Chautauqua Lake isn’t the only county body of water gearing up for a summer season of aquatic weed harvesting.

The Findley Lake Watershed Foundation acquired a mechanical weed harvester that can cut 1 foot wider and 1 foot deeper than the former harvester the group had used to remove the lake’s nuisance weeds. It will also be able to store twice as much material as the replaced harvester ever could, which means more efficient harvesting is likely in Findley Lake’s future.

“We’re all trying to figure out how to keep the lake water quality the cleanest,” said Philip Persons, the foundation’s treasurer.

Findley Lake’s new weed harvester was delivered May 15 and was immediately put into action clearing out springtime weeds. Two weeks in, the harvester is doing its due diligence with a crew that intends to service the 5.2-mile-circumference shoreline and the shallow parts of the lake where invasive curly-leaf pondweed and nuisance native weeds grow the thickest.

Foundation president Ed Mulkearn said growth of weed species has always been a problem, one that originates with the lack of a sewer system and a heavily agriculture-based community surrounding the lake.

“All their grey water runs through the ground and into the lake,” Mulkearn said.

While projects to manage runoff and maintain water quality — like building more retention ponds and aerating parts of the lake — will take more time to create, the short-term solution of having a more productive harvester to clean up the 360-acre lake will “drastically increase our efficiency,” Persons said.

Persons said about 400 tons of weeds were collected in 2017 and about 300 tons were collected in 2018. The harvester that collected that aquatic material has been sold to the city of Dunkirk to service the municipality’s marina.

“If (a harvester) goes down, we don’t have anything we can rely on,” Persons said, and explained that concern was all the more reason to acquire a brand-new harvesting machine.

The new harvester, fully named the ILH 800, was purchased from Inland Lake Harvesters in Wisconsin. A new shore conveyer and conveyer trailer, recently purchased alongside the harvester, will help with removing weeds from the paths of fishing lines, boat propellers and swimmers alike.

Lead Operator Paul Fellinger and a crew will operate the machinery from now through Labor Day.

A total of $140,500 in grants was used to purchase the harvesting equipment, and a bridge loan financed the rest of the purchase. The foundation received $50,000 from the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development fund, $50,000 from a Dormitory Authority of the State of New York grant, $20,000 from the town of Mina, $8,500 from the Chautauqua Community Foundation and $12,000 from the Findley Lake Community Foundation.

“Our general membership has really stepped up,” Persons added.

Mulkearn also thanked Chautauqua County Watershed Coordinator Dave McCoy, county legislator Marty Proctor and County Executive George Borrello for their support. The president said the Findley Lake dam repair project years ago would have failed without the county’s bed tax funding Borrello had pushed for.

“We’ve always had support from the county,” Mulkearn said.

Persons also mentioned that the foundation works closely with the Chautauqua Lake Association and bounces ideas of how to handle the smaller lake’s harvesting with CLA officials and its harvesting crews.

Follow Eric Zavinski at twitter.com/EZavinski