THE NATURE OF THINGS
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| Curly-leaf pondweed |
Duane Lake is both blessed and cursed with extensive patches and strips of an underwater plant called curly-leaf pondweed (Potamogeton crispus, for those who like to learn the Latin names scientists use).
And if you knew what to look for, you could see signs of it this year as soon as three days after Duane Lake’s ice disappeared.
The announcement came on a stiff west wind. You might have seen it but didn’t know how to read it.
Have you ever noticed how the surface of the lake has stripes or patches of smooth, shiny water when the rest of the lake surface is a bit rough?
It’s from the interaction of wind and underwater vegetation. The wind is pushing the surface water, but the underwater plants are resisting the push. No plants equals rough water. Thick patches of underwater plants equals smooth surface water.
But the wind on the water told us something more: Curly-leaf pondweed is tough. It starts growing each year under the ice.
And why is it both a blessing and a curse?
It’s blessing in that it dominates the underwater plant kingdom of Duane Lake, taking up space that nastier plants—perhaps invasive species—might occupy (that old axiom that “Nature abhors a vacuum”). It’s a blessing in that it provides cover for fish. They love to hide in the weed patches and dart out and back to feed. More fish means more eagles, more ospreys, more herons.
It’s also a blessing, compared to other plants that might otherwise dominate, in that it tends to decompose and seemingly (but not really) disappear by the end of June, sometimes earlier, opening up the water to easier boating.
It’s a curse in that until that “decompose date” it can interfere with sailing and even rowing and paddling. Once the dagger-board of your small sailboat hits that weed patch, you’re stuck.
Curly-leaf pondweed also performs two other functions for us, although perhaps undramatically: water filtration and phosphorus removal.
Grab a handful of curly-leaf pondweed and you’ll feel the accumulated grit on its surface. I suspect that is a key reason our lake water is so clear in spring and early summer.
And curly-leaf pondweed acts as a pump, sucking phosphorus from the lake-bottom mud up into its stems and releasing it into the water as it decomposes in late June. This phosphorus release can fuel algae blooms, but some small amount of the released phosphorus undoubtedly flows out of the lake and heads downstream.
Unfortunately, the small watershed that feeds Duane Lake doesn’t provide enough flow velocity to move much of anything out of the lake. In fact, the past three summers have been so dry that there has been practically no inflow to the lake and no outflow from it for at least three months. – Alan Knight
Don’t Forget! Neighborhood meeting May 6th
A Duane Lake community meeting will be held at 7:00 p.m. on May 6th in the basement meeting room of the Duanesburg Fire Hall.
The purpose of the meeting is to discuss several important issues being considered by the DLA board of directors. The Board wants your guidance on these topics (and any others you might want to bring up):
1. Whether to accept an offer of the gift of ownership of the dam. What are the pros and cons of saying yes? Of saying no?
2. Whether to form a separate corporation to own any land we might acquire, including the dam. In short, it could provide a layer of liability protection for the DLA.
3. Whether to change our IRS non-profit status from 501-c-4 to a 501-c-3. In short, a 501-c-4 is for organizations that serve a private purpose, whereas a 501-c-3 is for those that serve a public purpose. A c-3 tends to be more readily eligible for government grants.
Fact sheets are being prepared for each of these topics and soon will be made available to all.
Also, the two county legislators responsible for creation of the Duane Lake Septic Replacement Program – Holly Vellano and Tony Jasenski – will be attending.
We hope you will, too.
We thought Town Highway Superintendent Keith Hudson would die laughing when we asked him if he could remove all that dirt and sand and salt from Duane Lake Road. We told him it would wash into Duane Lake and fuel algae blooms – which it would.
But it got done!
We are grateful to have a highway department that is responsive and wants to prevent and solve problems.
Earth Day Clean-up @ Duane Lake
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