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"It couldn't have gotten any worse," Dick Pastula says of the invasive Eurasian milfoil that took over Houghton Lake. Pastula is secretary of the Houghton Lake Improvement Board.Plant invaders stir up lake problems -- and residents
Houghton Lake families raise $3 million to get rid of weeds that foil boaters, swimmers.
The milfoil choking Houghton Lake once covered half the 20,000-acre lake. A herbicide was finally used on it.The region's most unwanted
Meet some of the species that are invading the Great Lakes.
Foreign marine animals aren't the only threat to the Great Lakes. So are non-native plants.
One of the most destructive invasive plants is the Eurasian milfoil, a dense mat of weeds that fouls boat propellers, crowds out other vegetation and makes swimming impossible. Milfoil came to Michigan about a half-century ago from the eastern part of the country. It was first detected in Houghton Lake, the state's largest inland lake, in 1994.
But when the Roscommon County Board of Commissioners said it couldn't pay for an eradication program, residents along or near the lake decided to pay for it themselves, said Dick Pastula, secretary of the Houghton Lake Improvement Board.
About 5,200 residents collectively have kicked in $3 million over the last three years to control the milfoil. By the time residents acted -- eight years after the weed was first discovered -- the milfoil had spread, covering half the 20,000-acre lake at one point.
"It couldn't have gotten any worse," Pastula said. "It was so dense, people put 'for sale' signs on the rafting islands of milfoil. You couldn't use jet boats on a major portion of the lake because the jet boats would intake the weeds. And fishermen were getting caught out there and burning up their motors."
Most of the money collected from homeowners was used for an aquatic herbicide that killed the milfoil but did not affect fish or wildlife.
Roman Pacella, vice chairman of the county board, said the board couldn't absorb the cost of fixing Houghton Lake because of milfoil infestation in two other lakes -- Higgins Lake and Lake St. Helen. Pacella is one of the Houghton Lake residents who paid $500 to deal with the milfoil.
He said the eradication program was "a godsend."
"We would get these storms and tons of the milfoil would wash ashore," he said.
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The Detroit News.
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