with Alison. Okay. But I, I I'm just, every time anybody has pointed out the predominant weed up until about a week or two ago in the pond, the word Elodia has come up and, and that's been, that's been really present. But now again, as I said, tape grass is playing the role. It usually plays. Okay.
Yeah. I, um, and that re that report of Alison's, uh, she was, uh, reporting and tens of thousands of pounds of, uh, material removed, um, which is, uh, reminiscent of water chest and harvest and years past enormous, uh, biomass. Yep. And, uh, hard to say, uh, uh, you know, what's missing from, uh, Alison's, uh, report. It's, uh, it mentions a couple of geographic areas and then, um, so many conditions, uh, containers and pounds of, uh, of, uh, biomass re removed. But, uh, what's not there is, uh, what, uh, Dudley ponds, about 85 acres. We don't know, uh, how many acres are involved. Uh, uh, you know, one of the things when you have a tremendous biomass, uh, the, uh, harvester, wherever it is, it could be a hundred yards out, or it could be half a mile away, but the harvester chugs, uh, the harvest. And if it, um, fills up in a hurry, then it chugs much more slowly back to, uh, be offloaded. So it would be interesting to know, um, uh, you know, how much, uh, area is actually cleared in the pond. Yeah. I, I've got that down as a question to ask cause you, cause you're right. Right. Because they always start in the, in the heavy areas and you're right. And when it fills up, you've got to take the harvester back to shore, unload the thing. And I know that, uh, you know, they were, I don't know if they're still doing this, but they hadn't started it last year. At least they were starting later because what they had found is if you start early and they harvest this stuff, it's just going to grow back again. So if there's a wait till later in the season, you knock it down is down at the expense of people being able to get their boats on the pond. So are they taking that later approach or are they just tackling it earlier and just dealing with the consequences of the plants coming back up? Well, no, I just based upon when they started, I can tell you that they started later. Okay. I mean, like the, not, you know, like the third week in July, that, that was late. It was much earlier last year. It was earlier last year because this is our, our week three report, which is, I guess it was as of last week. So, okay. That would be late July or at least mid July. Okay. Um, and that, by the way, just sorry to interrupt that, that approach, meaning starting later makes sense because what you just described, which was, you know, early, but early, and then it grows back happened last year. Yeah. Sorry, Larry. Uh, no problem. Um, so yeah, since you live there or near it, um, can you give some percentage of the weeds you think they're taking out? Is it 5%? Is it 50%? I, I can't do that. I'm not even sure. Alison can do that. No, no, no, no, no. Alison can do that. Yeah. It's she's, she's cutting it every day, but and is the goal to have channels where boats are fishing and swimming and uh, You know, are there tactical objectives? Mm-Hmm. That's a great question. Um, in past years, what they have endeavored to do was to, uh, To cut channels actually, and try to mark them. so that people understand where it's where it's safe to swim where you know they can get on a paddle board and if they fall in they won't fall in a bunch of weeds uh that kind of thing uh and i think they're going to try to do that this year um as well so that yeah that was a really good question because you know if they are never with this just this one harvester they are never going to be able to cover the whole pond it is not possible not in the number of weeks they have and again so even if you had that many weeks and you covered the whole pond by the time you get done you know it's kind of like you know painting your house and you you finish the whole house and you got to go back and do it again that's that's kind of what happens yeah that that example is way too close to home literally another comment by the way on the harvesting uh i had my i have a um slightly mentally handicapped son in his 50s so he was over for the weekend and um uh so i took him over to uh mansion beach to go swimming because it's a it's a great beach it's very gradual out there a long ways but my oh my um that equipment mansion beach is torn up and all summer long uh and i've mentioned this other years uh apparently um the uh the beach is almost close to unusable just because of equipment uh there so it's a small beach in the first place so i'm not too happy about that tom you you had mentioned that before and and you know with the dumpster and the harvester you've just got equipment that's taking up space is the beach also torn up from just the the wheels and the you know oh yeah yeah incredibly a little bit yeah i i would say it's more than a little bit i i thought it was uh quite torn up uh with the exception of uh you know the small areas that um where it doesn't go but it's just plain torn up it might it might be a little worse right now than it was in previous years because i was out there one morning and uh the dpw had their truck out and they had their truck out and they had their truck out and they had their truck out they're trying to better position the um conveyor