On June 16, Jake Almond, Missouri Conservation Biologist, met with interested TLHA residents at the small lake to get recommendations on action to be taken to preserve and protect the small lake from getting smaller and eventually filling in. Attending homeowners were Dianne Simmons, Allen Dale, Wayne Corbett, Jim Martin, Craig and Marcia Retchless, Kurt Witt and Warren Stevenson.

Recommendations:

1. Priority is to eliminate the Muskrats by removing their food source  – the cattails – by using a chemical spray (herbicide) with a surfactant mixed in to hold the herbicide on the leaves of the plants until they die off. Replace cattails with Sweet Flag, which is already growing around parts of the lake.  The Sweet Flag’s root system is far more effective in preventing erosion.
2. Add more Rip Rap (rocks) along the entire front of the dam to prevent erosion.
3. Add grass carp to the lake to help with the weed problems.
4. Cut down trees and brush growing on or near the dam.
5. Kill the algae using a chemical spray – Cutrine.

Rather than burning off the dead cattails now and then spraying the new growth, the Biologist recommended spraying and killing them now, and then this winter cutting them down and burning them in a pile.

Only as a last resort should the lake be drained, then doze the bottom soil up to deepen the lake and use that soil to make a jetty into the middle of the lake from the dam.  This would be cost prohibitive, so the board voted to follow the Biologist’s recommendations for treatment per a motion passed at the May 14 TLHA Board Meeting.

Action:

• May 2, seven grass carp were added to the small lake (and 11 added to the big lake)
• May 29, Cutrine was sprayed to kill the algae on both lakes.
• June 14, work party to clear brush on both lakes and spraying cattails on the small lake