Celebrating Earth Day...

It Happens Every Spring

April is the month of re-appearance at Duane Lake. Blackbirds, beavers, geese, and lawn-care company trucks.

Blackbirds are the only ones that pose no problem to the lake. It's the humans in those trucks who pose the larger threat to our water quality.

Simply put: If you fertilize your lawn you are also fertilizing the lake. You are fertilizing the next algae bloom, and the one after that, and the one after that, as the fertilizer settles into the lake-bottom mud for almost forever.

Lawn fertilizers are largely a mix of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, with a few minor elements often thrown in. You can see it right on the bag. There are three numbers on the bag, printed as 20-20-20 (meaning 20% nitrogen, 20% phosphorus, and 20% potassium). or 24-8-16 or similar.

Same thing with lawn pesticides. They will wash into the lake.

So please do your lake and your neighbors a favor. Leave the chemicals--including the ones in fertilizers--in the store.

Incredible Lake Rainbow

If you missed the Tuesday afternoon thunderstorm, our neighbors Kurt and Andrea Husselbeck captured these two photos which showcase the beauty of Mother Nature over our beloved Duane Lake.  

Thank you for the submission...we love the amazing🌈views!

How much poop could a good goose poop if a good goose could poop poop?

Up to a pound and a half per bird per day, according to the US Department of Agriculture. Multiply that times, say, 50 geese a day at Duane Lake and that's another impressive load of nitrogen and phosphorus. Or maybe a hundred geese on some days, especially after eggs hatch and eagles have all the fish they could possibly prefer.

Geese are also known to destroy shorelines, chewing and digging out edible vegetation, leaving eroded, scarred shorelines.

And here's an important little detail: Geese are like swallows coming back to Capistrano. If they are born here, they come back here year after year.

According to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), the estimated number of resident geese rose from about 80,000 in 1995 to over 360,000 today.

So, anything you can do to fence the adults out of your shoreline property is an investment in goose population control and water quality for the future.

Here is a link to everything you could ever want to know about Canada geese, problems they pose to public health, and their control.


Celebrating Earth Day with the DLA

Join us this Saturday for Earth Day Clean-Up.  Click here for more details!