and they will got stuck in in the sand and they made a really big ditch trying to spin out of there uh so i don't know how well they filled it in but that might be part of the problem but yeah you know this this conversation can open up a whole can of worms because one of the things that that um i know allison and tree have been advocating for is having other places around the pond where they might be able to do what they do now on mansion beach absolutely like the uh new area near the dudley chateau off of dudley road uh i haven't looked at it recently but uh that would be a great spot but um my understanding is that that's been examined and it's been determined that the way they constructed the ground and the gravel and etc i did not i have no expertise here but this is what i heard uh would not handle the the equipment that we're talking about so i don't hold a lot of hope for that but that's a whole can of worms because we're we're all we're all desirous of that uh steve you know to tom margie's point you know the the of course the problem is is great that we have the harvester and conveyor pulling weeds out of the pond but they're they're they're taking up space on mansion beach um what's uh is there any uh feedback that you're hearing secondhand from people near the pond that are akin to what tom margie said like you know why are you doing this i can't use mansion beach or i know and i have to tell you mansion beach still gets a lot of use there are still a lot of people out there people sitting there in their chairs people launching you know canoes and kayaks and paddle boards i don't really see that by the way tom uh tom largie yes the the ability to do this equipment thing somewhere else has another aspect to it which is you know we talked earlier about going out and you know cutting stuff and then having to bring it back to mansion beach on a very slow harvester which takes time wouldn't it be nice if we're working down the other end of the pond that we had a place to pull in there and dump off what is cut absolutely absolutely mansion beach so there's a couple of aspects to this one is cluttering up the beach and the other is being more efficient and how the harvest harvester is used yeah i i brought that up in the past one of my um this goes back a few years ago when it was um the harvester was uh acquired and in my opinion uh there was um no nobody really looked at um oh how fast a harvester could go and uh how wide is the uh the cutting edge and and uh uh there wasn't really any uh kind of study uh uh done on on that at all one point of view well might have been that uh the town had uh a larger harvester but it simply wasn't uh looked at it was just acquired because it was on the market and relatively inexpensive yep you're probably right
and we're learning
okay anyway i don't know where you want to go with this tom clem but well no so right now so i've got a few questions uh based on the discussion that i'll ask of uh alison you know first to get a map i'll see if i can get a sense of how many acres of coverage we're getting uh yeah i'll ask about the the about the plants you know is it uh curly leaf then elodie then tape grass alice has got a real eye for this stuff uh so i'll get some more information then we'll get the the updates from her on a weekly basis out forward to the committee and they can be basis for future discussion and questions and again i'll take all of this stuff at the end of the year i think i did this last year maybe in the last two years i'll put it together as a report if you will so we have all the information gathered in one place and not just through emails coming by on a weekly basis okay uh the last thing on doubly pond and we had talked about this last time last season we had arc aquatic restoration consultants do a flora and fauna survey on on the pond and we had a number of actions that were suggested by arc if we wanted to learn more about nutrients and what might be contributing to weed growth in the pond and a lot of the dpa folks were particularly interested in this and uh they uh you know they they went ahead and reached out to arc uh wendy and keith gendron is that his name um because they they first keith or ken actually but uh wendy and our partner had worked with the doubly pond association before the service of our quality committee so there's already some connections and communications there so they they uh were curious about how much it would cost to do a full-scale nutrient survey of the pond and i just forwarded that to the whole committee a moment you know minutes before we met so we're not going to go into it in great detail here we'll talk about it next time because there's no action for us right now the upshot is you can take a look at this report but wendy's estimate is five figures probably 50 likely more than that right this is not anything that this committee would be able to afford certainly not on our regular 30k and if next year is going to be a priscilla core year that's going to already double our budget effectively and so to double it further for this is not going to happen so take a look at what i afforded you from wendy uh at the doubly pond association yeah steve no no go keep going but when you're done i want to okay now this is nothing that this committee could uh could pursue financially the doubly pond association