CAZENOVIA — On Saturday, Nov. 6, the Cazenovia Lake Watershed Council (CLWC) presented the 2021 Lake Summit at the Village of Cazenovia Municipal Building (90 Albany Street).

CLWC was created in 2008 through an inter-municipal agreement between the Town and Village of Cazenovia to provide a forum for stakeholders to gather and find effective, long-term approaches to protecting and restoring the environmental health and recreational quality of Cazenovia Lake and its watershed.

This year’s lake summit included presentations by representatives of Cazenovia College, the Cazenovia Lake Association (CLA), SUNY ESF, CLWC, and the Town and Village of Cazenovia.

European Frog-bit Control Efforts

Thad Yorks, Ph.D., professor of biology and environmental biology at Cazenovia College, provided an update on the status of the community’s ongoing European frog-bit control efforts.

In 2018, Cazenovia initiated a three-year DEC-funded project aimed at eradicating the invasive species.

Throughout the project’s duration, teams of Cazenovia College-employed crewmembers and community volunteers worked to hand-pull and discard as many of the invasive plants as possible.

European frog-bit (EFB) grows small lily pad-like leaves, about the size of quarters, and produces white flowers with three petals and yellow centers.

Relatively late in the growing season, dormant “overwintering” buds, called turions, form on the ends of the stolon (horizontal stem).

The turions eventually break off and sink down to the bottom until the next spring, when they float up and sprout.

Once established, the plant can form very dense floating mats that impede the movement of boats, swimmers, and even large fish and diving ducks.

The dense mats also create poor growth conditions in the water column that can threaten the survival of native species.

The species was first discovered in 2014 at the north end of the lake. EFB later appeared in the northwest bay and the northern inlets, and in small quantities to the south along both sides of the lake as far down as McNitt State Park.

Since the start of the roughly $48,000 DEC reimbursement project, the crews have made considerable progress, successfully removing large quantities of the plant from the infested areas of the lake.

In 2019, the crews focused their efforts on the wetlands to the north of the lake.

“They did a really good job getting it cleaned out of the actual lake, but north of North Lake Road there is a beaver dam that maintains a water level that is higher than the lake almost all the time in that area,” said Yorks. “We’ve got tens [of acres], if not a hundred acres or more, of wet soil where this plant can grow, and it is just not possible to get to it.”

According to Yorks, eradicating the EFB from the wetlands is no longer considered a possibility.

“We can’t look at this as an eradication effort anymore,” he said. “I don’t think there is any way we are going to get rid of this plant. Basically, it goes back up into areas that we are simply not going to be able to get to. It’s just not going to be feasible, but we can control it.”

Yorks noted that this past summer, the town contributed about $2,000 to a scaled-back version of the project.

“We had two people out in a canoe for about half the summer,” he said. “And they were able to get everything they could find in the actual lake itself and inspect the entire perimeter of the lake. . . This plant grows so quickly. If we scale back and take the foot off the gas, so to speak, and let it come back, there is no way we are going to get it cleaned up in the lake. . . I would argue that we should keep that effort up. Two in a canoe worked this year. Will it work every year? I don’t know, but I’m optimistic that it could.”

Electrofishing Boat

Yorks also reported that he has been in communication with CLA President David Miller and the Cazenovia Area Community Development Association (CACDA) regarding potential funding opportunities to secure a four-person electrofishing boat.

Electrofishing is a technique used by fish biologists to collect fish in freshwater streams, rivers, and lakes. An electrofishing boat uses an electric field to temporarily stun fish, which can then be collected with long-handled dip nets for identification. Data collected from electrofishing can be used to determine the abundance, density, species composition, and health of fish populations.

According to Yorks, the fish mortality rate is “very, very low” for both electrofishing and the current trap net approach. Unlike the stationary trap nets, however, an electrofishing boat would actively move through the water, allowing York’s students to collect data along much more of the shoreline.

“We are really close to having a proposal to submit to Senator Rachel May’s office for the bulk of what this would cost,” said Yorks. “This is expensive stuff. We are looking at a unit that might be $100,000 or $110,000. . . The CLA has indicated support for a substantial chunk of this, and we’ve got our institutional advancement folks at the college working towards getting some donors interested in helping with this as well. . .This would be huge for us on the lake.”

ProcellaCOR EC Lake Treatment

CLWC President Sam Woods discussed Cazenovia’s Eurasian Watermilfoil management efforts, including the recent treatment of the lake with ProcellaCOR EC.

