SARANAC LAKE — The Colby Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to maintaining water quality in the Lake Colby watershed, has received a $50,000 matching grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The foundation and the Lake Colby Association plan to use this three-year grant to eradicate the lake’s Eurasian watermilfoil, an aquatic weed that shades out native plants, entangles boats and swimmers, and spreads rapidly.

In response to this challenge, Harriestown town board, at its meeting Thursday, awarded the Colby Foundation a special $5,000 grant to help with the need for matching funds.

Work on an aggressive eradication program has already begun under the direction of the Adirondack Watershed Institute at Paul Smith’s College. Working as a subcontractor, AWI will do the harvesting, assisted by local volunteers. Using compressed air from a “hookah” rig that floats on the surface, a team of four or five AWI divers carefully remove milfoil along with its roots. These harvested plants are composted off-site at the end of each day.

The members of the Lake Colby Association provide coordination, administrative support and volunteers to assist the professionals as needed. The goal is to massively reduce the milfoil population this year through a “blitz” approach, to follow with aggressive removal of any regrowth in 2018 and to remove any final remnants of the plant population in 2019. It is hoped that from 2020 on, the task will be reduced to rapid response if any plants are identified in a late-spring survey.

For more information, contact the Lake Colby Water Quality Manager Lee Keet at lee@lakecolby.org or lee@colby-foundation.org.