may choose to um we can offer any guidance and suggestions but financially it's not something that we are likely going to be able to do the doubly pond association may have the resources to do it that'll have to be you know we'll we'll interact more with them uh perhaps through andrew yay who was at our meeting last time but just take a look at that estimate from wendy and arc just for you you know just so you understand where they're how they base how wendy based what what ben wendy had based her estimates on and so we could have a more full discussion when we meet in september uh but that was all i didn't want to go in depth because again larry and tom only got it moments ago uh so steve i'll turn it over to you for any comments sure okay so um just to elaborate on what tom is saying uh i've been in regular contact with wendy uh we kind of in a situation with her where we're extracting as much um insight and support as we can from her given the fact that we are paying her zilch right now yes which is why she generated that proposal it was requested by a committee that is part of the um doubly pond association called the healthy pond something i forget what the name is i am on the committee and joy is on the committee i believe norm is on the committee uh the dpa unfortunately likes to have committees that have a lot of people on them which i'm not really all that in favor of but there are a lot of people involved anyway um we have been i and uh bob smith and anne were on a two-hour call with the state about a month ago which was the goal of the meeting was to inform people about the schedule and the requirements to get both six over four b grants and 319 grants which could potentially pay for not only evaluating what's going on in dudley pond but also pay for some of the implementation steps to mitigate them this morning we had a follow-up call i was on the call and was on the call and melissa roberts was on the call melissa is a member of the dpa and on the committee i just mentioned and knows a lot about pond chemistry and weeds and chemicals and all the stuff that's really important in terms of figuring all this out and our goal in meeting with the state people this morning was to follow up on that session that they had and get more specificity around the requirements that we would have to supply in order to get those grants one of those grants it was the 604 b grant is something and let me just step back and address tom clem what you said you are absolutely right we do not have the budget for this the the i think the dpa is assuming that whatever we do in this regard the dpa is going to pay for however the 604 b grants which are oh i'm about to get interrupted hold on
let me make an an aside i'm looking at the screen all four of us i have the least expensive uh ipad you can buy and I bought it at some kind of discount. I think my resolution is much better than any one of you. I don't know what you're using. Well, so Tom, I've got a blurry background. I can unblur it. So it's not a resolution issue. It is. Let's see if I can change it here. Okay. So sorry about that. I'm at my son's house and he and my wife, and his three-and-a-half-year-old daughter just came in the house and created a lot of noise. So I had to leave. So anyway, the 604B grant, which we found out today, really is about doing the evaluation of what's going on with the pond. Much more expansive than just chemicals. I don't really want to go into the details now. But that's... That grant is only granted to municipalities. So no matter how much work the DPA does in putting the grant proposal together, regardless of whether they're paying for it or not, that grant is going to have to be worked through us. So we need to be intimately involved with that. The 319 grant, which is really an implementation grant, which is, okay, you want to solve these problems that you've uncovered in your evaluation, here's the steps you're going to take. We can help you pay for that. That can be applied for and go directly to the DPA. So we are involved in all of that through me. I'm kind of this committee's liaison to that committee. So I just wanted to fill you in on what we did with the state today. All this stuff, all these proposals are going to be due somewhere around early to mid-October. So there's a lot of work to be done. And we think that one of the grants that we're going to try to get is the one that will either pay for or help pay for the one that you, Tom Clem, just sent out to everybody, hiring Clark to do those evaluations. By the way, Wendy is really pretty knowledgeable on what this state is looking at. So I'm going to give you a little bit of a rundown. Because she is trying to expand beyond just, well, how much phosphorus is in the pond? And more about how's it getting there? What are all the sources where it's coming from? Septic tanks, cesspools, even down to things like driveways that people might want to redo that will reduce the amount of phosphorus. And then, of course, the flow that goes into the pond, that kind of thing. Can I interject here? Because I've been on this committee over 25 years. We already did some of that. I know. And we paid for it. And there are reports around. Yeah, it's about 40 years old, the last round. Well, not that old. No, I think in the odds. You're talking about the IEP stuff? The IEP stuff?
