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Macrophyte Management Plan Committee Update 

The Honeoye Lake Watershed Task Force’s Macrophyte (Aquatic Plant) Management Plan Committee has completed its research.   The research activities included engaging Dr. Steve Souza, Princeton Hydro, meeting with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Dr. Bruce Gilman’s 20 Years of Honeoye Lake Macrophyte Survey & Analysis, and researching what other lakes in Upstate New York have successfully used to manage their macrophytes. 

The committee has written a Macrophyte Management Plan per the NYSDEC requirements, and held a Public Information Meeting on July 31st to share its research findings, analysis, recommendations, and to solicit public feedback. 

The committee’s objective was to:

Develop an ecologically and scientifically sound Macrophyte Management Plan (MMP) to facilitate balanced recreational use of Honeoye Lake including boating, fishing, swimming and other uses. 

This will result in the following benefits to lake users:

Enhancing recreational lake opportunities while protecting aquatic plant habitats for the functions and values they provide.  This will be achieved by selecting aquatic macrophyte management strategies that are focused on providing biomass reduction in the top few feet of the water column in areas most frequented by recreational lake users.  

The committee evaluated all potential techniques by four criteria:

            Does it meet our management objective?

Is it fundable?

Are we likely to be able to get a NYS DEC permit?

Is it acceptable to lake stakeholders?  

For whole-lake macrophyte management, the committee recommended to continue mechanical harvesting, increase communication of mechanical harvesting activities, and to continue to evaluate new techniques as they are approved by the DEC.  Whole-lake herbicide treatments are significantly more expensive, and difficult to obtain needed DEC permits for a lake the size of Honeoye Lake. 

Also individual lake front property owners are encouraged to use benthic barriers, hand pulling, or suction harvesting for local control.  These techniques are effective and only suction harvesting requires a DEC permit. 

The complete Macrophyte management plan is available at http://www.co.ontario.ny.us/planning/honeoye_lk.htm