Adirondack Park Agency gives go ahead to herbicide in Lake George

Window of time to use ProcellaCOR this year ends June 30

By Zachary Matson and Gwendolyn Craig

Lake George could soon see its first chemical application to manage invasive plants after the Adirondack Park Agency on Thursday granted a pair of permits to pilot the herbicide ProcellaCOR in two bays of the lake’s northern basin.

The Department of Environmental Conservation issued its own permits on Friday, specifying an application window of June 26 to June 30, Lake George Park Commission Executive Director Dave Wick said Friday.

The park commission plans to use the herbicide in a pair of treatment zones as a demonstration of how chemical control works against Eurasian watermilfoil, which has stymied lake managers since it was first identified in Northwest Bay in 1985. 

“It would be absolutely negligent if we sat back and watched everyone else use a new, effective and safe management tool just because” an herbicide hadn’t been used on the lake in the past, Dave Wick, executive director of the park commission said after the APA meeting.

The Lake George Association continued its strident opposition to the plan, announcing within minutes of the meeting that it had filed a lawsuit to stop the ProcellaCOR plan and expressing disappointment with the board’s approval.

“The Queen of American Lakes has been free of intentionally-introduced chemicals for 12,000 years,” Leigh Youngblood, interim executive director of LGA told the park agency board. “We will persist in our mission to protect Lake George.”

Lake George Waterkeeper Chris Navitsky said he was “disgruntled” by the decision and that he was discouraged that the concerns of residents in the two bays opposed to the plan were disregarded.

The product must be used between May 15 and June 30, under APA conditions, so that it can kill invasive milfoil before native plants have started to emerge, leaving a tight window for the park commission to use the herbicide this season.

What’s next

Wick on Thursday said he expected the required DEC permits within the next couple of days. DEC in a statement Thursday said the permit applications were still under review and that the agency along with the state Department of Health “have not identified any concerns regarding the toxicity or persistence” of the herbicide when used according to its label.

Wick on Friday confirmed that DEC issued the park commission pesticide permits to use the herbicide.

Once permits are in hand, the lake park commission would proceed with the plan to release up to four gallons of the herbicide in each of the two bays when the contracted applicator determined conditions were suitable, Wick said.   

It’s not clear how an injunction request from LGA would impact timing, but Wick said his contractor would move forward with the application after  permits are secured unless a court order changes plans. Two APA board members were absent from the meeting, and member Zoë Smith cast the lone vote against the permits. 

“[We should be] thinking about a larger, landscape-scale, long-term approach, so we are not just continuously hacking away at this,” Smith said.

Opposition continues

The APA approvals come amid stiff opposition from local property owners, LGA and other environmental advocacy groups. Former Gov. George Pataki in an OpEd in the Albany Times Union on Thursday called on Gov. Kathy Hochul to stop the project from moving forward. He argued that Lake George remains a rare lake that has never been treated by a chemical and should remain so.  

“This would be a disastrous decision that can never be reversed,” Pataki wrote.

The Adirondack Council, Sierra Club Atlantic Chapter, Citizens Campaign for the Environment and other groups in a joint letter called on the park agency to put a moratorium on ProcellaCOR permits. 

The treatment zones, Blairs Bay and Sheep Meadow Bay, also known as Jeliffe-Knight Bay, are each roughly 4 acres. The sites are where milfoil beds in the past were harvested by hand but abandoned nearly a decade ago as not worth the cost and manpower. 

Now, the park commission is eyeing them as a pair of test sites that, if proven as effective at killing off milfoil as in other lakes, could lead to broader treatments in Lake George.

Wick said if the herbicide performed as expected the park commission was considering using it in Sunset Bay next year and would determine the most impacted bays to use the herbicide in coming years.

He said he expected no more than 10 sites around the lake would be good candidates for the herbicide, spots where continuous hand harvesting has done little to dent the milfoil beds. 

The APA on Thursday also approved ProcellaCOR permits for privately-owned Highlands Forge Lake in Willsboro and the Chateaugay Lake narrows, the seventh and eighth lakes APA approved to use the herbicide. 

“The APA board’s decision was based on the best available science and guided by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s stringent pesticide regulations and approved registrants,” the agency said in a statement following the meeting.

Debate heads back to court

Minutes after the APA meeting ended, the LGA announced it had filed a lawsuit against the APA, DEC and the park commission seeking to annul the approval and halt the herbicide use. The court record, said to be filed in State Supreme Court, Warren County, was unavailable online, but the LGA provided the Explorer with a copy.

Joining the LGA in the suit are the waterkeeper, the town of Hague, town of Dresden and six private property owners on the bays where the herbicide would be spread, the association said. 

This is the second time the organization, which is comprised of property owners around the lake, has sued the state agencies over an herbicide permit for two Lake George bays. In the first lawsuit, the LGA lost when the case came before the Supreme Court Appellate Division, Third Judicial Department in Albany in May.

The LGA said it raises new claims, including “rights of the riparian property owners on Blair’s Bay and Sheep Meadow Bay,” under the new Green Amendment to the state constitution, arguing that the application of an herbicide over the property owners’ private water intake pipes “violates their right to a clean environment.”

John E. Kelly III, chair of the LGA, said a petition of more than 5,000 people remain “vehemently opposed” to the herbicide use.

“We continue to pursue all available legal avenues to stop the needless application of a herbicide in Lake George by New York State despite overwhelming objections,” Kelly said.

Editor’s note: This article was updated to include information about the DEC issuing pesticide permits to the Lake George Park Commission on Friday.