“I think most will make the decision to sign off,” said George Borrello, Chautauqua County Executive, regarding the county-wide Memorandum of Agreement for the Chautauqua Lake Weed Management Consensus Strategy.

The document, introduced March 27 by Borrello as a binding agreement lake nonprofits and municipalities can sign onto before April 17, is intended by county officials and third-party firm Ecology and Environment to bring Chautauqua Lake’s stakeholders together.

As of Friday, five of 14 possible signatory groups have signed on to the agreement, including the recent affirmative actions taken on the behalf of Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua Fishing Alliance and Chautauqua Lake Fishing Association.

With no group having officially said “no” to the agreement and with a week and a half left for organizations and governments to make their voices heard on the statement, things feel positive for the lake according to Borrello. He thinks most, if not all, possible signatory groups will sign before the deadline.

“I firmly believe that, through this consensus strategy and the collaborative efforts that it will foster, that we will create sustainable solutions to the issues affecting Chautauqua Lake,” Chautauqua Institution President Michael Hill said in a statement.

Chautauqua Institution having signed onto this agreement has potentially major consequences, depending on a variety of factors, including if other groups sign onto the strategy.

Last year, Chautauqua Institution sued the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and town of Ellery over a contentious and controversial environmental review process that led to the applications of June 2018 herbicides in Ellery, North Harmony and Busti. Chautauqua Institution officials last year said they were concerned with the possibilities of chemical drift and other environmental questions.

Whether or not those concerns were founded, the legal action still incurred extra costs to the town and its taxpayers. The DEC and Chautauqua Lake Partnership, the group facilitating the herbicide permit process that intervened in court, were also pulled into a legal battle, one that was eventually dismissed in December by New York Supreme Court Judge Donna Siwek.

If the town of Ellery becomes a signatory organization on this memorandum, that entity can avoid getting sued again, at least under certain conditions. This time, the county would be the arbiter for the allowance of lawsuits, which is to say that, according to the agreement as presented, “all parties who sign the MOA will not pursue litigation against any other party to the MOA who is not in violation of its tenets.”

This means that, if the town of Ellery signs on as Chautauqua Institution has done so and assuming the other tenets of the agreement such as specific herbicide acreage rules are not violated by Ellery or the CLP, there legally cannot be a repeat of last year’s lawsuit without the county removing suing organizations from the agreement, a fact that is outlined in another of the memo’s tenets.

Despite all the “what ifs,” Borrello said recently that many people living around the lake have approached him with their approval. The town of Busti was the first municipality to sign onto the agreement, and judging by responses at Borrello’s press conference announcing the agreement, other town and village leaders seem pleased with the idea of consensus.

Follow Eric Zavinski at twitter.com/EZavinski