October 19, 2009 Minutes

EWM Committee meeting Monday, October 19, 2009 6:30 p.m. Barnes Town Hall

Ingemar Ekstrom called the meeting to order. Members present: Ingemar Ekstrom, Barb Romstad, Dave Pease, Mitch McGee. Ingemar introduced Glenda Mattila.

Absent: Pamela Toshner, Stefania Strzalkowska, Lee Wiesner, Gerald Gustafson

Agenda items:

1. Minutes from the September Meeting Minutes from the last meeting were reviewed. A motion to accept the minutes was made by Dave Pease seconded by Mitch McGee; approved.

Ingemar shared a newspaper article that was in the Bayfield County Journal on the program the POA recently conducted in the Drummond School.

2. Final review of CBCW Program for 2009  Ingemar & Gus Gus has finalized all the records for 2009 volunteer hours and in-kind donations for the 2009 grant. The number of boats at the landings was down slightly this year. The number of volunteer hours is quite a bit lower than last year&our force seems to be dwindling. We did pick up 463 volunteer hours of shoreline monitoring. Total volunteer hours, in kind gifts, and donated mileage equaled $13,500. Total cost of the program was $34,766, plus research project costs were $5,609; Town of Barnes expenses were $21,219. After the matching grant money is received and the POA donations are given to the Town, the cost to the Town of Barnes will be around $5,000 - $7,000.

3. Drawing Winners for Shoreline Monitoring Kathy White, Bob Ambrose, and Buck Carlstrom were the three winners of the shoreline monitoring drawing. Each received a gift certificate from one of three area restaurants, the Cedar Inn, Windsor and Trading Post. 4. Letter from the Town of Gordon The Lower Eau Claire boat landing is located in the Town of Gordon and we estimate that we spend about $1,700 covering that landing. Paul LaLiberte wrote a letter to the Town of Gordon asking them to reimburse the Town of Barnes EWM project. The Town of Gordon responded to the letter indicating it had voted not to give money to the Town of Barnes for the project. 5. New Members Ingemar introduced Glenda Mattila and asked the committee to approve Glenda and her husband Rick as tag team members of the committee. One of the two will attend the meetings monthly. Dave Pease made a motion to approve, Mitch McGee seconded; motion passed.

6. Updates on Tomahawk and Sand Bar Lakes project John Skogerboe, checked Tomahawk this week and found no sign of Eurasian Water milfoil.

7. Town Website  EWM site Ingemar took the members on a tour of the Eurasian Water Milfoil section of the Town of Barnes web site. We are looking for a couple updates to the section; Ingemar will talk to Ron Pearson about the changes.

8. Other Business Need to put together a Lake Management Plan for Sand Bar Lake for 2010 Need more volunteers for 2010

9. Next meeting date, February 15, 2010, 6:30 P.M. Barnes Town Hall

Motion to adjourn; Mitch McGee, second, Glenda Mattila; passed.

Meeting adjourned at 8:05 P.M.

Stefania Strzalkowska notes submitted via email to include in the minutes:

Notes from Michelle Naults (WDNR Science Services Bureau) presentation about Tomahawk-Sand Bar Lakes Research Project presented at the AIS Coordinators Meeting, Stevens Point, 22 Oct. 2009

WDNR is looking for Strategic Management Tools, meaning using the best tools (science) available at that time for that lake. Strategic management is individualized to the lake.

Tomahawk  Results of whole lake treatment: significant (statistically) decreases in dominant native species in 2008. In 2009, some increases in some species, but overall, species richness (# of species) and biomass is down considerably. In 2008 & 2009 late season surveyno EWM observed in lake.

Residuals were in Tomahawk Lake 166 days or ~4000 hours after treatment (which was half of the lowest recommended concentration of the label!). The contact time for the plants was 4000 hours. Applicators shoot for 72 hours of contact time before chemical degrades. Other studies have shown that by day 7, the active chemicals within 2,4-D were below detectable limits. Again, based on all the previous knowledge and studies, the researchers were hoping for only 72 hours of contact time, instead, there was 4000 hours. Hypothesis for this very unexpected result: northern lakes do not have the microbial communities of the same populations as southern lakes to break down the chemical after time.

Questions still remain: Will the EWM stay down? Will the natives come back? Will the cost be justified?