The town, in cooperation with the CLA, treated 190 acres of the lake with the newly approved herbicide in June 2021.

Woods explained that the decision to switch from the herbicide Renovate to ProcellaCOR was based on cost and effectiveness.

“The amount of the chemical that is needed to kill milfoil with ProcellaCOR is very minute compared to the concentration needed with Renovate, and it also costs less,” he said.

The 2019 Renovate treatment cost $238,000, whereas the total cost of the most recent treatment was $179,615, with the town contributing $55,115 (covering a snail study plus permit and legal fees) and the CLA contributing $124,500.

Woods explained that based on rake-toss studies conducted by Robert Johnson, of Racine-Johnson Aquatic Ecologists, since 2009, ProcellaCOR produced the best results of milfoil reduction to date, with only 25 out of 302 sampling sites showing milfoil after treatment. Based on the new herbicide’s effectiveness, the hope is that the lake will require treatment every three years, rather than every two years with Renovate.

“When Bob goes out and studies, he is [going to over] 300 sites, where he actually tosses out a rake, brings it in, and then counts the plants that he gets,” said Woods. “Every year, one of the things that he is looking at is [whether] we are killing just milfoil or [if] we are killing native plants as well. Both Renovate and ProcellaCOR are very, very good at leaving the native plants alone.”

The CLWC president next highlighted the fact that the total funds ($179,000) raised by the CLA between June 2019 and June 2021 for lake treatment was down about $50,000 from 2018.

“I think because we knew we would be saving some money and things like that, our effort to fundraise was a little bit less aggressive than [it was back] in 2018,” he said.

Woods also stated that the CLA would like to see contributions from more lakefront residents going forward, but that the organization felt “pretty good” about the most recent fundraising.

ESF Cazenovia Lake Research

Dr. Greg Boyer, chemistry professor at SUNY ESF and director for the Great Lakes Research Consortium, provided an overview of ESF’s Cazenovia Lake research.

Boyer first introduced the topic of harmful algal blooms (HABs) and explained that blue-green algae are highly evolved types of bacteria called cyanobacteria.

According to Boyer, of the approximately 8,000 species of cyanobacteria, only about 100 are of concern to humans.

To “bloom,” cyanobacteria require nutrients (nitrogen and phosphorus), energy (sunlight), warm water (temperatures above 60 F), calm winds, and a seed population.

“They all need all [of] these things,” Boyer said. “We may be working on [controlling nutrients,] but if the lake isn’t warm enough, the bloom doesn’t happen. If the lake is too windy, the bloom doesn’t happen. [Therefore,] it becomes very complex sometimes to figure out what you did and what nature did in terms of why the bloom did or did not show up at any given time. Sometimes we think we are having a tremendous effect when, in fact, nature is actually controlling what’s going on in this whole process.”

Boyer noted that while several of the factors involved in blooms are beyond human control altogether, it is possible to alter a lake’s nitrogen and phosphorus levels and, in certain situations, to artificially circulate the water to disrupt calm conditions.

“[According to historical data,] your phosphorus concentrations, in the big picture, don’t seem to be that high, but you are still getting blooms,” Boyer said. “So, the real question I’m interested in is ‘Why are you getting those blooms? What’s driving those blooms?’”

ESF’s research is focused on determining the relative contribution of internal sources of nutrients to Cazenovia Lake, such as the release of phosphorus from sediments beneath the water, as well as the contribution of external, non-point nutrient sources, such as leaky septic systems, lawn fertilizers, road runoff, and storm drains.

“[This information will help us] figure out how to optimize any type of management plan or approach,” Boyer said. “We don’t really want to spend a lot of money fixing Source A if it’s really not that important. . .”

The researchers are also interested in determining whether there are certain types of cyanobacteria that respond to different nutrients.

ESF is investigating the different algal populations in the lake in collaboration with Bob Crichton, who possesses an Iolight microscope.

“It’s linked to your cell phone,” explained Boyer. “So, you put a little drop on the microscope, the cellphone takes an image. . . and then you mail it off to someone like me, who does the microscopic identification. It’s very interesting because we know that the types of blue-green algae are changing in your lake. . . It’s really important for us to know what [particular cyanobacteria] is doing the bloom. . . We don’t worry about some of these blooms nearly as much as we might worry about some of the other [toxic] ones.”

