Village hires company to remove plants from creek
Under Water Solutions of Crotonon-Hudson has begun removing eight acres of water weeds from the Lower Esopus Creek near the village beach and an area downstream in front of private waterfront property.
The eco-harvester was deployed Monday and over several days is expected to pull up about 3.5 acres of water chestnuts directly in front of the public beach.
“This machine is quite unique because this removes the invasive aquatic plants by the roots,” said owner Zdenek Ulman.
“If you cut it, what happens is it falls down and deprives the lake of sunlight and oxygen,” he said. “Also, it grows right back.”
The water craft uses a barrel-shaped pulling wheel in the front to either pull the long weeds up or skim the much smaller floating plants from the top of the water. The plant then lands on a conveyor belt and is shuttled up an incline before being dropped into a 4-by-8-foot storage
container.
Removed plants were taken to nearby village vehicles where they were hauled away by Department of Public Works crews.
“People use it for fertilizer,” Ulman said. “The plants are 80 to 90 percent water. So once it dries out, it weighs nearly nothing.”
The Village Board earlier this month agreed to hire Under Water Solutions at a cost of $5,300 after trying
to keep up with the weeds that had encroached on the swimming area. They had hoped to avoid a repeat of last year’s beach closure, when water chestnuts sprouted in April and spread over the entire creek within a month.
Ulman said that the widespread growth of invasive species in recreational water bodies appears to be the result of human activities.
“I’m not sure that all that algae and invasive plants are the direct result of climate change,” he said. “There is probably some percentage to it, but in my
opinion it has to do with the quality of water and I would say that chemicals and septics are a factor.”
Ulman said it is difficult to forecast how much cutting is needed to get the weeds under control on a water body such as the Lower Esopus Creek.
“It’s moving water that comes from a distant location, plus there are boaters, so the milfoil (plant) gets spread by fragmentation,” he said. “So, any little cut from the propeller, the plant gets moved 10 to 50 feet, and that’s where a new plant will grow.”