You know, Mike Lowry might have a... Yeah. A handle on some of that. I know. But we spent money already on some of that. Yeah. Tom, if you could let us know what that is. Because Wendy referenced the IEP report from 82, 83. So that's what's... It's old. Yeah. So if there's something more recent... And I've got the files. I'll look. But Tom, if it comes to mind, let me know. Because, you know, 40 years, yes, it's like that's a good time to get another report done. But if it's been more recently, maybe in 20 years? Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. By the way, the state... The state was pretty impressed with the ARC proposal. They made some suggestions as to what she might want to add, which we're going to relay to her. And again, I want to emphasize that from the cost point of view, the assumption right now is that this is all going to be paid for by the DPA. Because we don't have... We don't have a budget for it. But if we get these grants, then we may have... Then we may get all or... For total relief. We'll see. We'll see. Question for you. Because I know we talked about the 319B and the 604B. I may not have my letters or numbers correct. But doesn't one come before the other one? You said these were due October 4th. I thought one was the dreaded feasibility study. And then you have one afterwards, which is... Exactly. But they're granted at different times. But they really want to see. What the state wants to see is the entire plan. They want to know... You know, what you need... What you think you need to evaluate. And you also want to know... And I kind of wondered about this myself. Because I'm not sure whether there's a chicken or the egg thing going on here. They want to know, you know, what implementation steps do you think you need to take to alleviate the issues? Well, if you haven't evaluated the issues yet, how do you know that? But they kind of want, you know... To be thinking about and talking to them about what you might want to do as a result of what comes out of the studies. But we still... We do have a fair amount of data anyway. But, you know, we want to see if we can get a grant to take that a step further. One of the things we've never done, like, you know, I go out... You may remember this. I go out on a biannual basis and do measurements of things like dissolved oxygen, phosphorus, chlorophyll, et cetera. By the way, I just finished the report for the spring. It took a little longer than I wanted, but it's been a busy summer. I'll send that around in the next day or two. But the state also has that report. But what that doesn't look at is where does it come from? You know, what issues do we have in terms of stormwater runoff and septic tanks and cesspools? They really have a strong interest in understanding... That bigger picture, which we're going to try to give them. Sorry, Tom, I think I interrupted you. Yeah, what I wanted to ask... So right now, Anne Drouillet is putting together then the 319B and the 604B for October 4th. So the whole... So she's applying for both of these things for October 4th, because the state wants to see the whole picture. They want to see... They call it the plan.
Yeah, it's Anne, me... Melissa, and other people will be involved as well. Okay, so... Because I thought these were not due until next year. So that's obviously incorrect. But you're submitting both of these things for October 4th, but they're funded sequentially. We'll get the 319B, if I recall. That's what it sounds like, yes. Okay. You know, you get on the call with these DEP employees, and they're really informative, and they're really smart, and they're really knowledgeable. But they do... The way you speak their own language. So you walk away, and you go, oh, that's clear. And then you think of 40 questions afterwards. And we have a window over which we can always ask questions. But the grant umbrella, if you will, is going to be finalized and approved, they believe, on September 19th. After that point... We could not have a call like we did this morning. Okay, so... They just can't do it. Okay, so there's like a... What do they call it? A window where you can't communicate with them. Exactly. You can always ask a question, but you can't get on the phone with them and go, well, what do you think we should do here? You know, that's off limits. Okay.
Okay, so that'll be... So if those are successful, then those can be avenues to pay for this. So if there's a survey that Wendy gave us a draft of, or the DPA could choose, the membership could choose to use their funds to pay for it. So there are a couple avenues here if this goes forward. Yeah, I don't really think realistically that anybody on the DPA, on that committee of the DPA, is thinking that we are going to fund any of this. Which is good, because we've told them that, and, you know, they get it. Yeah, okay, great. Thank you, Steve. Okay, so we'll see what happens. So Tom, Larry, you've got Wendy's draft just to consider, and we can discuss further. So I guess if we meet in September, it'll be before... Well, we can get a update from Steve in September on progress. But you've got the Wendy's draft proposal. No action needed by us right now. There's no action we could take. Is there an action to see when the last study was done? Oh, yeah. Let me take that. Yeah, I'll see what I can find, because I've got all the historical files. So in that document from Wendy, she talks about the 1982 report. I can circulate that to everybody here. But yeah, Tom Largay, if you can recall what that one is. I can write to Mike Lowry, too, if there was something that was done. Yeah, Tony Moore's was also instrumental. He was our technical guy. But as an example, we had a study done, and it had to do with... It had to do with a runoff and measurement of what happens with runoff. And it turns out if in July or August you have a torrential rainstorm, then in the first half hour, and they actually measured it, you have to wait for a torrential rainstorm, running down Simpson Road or whatever, all kinds of stuff come in. And then it clears up after a while. I mean, we paid money for that. I don't know that... I'm certain... There were no actions that