Boyer added that because the researchers cannot be present for every bloom, ESF is experimenting with autonomous monitoring stations. The telemetry units, which float under people’s docks, constantly monitor the water for algae, temperature, conductivity, and turbidity and broadcast the data to the web.

Questions on Boyer’s research can be directed to [email protected].

CLA Projects

Miller began his discussion of the CLA’s “5 Year Project Plan” by reporting that the Foundation for Cazenovia Lake had merged with the CLA.

“When we looked at our mission statements, they were effectively the same thing,” Miller said.

The money in the foundation has been put in an endowment at the CNY Community Foundation and will be used exclusively for long-term, one-time projects designed to enhance Cazenovia Lake; the funds cannot be put towards lake treatments.

Miller then discussed the status of the following initiatives: the CLA/ESF partnership, long-term water sampling, reducing silt inflows into the lake, milfoil treatment improvements, community outreach, and walleye stocking.

During his overview, Miller announced the conclusion of the walleye stocking project, noting that the ecosystem is not suitable for a long-term, naturally producing walleye fishery.

“We could stock the darn thing every year or every other year with larger walleye, and over time we could probably have some success, but the cost-benefit analysis. . . just isn’t there,” Miller said.

He then provided additional insight into the water sampling program, explaining that the CLA performs sampling three times a year at three locations on the lake. Sampling is also conducted on potential HABs as they occur.

The main goals of the project are to detect water quality changes over time that might serve as early indicators of potential problems; to monitor the health of the lake ecosystem, from the sediment to the fish; and to alert stakeholders of areas to avoid in the case of an HAB.

Miller concluded his presentation by highlighting a study on the impact of a backflow created by two dams at the south end of the lake.

“At [that] end of the lake, after large rain events [or rapid snow melt], we will get water flowing the wrong way, from Chittenango Creek back into the lake,” Miller explained.

To study the effect of the phenomenon on the lake, the CLA sampled the backflowing water and compared it to samples from the six largest tributaries running into the lake during the same time periods.

According to Miller, the results indicated that the backflow had significantly higher concentrations of total phosphorus, total suspended solids, and total nitrogen compared to the average results of the six largest tributaries coming into the lake.

Miller also explained that, over time, the silt carried into the lake by the backflow will continue to accumulate and lower the water levels at the swimming area, the Brewster Inn, and other areas at the south end of the lake, Additionally, the influx of phosphorus and nitrogen are expected to impact the lake’s water quality.

Currently, the CLA is working with the New York State Canal Corporation, which owns the dams, the Town and Village of Cazenovia, Cazenovia Preservation Foundation, the DEC, and outside consultants to develop potential solutions to the problem.

Town updates

Town Councilor Jimmy Golub presented the town’s lake-related expenditures, which totaled $117, 209 for 2021.

The town contributed $2,880 to benthic mats, $269 to weed harvester maintenance, $5,268 to weed harvesting labor, $55,115 to the lake treatment, $1,064 to signs for the treatment, $36,613 to harvester payments, $13,000 to the Lakeside Park Boat Launch, and $3,000 to the police on the lake.

Golub also compared the loads of weeds harvested this year (35 loads) to the previous three years (82 in 2020, 54 in 2019, 55 in 2018).

“This just kind of underscores what a great job ProcellaCOR did,” Golub said, “. . . If we go back another two years to a year when we didn’t treat [the lake], it was over 150 loads, so we should be celebrating the fact that we didn’t get as much with the harvester.”

Village updates

Village Trustee Cindy Bell Tobey concluded the summit presentations with an overview of the village’s ongoing work at its two lakefront parks.

In her discussion of Lakeland Park, Bell Tobey highlighted the kayak racks and new launch area and reported that CACDA has applied for a grant to continue reconstructing the canal wall and the retaining wall along the swimming area.

The trustee also reported on the Lakeside Park Boat Launch, which is attended by four boat stewards seven days a week, from 6:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., throughout the summer.

During the 2021 season, the boat launch had 246 out-of-town users — who traveled from 50 different New York towns and three other states — and 405 village and town users.

“Anybody can get a boat permit to go out on the lake,” said Bell Tobey. “However, for the village and town [residents] it is free. . . For [out-of-towners] it is $75 for the year or it’s $10 for day use, but you can only get day use [permits] Monday through Thursday.”

Questions can be directed to [email protected].

For more information on the CLA, visit cazlake.org/.