A fight is underway to protect local waterways from a persistent invasive species.
Rich Ruby is a fisheries biologist with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the regional technical specialist for the Lakes and Rivers Division for Aquatic Ecosystem Restoration. He said hydrilla is resilient and can spread quickly, disrupting the ecosystem and creating issues for people enjoying the waterways.
The U.S. Army Corps off Engineers has been working to stop the spread of hydrilla since 2012.
"Once it grows to the surface, it can shade other plants out,” Ruby said. “It can change the water chemistry to the point where it can lower the dissolved oxygen. It can also make it uninhabitable for other plants and other animals."
This year, the team is focusing on areas within the Erie Canal, Niagara River, and Cayuga Lake. Through management strategies, the plant’s spread has been minimized.
Ruby said one area where teams have had success limiting hydrilla is Aurora, where they’ve been working since 2016.
"In Cayuga Lake at Wells College Bay, they found hydrilla, and when we first went out there, it was growing to the surface, very thick, very dominant in that area, in about a 30 acre area," he said.
Ruby said the teams use a combination of preventative measures, early detection, and targeted treatments of herbicides, which he said are safe for nearby communities and waterways.
“These have been herbicides that have been used for decades,” he said. “They're not relatively new ones. They've been around for a while. They've been tested, and there's been long term studies done on them with regards to safety."
This is the last year the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will take part in a full-scale treatment of hydrilla, but experts will continue to offer assistance to its partner agencies at the federal, state, and local level.
It has been actively working with partners like the USACE Engineer Research and Development Center, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Finger Lakes and Western New York chapters of the Partnership for Regional Invasive Species Management. And Ruby said it’s important that the fight against hydrilla continues.
"If we lay off, and we stop treating it, it's going to continue to grow and then people might start seeing, most likely will start seeing, those negative impacts that we've seen in other lakes, where it's uncontrolled."