ever came out of it. But that kind of thing has been done. But I certainly don't... I would absolutely not have any of those documents. They weren't in my purview at all. So I will search my thumb drive. I can reach out to Tony and Mike. And then what I'll do, Steve, if I find this, I'll circulate that and the IEP report to the committee members. Seriously, we have it. But Steve, if I do find this more recent report, I'll have you pass that along to Wendy. I don't know if that would change her scope of work, but it'd be good for you and the committee working on these grants to have that information. So I'll take the action to track this document down and then share it with this committee. And then we can share it externally with the relevant parties. Yeah, the only... Other than the IEP report, the only reports I'm familiar with are the ones that Wendy and Art did last year, I believe. They... There was last year and it was in 2020. Yeah. But, okay, so... But those were just Flora surveys. So what Tom is talking about sounds like it's more comprehensive. Okay. It doesn't ring a bell, but let me, you know, let me dig around for that because if we spend money on it and we have this body of information that can inform any work we may do now, we want to get that out to certainly the experts like Wendy so she can adjust her quote accordingly. Sure. Okay. So that's my action. All right. That is it for Dudley Pond. We talked a little bit about her... But Tom Largy, I'll open the floor to you. I don't know if you've been able to get out there or if you've communicated with... Yeah, well... Well, first of all, I have not been out unheard this summer. You know, I took a bad fall about three months ago now and tore my rotator cuff badly. Went in to see the surgeon. I thought he was going to put me under the knife, but he said, live with it. And it's getting better. So as an example, next month, I have a big fly fishing trip to Washington State planned. Also, I had a mishap with both my outboard motor and my trailer. That's a long story. I ended up spending $7,000 that I didn't think I was going to spend this year. But I did it. So I've... My boat is...
Set to go with a new motor and a new trailer. And my shoulder's a lot better. And if I can find somebody like Larry or Tom, we can launch unheard pond. It's going to be a mucky. The pond's very low. I think my truck will go halfway into the water, launch my boat with a new trailer and take a cruise around the pond and see what should be seen. I'm willing to do that any time this weekend, possibly some days next week, Friday morning. So... That works for me. Yeah, I could do this weekend. All three of us could go on. Well, there is a problem of the quorum.
We won't talk about... We can't have an unofficial meeting. Is that it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, George Harris, who some of you may know. Oh, yeah. George was hot on that years ago. He's quite elderly now. You might say I'm elderly. I'm 86. But I think George is more elderly, but he'd have been all over that. So realistically, actually, I'd like to get Larry out on the pond. And so... And maybe we could make a couple of trips, but I don't want to get into this quorum business. Yeah. Okay. I would love to trek around, take a trek around Herd Pond. I've never done it. I will not be around this weekend. Yeah. Well, anything's arrangeable. It has to do with my energy. And the forecast is for not so hot weather. I don't want to go out in the pond. I don't want to be on the water when it's 90 degrees or anything. I just won't do it. Well, we'll find a way. We'll make it work. Yeah. So that's why I'm making arrangements for saltwater fishing trips in September. That's when the fish are running anyway, but not now. My friend who went out with me, he's got a bass boat. He lives down at the end of Pelham Island Road, and he's on the pond 100 days a year. He's the one who gave me... The report of sporadic weeds. But he also injured himself grievously in trying to push his boat. He's got a big boat in very shallow water, and he's done quite a number... I think he's going in for surgery on that. So he's out of business. So that happens to us. Otherwise, for Herd Pond, I sent Jeff Campbell... Castellani, who I've mentioned for years, has done the pulling and also some mechanical harvesting. He sent me a report today and said they'd spent four days on the pond. It could be they've only spent three. And they pulled 3,500 plants, which is dismaying because... Hmm. Around 2013 or 14, after... We had run mechanical harvesters on the pond up until 2009. And then one year, we may have had 10,000 plants and 6,000, then 2,000, then several hundred. And the pond has blown up on me several times since then. And apparently those seeds, you know, sit in the sediment for 15, 20, 25 years. We'd been told back in 2002 that there was a seven-year viability. That's not true. It's 10 years, it's 12, it's 15, it's 20. They don't really know. So anyway, he pulled the plants and they're going to come back very shortly. I... I cautioned them since water chestnuts tend to drop their seeds starting about the middle of August. And I also asked him to check with the clear cast, meaning Tanner and such. What happened last year, Tom, Clem and I were out on the pond. And as we get toward the South Cove where the severe infestation has been, there were patches that going in towards it
that had not been treated. And we spent, you know, if I'd done it all day for a couple of days, we could have done it, but we just couldn't do it. So I don't know if they treated those, some of those patches or not. There's also the issue that, you know, at the far end of the pond on the perimeter, there's this issue with fish and wild, purported fish and wildlife property under the pond, which I still don't understand, given that the, it's a great pond controlled by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. And proper, unless it's a, some kind of an impoundment like Farrah Pond, and Lincoln is private because it was dammed up. It was, it was property before it was dammed, but nothing like that happened on Heard Pond. So anyway, the weeds have been pulled.
