The south basin site of Chautauqua Lake has been home to a large buildup of aquatic native and invasive weeds that piled up significantly last year, and that biomass resulted in a fish kill in November 2018. After the incident prompted county officials and lake stakeholders to act, a plan was put in motion for a spring cleanup.

CLA is currently fulfilling its portion of contract work, a job that CLA President Paul Stage said is likely to extend into next week. Starting Monday, county employees helped excavate unwanted material at the end of Duquesne Street near the Ellicott Shores Apartments.

After that work was completed Tuesday, CLA workers began their collective job of removing plant debris and other rotted materials from the rest of the Burtis Bay shoreline — nearly 3,000 feet — stretching to the Ellicott Town Park. Laborers equipped with waders and pitchforks teamed up with barge operators to collect and remove piles of decomposed plants and fish.

Residents have been asked to refrain from putting in their docks or engaging in other aquatic activities until the cleanup is finished. Celoron property owners have expressed satisfaction that something is being done about the nuisance weeds, even if it is half a year after thousands of fish died due to the biomass suffocating them in the fall.

A CLA barge outfitted with a crane removes the plant-based material from the Ellicott shoreline. P-J photo by Eric Zavinski

“I appreciate what they’re doing, but it’s not going to get everything,” said Chautauqua Place homeowner Jim Kasperek.

He indicated, as CLA officials also have, the cleanup is proving to be more difficult in some respects due to the deterioration of the plants and animals that had occurred over the winter months.

What used to be a biomass that stretched out more than 50 feet turned into a moving mess as the spring began. The Chautauqua Lake and Watershed Management Alliance performed a site review in late March, but another month’s time was needed for county officials to coordinate a cleanup with the town of Ellicott, village of Celoron, CLA, New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and Jamestown Board of Public Utilities.

A total of $73,000 was collected through Chautauqua County, the Alliance and the Chautauqua County Region Community Foundation. Back in November, the County Legislature voted to allocate $25,870 from the 2 percent Occupancy Tax Funding Reserve for the cleanup.

Other Burtis Bay residents, including Mike and Peggy Newell of Chautauqua Place, are feeling relieved that the cleanup has commenced but also suggested that a cleanup several months ago — before the fish kill — would have been the ideal scenario.

The pile of debris collected from Burtis Bay sits undisturbed west of the Ellicott Town Park on Wednesday. Chautauqua County employees and Chautauqua Lake Association workers have added to the pile since the cleanup began Monday. P-J photo by Eric Zavinski

Stage agreed and listed various reasons why his organization didn’t have the chance to be mobilized at that time. He said weed buildup compounded in the fall, after the summer CLA operating season had taken place.

While some think CLA’s reserve funds would have lent themselves well to an earlier cleanup, Stage and Executive Director Doug Conroe have gone on record before defending their fiscally conservative stance. With the resignation of former state Sen. Cathy Young, R-Olean, state funding for the CLA has at the least been delayed, straining the organization’s need to hire seasonal workers to maintain Chautauqua Lake this summer.

“If you want to get rid of the weeds,” Stage added, “you raise the lake level.”

What Stage referred to as an unnecessarily low lake level in the summer and fall has helped grow nuisance weeds in the south basin, which Stage said contributed to the incident in November and the need for a cleanup. He reported that the lake level was raised for the cleanup and that the weather has cooperated nicely so far this week.

Debris is being collected and dewatered at the Ellicott Town Park in the dirt parking lot west of the baseball field. The materials will be left to drain there for weeks and will then be transported to the Chautauqua County Landfill.

Stage said the planty material will not be reused as nutrient-rich soil since non-natural trash has mixed with the muck that is being removed from the lake.

The remaining portion of the 3,000-foot work zone will be cleaned throughout next week. Currently, sludge has risen from the county’s excavation site to the surface around the breakwall in front of Duquesne Street. Some scattered plant material so far remains along Burtis Bay shores’ shallow waters that have been cleaned as some left-over material is getting carried away toward the head of the Chadakoin River.

Follow Eric Zavinski at twitter.com/EZavinski