Testimonials

Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 9:39 AM
> Subject: RE: Lake Blanket Use in the Adirondack State Park

Hi Warren:

Please use and attribute whatever you wish on the website.  I would be
glad to answer Emails regarding our experience to date.  Lake Blankets are
probably not for larges lakes with large boats, big engines, anchors on
top and or dragging, etc., such as Lake George.  But for smaller lakes such
as ours, they are an excellent alternative to herbicides.

Hi Warren -

About a month ago we placed my 3 blankets in 8 feet of water over a very
heavy milfoil bed.  Only weight was the 3/8 rebar.  This covered 1200 sq
feet.  1 hour effort for two people.

Also placed 40, 10x10 dryer felt mats, lined on each with 1/2" rebar,
and a concrete block on top for added weight.  Total 4000 sq.feet.  1 day
effort for 7 people.

Ed Snizek from the APA came down to watch us pull them.  The Lake
Blankets killed the milfoil just as well as the heavy mats, at a tiny fraction of
the work required by the 10x10 mats.  Snizek was very impressed and will be
recommending your product wherever appropriate, i.e. where not likely to
be disturbed by 200HP outboards, danforth anchors, and the like.

We will be ordering 20 or 30 lake blankets for 2008, and same for 2009.
After that orders will be for maintenance of about 50 to be placed each
year, and moved 3 times.  Mats will be put down professionally, probably
by Lycott Environmental, who also serves Lake George.  Suggest you contact
them, they must use benthic barriers for much of their work in MA.

Best regards,

Bob Sherman [ rcs9234@roadrunner.com]

August 2007

It’s a good time to summarize our work with the “Lake Bottom Blankets (mats)”,  so far this year.

We had purchased and deployed 3 mats (1200 sf.) last year and left them in the water all winter.  Each mat is 10’ by 40’. 

We purchased 25 more (10,000 sf.) a few weeks ago.  A group of 6 or 8 volunteers assembled them in about 4 hours.  This assembly consisted of inserting rebar, tie-ing off ends, etc.

We hired a limnologist-diver, Richard King, who supervises, supplies other divers as needed, check for rare plants, etc. 

We deployed the 25 new mats, and relocated the 3 others yesterday, in one day.

One of the members of our Aquatic Conservation Taskforce (ACT), Bill Campbell, has a 10’x20’ powered raft which we used as a work barge.  We piled the 25 new mats on it, positioned the barge, and passed each mat to King and two of his guys in the water.  They did not need scuba, and just used snorkel.  We started at 8:00, got organized, loaded the barge, went out on the lake, deployed all mats in about 4 hours!!!  We went to lunch.

I don’t understand it, but we had no floating milfoil fragments after deployment.  Last year, with the different mats and scuba deployment we had hundreds of pounds of fragments.  Part of this may be seasonality, but a lot of it is that the lake blankets sink slowly to the bottom while the divers are on top, guiding them down, instead of being in the middle of the milfoil bed, wrestling a heavy mat around.

Over lunch we discussed how to pull up the “old” mats to redeploy them.  King took over.  He had us position the barge over and perpendicular to the mat, and, from the water, passed one end of the mat to his 2 guys who were on the barge. They muscled it up, which coincidentally worked very well with the positioning of the rebar tubes – that’s unclear, I know, but Warren will know what I mean.  Within maybe 30 minutes we had all three aboard the barge and repositioned them in about the same time.  There appeared to be no effect on the mats of being in the water so long.

King and crew are off hand picking last year’s matted areas as I write this. 

The simplicity of the entire operation was extraordinary compared to last year.  We matted a total of 11,200 sf. in less than a day.  I think in the future we should expect to average a total of about 20 minutes per mat removing from the water, and relocating.  This is with time for organization, breaks, air, etc.  We need a barge, a “Captain”, two “younger-than-me” people on the barge, plus Rich and crew.  We may or may not need people in boats picking up fragments.  We in ACT should meet quickly to plan for July’s re-deployment and how to man this on a permanent basis. 

Bob Sherman,