The treatment's been done. Thanks to Tom Clem, because he put all that paperwork and such through, and I simply don't have a taste for it anymore. I'm through with all of it. All of that. I don't mind going on a boat ride and commenting on things and using what institutional memory I have, but. For better or worse, that's a large part of my day job. So I'm used to, you know, emailing, calling, pushing, pushing the paper around where it needs to go. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just. Tom, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you, so you were talking about the boundary. So, you know, that was my misunderstanding. I thought it was some kind of a fluid boundary, but it sounds like the boundary of course is fixed. And it was just that, Tanner last season solitude couldn't get to that boundary because I guess the water depth was too low for their boat to get out there. Well, I thought it was a boundary, the actual boundary, but anyway, that's, you know, we don't talk to those guys very much. They haven't given you a report. We have no idea. So. Yeah, there's the, yeah, certainly no, no in progress report, right? We get Jeff Castellani puts one report together. It has everything, but it's that it's after the fact, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay. I'll see if I, let me reach out to Tanner and see if I can get some more real time information. So we have a sense of, of progress. I mean, they did the second treatment, so I assume he can see if that first treatment was effective or ineffective or whatever the case may be. Yeah, right, right, right. And Larry, maybe you and I can get out on the pond and then, and you all the guys as well. It all boils down to my energy and time, but what I really, when you go into the pond, unlike Mansion Beach, which was a nice gradual, sandy herd pond is muck, muck, muck. So, and you got wet and maybe muddy and somebody has to go in and push out the boat and so forth. And. So, yeah, Friday possibly, or Sunday. Saturday's not good for me. Yeah, well, it would have to be Friday morning or Sunday. Maybe Sunday would be good. As an example, Sunday morning, I have to take my wife to an appointment Friday afternoon. So, yeah, that could work.
Okay. But text me when you get a, sense what yeah yeah yeah yeah okay all right the last agenda item is just for the committee's awareness uh every year the town puts together an annual report and each committee and the town has to contribute their summary of the year's activities i'll put that together from uh all the information that we've all the activities we've done over the year so just for the committee's awareness i've got all the information that i need i'll put it together they've gotten you know the town only needs so few words from each committee i used to worry about compiling it all now they need such a high level overview and there's no time at all so just for your awareness i will put that report together for the committee's report together for the town's annual report which is due september 30th so i'll take care of that so just for the for awareness we will get we will get to review it uh yes you will i will send it around to people to yeah i will do that okay yeah i also have a comment uh we got larry uh onto the committee uh because he has an interest in the mill pond which uh about 10 years ago actually um 2013 and 2015 i uh had a uh what did they call that uh thing well it was not a dredger but uh we did the the hydro rake the hydro rake we did the shoreline and that was a very uh mucky uh experience pure chocolate water um but uh larry's got an interest in the pond and and uh at least the upper third um is um heavily silted and maybe sometime in the future uh it was last done in 1972 there's a possibility of uh maybe some uh kind of dredging project but uh it occurred to me with steve garone talking about uh these grants and such that um maybe um there's some kind of experience that comes out of that that you larry might just yeah that's a good point um because most of the feedback i've gotten is that in new england uh often they're trying to remove these ponds um like mill pond and it's a um a uh losing game trying to dredge it's very expensive however i will say that i walk by every day and there are always kids and families absolutely uh all the time out there it is so good to see um so yeah i think um yeah we'll see what uh steve and the dunley pond association go through i hope down from it larry can you can you uh explain that you said they're for small ponds like mill pond they're being filled so i used to be on conservation in uh whalen and um um one of the things that uh i was surprised they redid the dam down um off rice road there yes yeah like five years ago whatever it was yeah um but there's a discussion that one of those ponds like mill pond are disrupting the natural habitat that is there before the falls was put in so um there's a general uh the only thing combating that is that when you put up a dam it actually increases the wetland area and grows conservation's footprint if you will um but uh there is movement to remove some falls uh from small ponds okay so mill pond only exists because they put that dam down yeah well actually i'm uh fairly familiar with that uh as a as a trout fisherman and also many