About a dozen residents who live around Bare Hill Pond urged the Conservation Commission last week to approve a drawdown this fall to reduce invasive weed growth. There was no drawdown last year.
Several people brought handfuls of yucky greenish-brown strands to illustrate the problem. Patricia Ruze of Willow Road wore a necklace of milfoil to make her point. Two Turners Lane residents who asked not to be identified, told the commission, “The kids won’t go in the water anymore.” Other residents agreed that they, too, had stopped swimming because of the weeds.
Bruce Leicher, chairman of the Bare Hill Pond Watershed Management Committee, said that the results of the committee’s study did not show enough weed growth to make a drawdown absolutely necessary. But he noted that the study looked at the same locations year after year, for consistency. The report did not address changes that took place elsewhere on the pond.
Leicher also said that skipping the drawdown this year might necessitate having one every year for the next three years to get weeds back under control. But doing a drawdown this year could mean that the process need take place only in alternating years in the future, he said.
Members of the Conservation Commission seemed to find this argument persuasive. They voted unanimously to approve a 5.5-foot drawdown. Their vote brought a round of applause from the pond abutters.
The drawdown will begin on Sept. 24. The first stage will lower the pond approximately 1 foot—not enough to interfere with recreational use in the early fall, Leicher said.
The drawdown must be complete before a freeze, so that turtles and amphibians have a chance to move into the area that will remain covered by water. There they overwinter by burrowing into the mud at the bottom of the pond. Otherwise, the critters could be left exposed to air temperatures too low for their survival.
