LEICESTER — The town of Leicester has been awarded a $50,000 grant from the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to help control invasive species on Lake Dunmore and Fern Lake, located in the towns of Leicester and Salisbury. The control program is coordinated and operated by the Lake Dunmore/Fern Lake Association.
The award from DEC’s Watershed Management Division will help the association fund Eurasian water milfoil (EWM) control in both lakes during the spring, summer and fall of 2016. The association, a 501(c)3 nonprofit corporation, has a total annual project budget of $331,057, funded by the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation grant-in-aid, the Lake Champlain Basin Program, lake residents, friends of the lakes and the towns of Leicester and Salisbury.
The grant supports a control project which incorporates volunteer lake monitoring, the use of diver-operated suction harvesting, the hand pulling of milfoil, herbicide application by SOLitude, benthic barriers in approved areas, and a public boat access greeter program. A volunteer program was established in 1994 hand pulling Eurasian water milfoil in an effort to control the spread of the invasive species. In 2015, the program harvested approximately 3,776 bushels of EWM and inspected in excess of 1,275 boats prior to entering or leaving our lakes for invasive species.
For more information about the DEC grant, contact Julie Delphia, Leicester town clerk, at 802-247-5961, ext. 3.
For more information about LDFLA and the invasive species control program, contact Jim Meyersburg at 239-272-5459 or [email protected].