Minutes
Brooks Lake Improvement Board
Special Meeting
December 4, 2007
10:00 P.M.
Board Members Present: Bender, Sullivan, Mingerink, Leonard Board Members Absent: Wright
Also Present:  Tony Cunningham, Weed Patrol Inc, Pat Baker, Staff

1. Call to Order: Chairman Bender called the meeting to order at 10:15 a.m. and explained the purpose of the special meeting was to discuss the concerns and problems over the past years of the water quality, its not getting better. But we have a major issue going on and we need to identify what those issues and problems are and figure out what to do to stabilize where we're at and we're looking for input on what to do.   Turned the floor over to Tony Cunningham.
2.   Tony Cunningham, Weed Patrol-Water Quality Issues:
The major problem with Brooks Lake is single cell algae, green water, its been a problem that has persisted on Hess Lake for a long time, Brooks Lake has been green for several years but not as bad. We went to Brooks Lake, there was Milfoil and pondweeds dense enough to be a nuisance, treatments have been done for several years, this year we found hardly any plants at all. Brooks never had a lot of plants, but even compared to a normal year, there were very few. People will give us credit for not having weeds, we can't take that credit, we didn't treat any weeds on Brooks Lake this year. On Hess Lake a Floridone treatment was done last year and I only found 1 plant of Milfoil this year. On Brooks Lake I went to the spot by the channel off to the east, down by the stumps, no Milfoil at all. It seems Brooks Lake started late and when the plants did start growing they started late, but not having much light, what few native plants we saw, were sparse and weak, had a very Hess like algae persistent all summer long. There is a lot of blue green single cell algae common thru out the lake. There are 2 approaches to the problem and the best course of action would be to take both of them to some extent depending on effectiveness:

1. Proactive, go in and kill the algae, make the water clear, sounds simple but not a sure fire thing, problem is you have to kill algae faster then it grows, single cell grows by division and there's a lot of environment for algae, it only needs nutrients available in the water to grow. How much algae grows is usually a function of how much phosphorus is in the water. You have historical data and can go back 1 -2-3 years and it would be interesting to see if there is more phosphorus in the water now than a couple of years ago. Would like to see if there has been a spike of some sort and to know if there is a correlation of what we're seeing in the lake as far a light penetration and phosphorus.
   

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