At its January meeting the Lake Anna Advisory Committee (LAAC) approved a new Hydrilla Management Protocol to allow the group to be more flexible in how they manage the aquatic weed.
LAAC Water Quality SubcommitteeChair Harry Looney worked with Chairman Christopher C. McCotter, Orange County LAAC representive Jeff Palmer and Louisa County LAAC representative Robin Horne to update the original protocol to allow the group to be more flexible with hydrilla management, creating a list of areas that had the submerged aquatic week last summer and grading them using a rubric and a shorter time table.
“We are now able to decide which areas need treatment not in January but in July, when we our surveys will start showing where hydrilla is growing this year,” Looney told Life & Times.
LAAC also approved a treatment plan for 2025 that includes the stocking of 100 grass eating carp in the upper North Anna River arm of the lake and aquatic herbicide treatment of parts of Freshwater and Contrary Creeks.
Looney also noted LAAC would be part of the Dominion policy that permits Homeowners Associations to apply to have a licenses aquatic herbicide applicator treat hydrilla impeding navigation or creating a safety issue in front of their common areas/docks. Applications can be found at the Dominion Energy webite at https://www.dominionenergy.com/-/media/pdfs/global/nuclear/north-anna-power-station/lakeanna-and-whtf-vegetation-control-policy.pdf
“LAAC will review those applications, too, first making certain it’s hydrilla in question as well as making recommendations on the request.”
LAAC manages the lake’s buoy system and hydrilla using 20K of funds provided by Louisa (9K) Spotsylvania (9K) and Orange (2K) Counties
Looney noted he and McCotter had learned the Lake Gaston Association, a similar group to LAAC that manages hydrilla on the 20,000-acre Dominion Energy-owned lake on the Virginia/North Carolina border, has a much larger budget and hydrilla mangement program.
“We learned that LGA manages hydrilla very differently and has a $1 million budget, part of which comes from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. They also work closely with NC State University to survey hydrilla tubers with sediment samples and over 100 volunteers for a whole lake survey.”
Hydrilla begins to grow in May after dormancy during winter. Its growth peaks in September and slows by the end of October, dying back by the end of November. Tubers do remain in the lake bottom and a combination of nutrients, turbidity and water temperature determines where the weed emerges the next season.
