The water chestnut, an aquatic invasive species, was found last summer in Dead Creek, also known as Scomotion Creek, on the north end of Plattsburgh. Water chestnut is best controlled by physically harvesting it when the plant is young. The Lake Champlain Basin Program and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation coordinated a harvest Thursday morning at a boat launch near the creek.
Staff from Clinton County Soil and Water, the DEC, Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program, Lake Champlain Sea Grant, Lake Champlain Basin Program, Champlain Watershed Improvement Coalition of New York and the Nature Conservancy arrived at Wilcox Dock Thursday morning with kayaks and canoes ready to go out on Lake Champlain adjacent to Wilcox Dock. The goal: hand harvest water chestnut.
Kaylyn Wood, a Conservation Technician for Clinton County Soil and Water, is pulling her kayak off a truck.
“Kayaks it’s a little bit easier to reach down and grab the weeds or the water chestnuts,” Wood explained. “You’re closer down. You’ve got to try to grab as far down on the plant as you can and try to wiggle it out so you get all of the plant out of the water.”
The water chestnut is a non-native floating aquatic plant that grows so densely, says Erin Vennie-Vollrath, it crowds out native water plants. She is the Lake Champlain Basin Coordinator for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation at the New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission.
“It’s growing so thickly typically that no sun can get down into the water so then it shades out any native plants growing underneath. Also it tends to decrease the oxygen level beneath it as well,” Venne-Vollrath said. “So we see impacts both on our native plants as well as some of our native animals.”
Nature Conservancy Adirondack Park Invasive Plant Program Director Brian Greene explained that yearly harvesting is crucial to controlling the spread of water chestnut.
“Water chestnut is an annual so that means it makes a seed and then once it releases the seed the plant dies back. But that seed can be viable for up to 10 years,” Greene said. “So that’s what we’re really trying to do is get these plants before they drop their seeds.”
Greene stepped a few feet into the water at the boat launch and pulled up a water chestnut.
“There’s another one right there. There’s one there, there, there, there, there,” Greene points out. “It has a very unique shape with these kind-of triangular shaped leaves that are serrated. And then they have these air bladders to help it float. It’s actually pretty easy to identify once you see it.”
The plant is very thick in sections of Scomotion Creek, but the water there is so low that organizers can’t access the area. Vennie-Vollrath briefed everyone on where they would harvest along the nearby lakeshore.
“The area we’re going to search here in the Wilcox Dock area is about from this launch here, along the edge of the wetlands and then just a little bit down the shoreline. You’ll kind of go past the wetland area and it might be growing a little bit along the rock shoreline there as well,” Vennie-Vollrath instructed.
“Here’s our water chestnut guys. I think it looks like a floating doily with triangle serrated leaves.”
Lake Champlain Basin Program Aquatic Invasive Species Management Coordinator Meg Modley held up a water chestnut plant for the group.
“You do need to look carefully because they are sometimes underneath lily pads and hiding in the shallows and the other vegetation. What we’re trying to get out of here are these nutlets,” Modley noted. “These four-pronged nutlets they can be sharp so just be careful when you’re removing the plant. Gently pull on the stem to try to get the majority of the plant out. Get them into your boat. We’re really most worried about the nutlets, but we’d like to get the whole plant out of the lake.”
Nearly a dozen people then headed out to hunt down and pull the invasive species out of the lake.
“I’d stay outside of the reeds. It’s pretty shallow on the inside,” Modley reports.
”Okay,” acknowledged Vennie-Vollrath. “Yeah you can see that it’s probably only a couple feet deep here.”
Greene explained that the invasive water chestnut can grow so thick it blocks boat traffic, anglers and swimmers, so it is best to find populations when the plant is young.
“Our biggest fear is that it would just cover up this entire bay and then people wouldn’t be able to get their boats in here to go fishing. Or you know Plattsburgh beach right down here where all those really sharp little nutlets would wash up on the shore and people would be trying to walk and they would get them stuck in their foot. And that would be a really painful experience,” Greene said. “So we’re really trying to manage this population and prevent that worst case scenario.”
