There are few more beautiful spots to spend a day in Maine than on Lake Cobbosseecontee. Unfortunately, our lake has a real problem which must be addressed immediately.
Three invasive aquatic plants, including Eurasian water milfoil, have been discovered in several areas of the lake, and the threat of access being choked off to this wonderful waterbody is real. If invasive milfoil infests a lake, swimming, fishing, boating, or any other recreational activity will not be possible. It’s happened to lakes in several other states and it most certainly can happen here, too.
So how do we stop it? Whether you live on the lake, take day trips to boat or fish, or visit during your yearly vacation, please inspect and clean your boats every time they go into the water. That includes trailers, propellers, live wells, and gear. Check every square inch where plants can hide: on anchors, in bait wells, shallow anchor systems, impellers, and fishing gear, then make sure your boat is thoroughly drained and dried. Even the smallest fragment on your boat could float away, re-root and infest another part of the lake. This is the essence of the “Clean, Drain, Dry” program that you will see or hear about around the lake community.
Finally, please launch your boats from public boat launches where trained inspectors from the Cobbosseecontee Lake Association and the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed can examine them to make sure they are milfoil-free. Trained divers from the Friends of the Cobbossee Watershed have found, marked, and removed more milfoil just in the past few weeks. A targeted herbicide was also recently approved by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection and then applied to control (eradicate) the two largest areas of growth of Eurasian water milfoil.
We all love this lake and don’t want it taken away from us. We need to work together to clean it up. Its future is in our hands. The thought of losing the lake we love should be motivation enough for us all to do our part.
For the Love of the Lake,
William Kieltyka
president
Cobbosseecontee Lake Association
East Winthrop
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