Finance Committee - 04/15/2020 Page 8
Alderwoman Harriott-Gathright
| am trying, sorry.
Deb Chisholm, Environmental Scientist/(Waterways Manager
We do the Mill Pond and the Canal every other year; we do the Nashua River every year. So far, we have been doing
Sandy Pond every year as well. So all three of those locations will be done fairly simultaneously this summer.
Mayor Donchess
Questions or discussion?
Alderman Klee
| have a question Mr. Mayor. You said that you do the Mill Pond and the Nashua Canal every other year. Is this keeping
it under control by doing that? And you said some other ones you are doing every year. Is this contract, does that include
all of those plus the Mill Pond and the Nashua Canal right? That’s what | am seeing, the Nashua Canal?
Deb Chisholm, Environmental Scientist(WVaterways Manager
Correct. This contract includes all three of those locations. We evaluate at the end of each season; we evaluate what we
are going to need for the following season. And so far, doing the Mill Pond and the Canal every other year seems to be
working. If it doesn’t seem like it is working then we can try to switch it to being an annual basis.
Alderman Klee
Thank you very much.
Deb Chisholm, Environmental Scientist(WVaterways Manager
You’re welcome.
Alderman O’Brien
Mr. Mayor, may | speak.
Mayor Donchess
Of course.
Alderman O’Brien
Ok, Ms. Chisolm, perhaps maybe it would help the rest to explain, we may eradicate or temporarily eradicate one
particular species such as the water chestnut, but then we may groom for another invasive species to come in and
repopulate that particular zone. This is why we suggest to people to good boating practices, not to bring these
contaminated species into our waterways, but we are kind of passed that. But this kind of a never-ending battle to try to
mitigate this, to save our waterways. If you want to enlighten a little bit more on that?
Ms. Chisholm
Well you are right Alderman O’Brien, it is really a maintenance thing and it is something that we will be doing every year,
forever. And you are right about the water chestnuts, the water chestnuts we don’t necessarily treat with an herbicide, we
did have mechanical harvesting going on a few years ago. That took out most of the water chestnuts. We now have a
volunteer group that goes out; we team up with the Nashua River Watershed Association and get volunteers to go out. |
think we are scheduled hopefully, fingers crossed, we are scheduled to go out in July with two groups to pull them by
hand, which | will let you all know when that is happening and you are all welcome to join us to see how the invasive
species eradication actually works.
