Wasilla has new weapon in fight against weeds

WASILLA — While borough officials work to sell a troubled ferry bequeathed to them by the Department of Defense, Wasilla city officials took possession of a much smaller boat Tuesday afternoon.

The unnamed vessel — officials jokingly said they would consider naming it the M/V Wasilla, a light-hearted swipe at the Mat-Su Borough’s troubled M/V Susitna — pulled out from the boat ramp at Carter Park, and went out into the water of Lake Lucille. A hydraulic ramp on the front of the boat lowered into the water after a few moments. Public works officials demonstrated the boat’s twin-wheel design with a flume of spray. The $74,000 boat (funded by a Department of Natural Resources grant originally used to rebuild the Lake Lucille Dam) is designed to go where other boats can’t and scrape waterweeds off the lakebed, then feed them into on-shore trucks. The weeds will be deposited for composting outside a nearby public works shed.

While the mood about the new boat was mostly light-hearted, the vessel is intended to address a serious issue. Lake Lucille has been on a state list of impaired waterways since the 1990s over concerns that fast-growing invasive plants and silted springs could be an environmental hazard. Officials have also dredged sections of the lakebed where silt has accumulated on top of the springs that — along with snow and rain — are the lake’s main source of new water.

Weeds can snare boat screws and plane floats, snag swimmers’ legs, alter the oxygen level in the lake and in the long run, pose an existential threat for the lake itself, said public works director Archie Giddings.

“We’ve got photos of some lakes … there used to be lakes back here that are now grassy fields in 40 or 50 years,” he said.

Tuesday’s brief excursion (officials expect the boat to be in heavy rotation next year) isn’t the first time officials have tried to mow weeds, or use a dam to regulate the water level on the lake. State officials granted $300,000 in to improve the dam.

Lake Lucille “has always been an issue for different mayors,” he said. “When the new dam went in, we looked at options. Can you build that dam so you can regulate the water level? Fish and Game and the DNR weren’t too keen on that.”

Officials examined the possibility of renting a water weed mower from Anchorage, though that proved unsustainable, Giddings said.

“That was fairly successful but it was cost prohibitive to contract it out to get a piece of equipment,” he said.

The harvester is an alternative to using herbicide to kill weeds, which was often met with fierce political opposition from recreational users of other lakes in the past, Gidding said.

Contact Brian O’Connor at 352-2269, brian.oconnor@frontiersman.com, or on Twitter @reporterbriano.