For some years prior to the discovery of Eurasian water milfoil (EWM) in Schroon Lake in 1995, the Schroon Lake Association had been warning our members and the public that this exotic invasive could be found at any time. We trained a corps of volunteer Milfoil Watchers and hired a professional Certified Lake Manager to look for the exotic invasive and when it was found in the lake we paid for hand harvesting. As time went by, however, and more beds were found, the problem became much bigger than we could handle financially along with continuing our funding of scientific studies about the lake, its zooplankton and its aquatic plants.. At that point the towns of Schroon Lake, Horicon and Chester agreed to take over the funding of the hand harvesting of milfoil, while the SLA would fund scientific studies. In 2006 our Lake Manager, Steve LaMere, together with our member Eric Cordis, obtained a grant from the State of New York in the amount of $26,000 over three years to assist with this ongoing expense.
Today the Schroon Lake Association stands ready to serve as an immediate emergency funding source for milfoil harvesting of new beds which may be discovered after the town budgets are planned and before they can arrange to allocate new funds.
