Rather than a reprieve, “it was a shot in the gut,” said Lake George Waterkeeper Chris Navitsky. On June 28, State Supreme Court Justice Robert J. Muller lifted a temporary restraining order preventing the Lake George Park Commission from treating Eurasian milfoil with the herbicide ProcellaCOR on two bays on northern Lake George.
Less than 24 hours later, on Saturday, June 29, roughly nine gallons of the herbicide were poured into the two bays, the first time a chemical has been used to treat invasive plants or animals in Lake George.
“Despite widespread objection to this experiment in chemical management of Eurasian watermilfoil by the four towns adjacent to the treatment sites, riparian owners, and more than 5,000 residents and visitors, New York State has put the pesticide in the water,” the Lake George Association stated in a June 29 press release.
“With all the negative information about ProcellaCOR that the judge ignored, I’m disgusted they put it in the lake this morning,” Town of Dresden Supervisor Paul Ferguson was quoted in the press release as stating. “The Park Commissioners are not looking out for the best interests of Lake George.”
The Lake George Park Commission issued its own June 29 press release. “For almost three years, this project has received the highest level of review and scrutiny by the appropriate regulatory and scientific parties, and has received all necessary permits,” Lake George Park Commission Chairman Ken Parker stated.
“There are absolutely no public health or drinking water restrictions related to these applications, and those two bays are now open for activity.”
A Saratoga Lake invasive species program manager was quoted as stating, “We applied ProcellaCOR in 2022 with results that were nothing short of incredible: complete milfoil
eradication in the treatment area (with) no negative outcomes. Having worked on milfoil control for decades on dozens of lakes, this new tool is a game-changer for invasive species
management.”
Marc Bellaud of SOLitude Lake Management, the firm that was paid $18,698.69 to apply the herbicide to the Eurasian milfoil, was quoted in the press release as stating, “the project was conducted as designed, and we expect excellent results.”
Skeptical of Governments’ Assurances
The Adirondack Park Agency (APA) approved the Lake George Park Commission’s applications on Thursday, June 20; the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) issued its own permits the following day, on June 21.
Following its vote to approve the Lake George Park Commission’s application, the APA issued a statement that reads, in part: “The APA board’s decision was based on the best available science and guided by both the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s stringent pesticide regulations
and approved registrants. Scientific evidence and studies have been conducted to ensure this product is fully protective of public health and the environment when applied at the approved application rates.”
Tom West, a member of the Lake George Association’s Board of Directors and an attorney for the organization commented, “Everybody says ProcellaCOre is safe. I don’t think it’s safe. The government said DDT was safe. It said Agent Orange was safe. The New York State Department of Health told the people of Hoosick Falls that there was no need to test for PFAS. So relying upon a government agency to determine what is and what is not safe is not a useful exercise.”
Preliminary Injunction Denied
From the bench at the Warren County Court House in Queensbury on Friday afternoon, Judge Muller refused to instate a Preliminary Injunction that would have blocked the Lake George Park Commission from using ProcellaCOR in the two bays before its permits expired on June 30.
An attorney for the LGA, Robert Rosborough, raised issues that he said were not before the court in 2022, when the LGA argued that the state agencies’ decision to permit the use of
ProcellaCOR was based on incomplete information about the chemicals’ potentially adverse impacts on Lake George’s water quality and aquatic life.
Among the new issues raised were the property rights of riparian landowners to draw drinking water from the lake and the likelihood that the use of a chemical near those intake pipes constituted a violation of their rights to a clean, healthful environment, as guaranteed by a state constitutional amendment that took effect in January, 2022. Thee chemical was dumped into both Blairs Bay (just south of Anthony’s Nose) and Jelliffe-Knight Bay at Huletts Landing, both in the Town of Dresden, Washington County, NY.
“There are ways other than an herbicide to treat Eurasian milfoil in the two bays this season,” said Rosborough. “By issuing a preliminary injunction, this court would stay the application of the herbicide only temporarily, while the claims of riparian landowners, the LGA and the Lake George Waterkeeper are decided. And if that were to be done promptly,
this litigation could be finished by the end of the year. Were we not able to prevail, the Lake George Park Commission’s treatment could be undertaken next year.”
After weighing the arguments of the LGA and the New York State Attorney General’s office, Judge Muller stated, “There are times when the court issues decisions that it’s not very
enthused by and this is one of those occasions. I have to follow these agency determinations, and I don’t have the discretion to ignore them.”
(On May 2, 2024, a panel of appellate judges overturned Muller’s 2022 ruling that blocked the Lake George Park Commission from applying ProcellaCOR that year, stating that courts ought to defer to an agency’s expertise and that the appellate court was “satisfied that the APA complied with its statutory and regulatory duties” to obtain information about the herbicide and its impacts.)
“Judge Muller produced the right outcome,” said Dave Wick, the Lake George Park Commission’s executive director. “The Attorney General’s office was very clear that there are absolutely no public health issues with this product. I hope people take some comfort in that. We would never initiate a project where there were negative impacts to the health of the public.”
As a condition of its permits, the Lake George Park Commission is responsible for monitoring the bays for the persistence of residual chemicals. It must also ascertain what, if any, impacts the treatment had on the health of the aquatic plant community.
According to the Park Commission, “ProcellaCOR is exceedingly selective, and in Lake George, native milfoil is the only native plant that would be affected.”
According to Chris Navitsky, the Lake George Association itself has a program in place to assess the impacts of ProcellaCOR on non-target plants, among other things. Even before the chemical was applied, vertical profilers were anchored in the bays, where they will continue to capture important data, the LGA stated.
“It is very unfortunate that ProcellaCOR was put in Lake George at all, particularly when The Jefferson Project’s computer models were available to predict the flow of pesticide without putting it in the water,” said Dr. John Kelly III, LGA Board Chair and a founder of the Jefferson Project. “But now that it has been applied, we must take the opportunity to scientifically measure the effects for better-informed lake management decisions.”
LGA’s Legal Options
The LGA will continue to evaluate its legal options to prevent the use of ProcellaCOR in other parts of Lake George, the organization stated. According to Tom West, a judge could determine that the state agencies had no right to infringe upon the rights of riparian property owners without their consent.
A version of this article first appeared on the Lake George Mirror, America’s oldest resort paper, covering Lake George and its surrounding environs. You can subscribe to the Mirror HERE.
Photo: SOLitude Lake Management prepares to dump herbicide in Lake George for the first time on June 29, 2024 (photo provided by Lake George Association).
It has never failed to be dangerous to allow government agencies to make ecological decisions that should be made by scientists and biologists. Too many times, the government has SWORN that there is “no problem” and everything is proclaimed to be “perfectly safe” only to be proven wrong later on.
We’ll see how this plays out.
Does anyone have the name and ownership of the lab where the Lake George Park Commission is sending its samples for analysis? Is it correct that the lab is owned by or sponsored by SePRO, the company that manufactures ProcellaCOR? I hope this is not correct and that they are using an independent, unbiased lab. I did not see the name of the lab on any of the reports published on the LGPC website. How can we find out this information?