years ago i was a past president of the uh boston chapter of trout unlimited a national conservation organization so there um uh is a big push to uh get rid of uh dams but um there are dams and there are dams and uh yeah so uh uh in particular uh on the cape uh south shore and north shore where you have uh anadromous fish coming up herring um and in some cases brook trout then um there are pushes to get rid of dams um out and uh if you go out 117 out to bolton and just before you come to i-190 off to the side um it's kind of a meadow area and uh that used to um be a pond and in fact um uh there's a guy uh has a truck there he uh sells hot dogs nice guy uh i uh have my son tom i've when we're skiing out at wachusett we'd um stop at the uh and get a hot dog there or no we got ice cream no hot dogs ice cream 50 cents each he uh i think he increased his price but uh anyway the pond uh uh from time to time i'd be out there and um and i caught some bass out there and then um one fine day i found the pond was gone and um so i i looked into it and um in that case um uh the brook there is probably has or had native brook trout and uh uh and the thinking was that by getting rid of the pond because there's something called thermal pollution. If you back up a stream, then it's subject to the sun and all of a sudden the water coming over the spillway in July and August is too warm for trout. That was the rationale there. I don't think that kind of rationale exists for the Mill Pond. And by the way, I think there have been native brook trout further up in Upper Mill Brook. I'm not certain that they're still there. There are native brook trout in Pine Brook and Haywood Brook in Wayland, which are fairly well known. Anyway, back to the Mill Pond. It was deeded, the land around the Mill Pond and possibly the pond itself were deeded to the town as a park. So from a DPW, a selectman's point of view, it was accepted way back in, I don't know, the 30s and 40s as a town park. And that's what it is and should be maintained as. Larry, I might, I may have sent you some material. I don't know if I've sent you any of that or not, but it is a park. It is. It's not conservation land. It is not conservation land. No, it's not. It's a town park and it's suitable to have a trash can there and a picnic table and so forth. And use of lights and yeah. Yeah, that's what it should be used for. Recreation, yeah. Right, right. Well, anyway. All right. Yeah. So, yeah. So that'll be, so Steve, your experience with the grants can be maybe help Larry and, you know, and Larry, maybe there's even, we can even have something not like Wendy, but, you know, if we want to even get a set, well, so if getting rid of Mill Pond is one option, fine. You know, what is that going to cost? But if the option is to maintain the pond, but maybe we have to remove the silt, maybe at some point getting an estimate of what that's going to cost. Cause that's definitely gonna be more than $50,000, but maybe what Steve is going through now can be of use for Mill Pond at some future point. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks Tom, for bringing that up. And yeah, Larry, thank you for having that interest in Mill Pond. Anything you want to, and we don't, we rarely talk about Mill Pond, but there's something that, you know, even beyond the hydro raking that you want to bring up that this committee can aid in some way, please, please let me know and we'll put on the agenda and discuss. All right. The last thing is to set a meeting date for September and Steve, are you going to say something? No, I just, I was talking to myself. I have to open my calendar. Okay. Yes. So I'll throw out to get the discussion going. A month from now the first, I guess it's the second Tuesday. September 8th is a Tuesday, but you know, Mondays, are options wednesdays are options so i'm looking at the week of the 7th which is a monday so 7th 8th 9th or 14th 15th and 16th any preferences on those for those weeks well i i can i for me i have to eliminate the 8th because that's the second tuesday and i have another commitment okay but and usually wednesdays don't work but that won't start until the 23rd so for me 7 9 14 15 16 are okay okay so that is september 9 15 or 16 any uh preferences tom largy or larry uh the 15th won't work for me so doing it uh 9 10 looks good well it won't be that it won't be the 10th because i can't do that yeah as i've learned from hard experience on thursday for whatever reason you can only have a zoom meeting until 4 p.m and that's not going to work for me so we have september 9th or 16th our wednesdays uh tom largy any preference yeah no the the ninth cell and uh the 16th either one is good with the uh but as i said i mentioned i'm actually scheduling some trips but not on those days yet uh so and actually it occurs to me that this is the uh i want to tell you today is the 11th let's make it this i'll propose the 16th for our next meeting wednesday sounds good okay september 16th wednesday all right and with that then that concludes the agenda so at 8 20 i will make a motion to adjourn is there a second everyone's jumping in there i'll give that one to tom largy all right and uh let's go around the room uh tom clem i tom largy i steve groan i mary cunin i great thank you guys i'll see you on september 16th