History of Pond Treatments

Field Pond has had recent attention from the Massachusetts Dept of Conservation and Recreation (DCR), who have undertaken programs in 2006 and 2008 to control the invasive plant growth. Attached below are various reports and maps which detail these programs. Here is a brief summary:

2006

• Surveyed by Aquatic Control Technology, Inc. who recommended treatment.
• Program to control the widespread and abundant growth of invasive variable watermilfoil and fanwort, which was near contiguous cover.
• Herbicide: Sonar (fluridone) at initial dose of 15-20 ppb (goal: >10 ppb for 90 days)
• Initial treatment on 6/20, then two booster applications on 7/19 and 8/20
• Result: controlled >95% of milfoil and >99% of fanwort
• Post-treatment new plants: moss, stonewort covering most of bottom (this is good). Traces of elodea and thin-leaved pond weed (also desirable).
• Post-treatment casualties: waterlilies and watershield (but they should grow back).
• No reports of fish mortality
• Conclusion: successful control, good for next 2-3 years.
• Recommendation: Spend $5-10K on 'spot management' of milfoil in 2007 with Reward (diquat). Also hand-pull by volunteers as much as possible.

2008

• Surveyed by Aquatic Control Technology, Inc. on 5/30 who recommended treatment.
• Variable watermilfoil was fairly advanced and widespread.
• Overall cover 10-30%, with some areas of dense cover
• No fanwort anywhere.
• Healthy bed of stonewort throughout most of the bottom (good)
• Thin-leafed pondweed (good) predominant in deeper portion near dam
• Recommend: treat entire pond for milfoil with Reward (diquat) in split treatment (14 days apart)
• Treatment was undertaken, but completion report is not yet posted here.

The surveys, treatment, and follow-up reports were all done by Aquatic Control Technology of Sutton, Ma. The cost of each treatment was $20-30K, paid by DCR.

Here are the detailed reports from both the 2006 and 2008 treatments. This is a large file (20MB) so it might take a few minutes to download. When you unzip the file it will put all of the 2006 and 2008 management reports into a folder.

Below are the individual reports. These might not load correctly into acrobat on Windows, but if you save the file to your drive it should then load into acrobat without a problem.