There’s often little agreement when it comes to Chautauqua Lake. This year, in our opinion, most reasonable people agreed that conditions on the lake were a mess, particularly in the south basin.

The rise of elodea,which is not classified by the DEC as an invasive plant, was a particular problem in the south basin. It’s worth noting that A.J. Reyes, the project lead on Chautauqua Lake at GEI Consultants, didn’t think issues in the south basin were caused by any particular management decisions or actions, though he did say the large amount of elodea growth seems out of the ordinary. Reyes and his team aren’t sure what caused the increase in elodea growth, but the elodea invasion along with the lake’s ongoing battle with Eurasian watermilfoil was a problem all summer.

Rather than litigate the reasons for a rough year on the lake this year, we’d prefer to look forward to next year. And there are some interesting tidbits from the August meeting of the Chautauqua Lake Watershed Management and Alliance minutes that make us wonder if a structure may be forming that could help improve yearly management of Chautauqua Lake. That won’t be a popular opinion for many who want wholesale changes, but recent board discussion has piqued our interest.

Reyes and his team have been performing a background review of documents and data, and meeting with lake service providers, researchers, regulators, and government officials in order to understand the current state of the lake and how it is being managed. Reyes and GEI Consultants will compile an end-of-year summary and recommendations by the end of the year. The quality of those recommendations should go a long way toward deciding if it’s even worth the time to reconfigure the alliance’s board or if we should go in an entirely new direction altogether – something some lake stakeholders have said should be considered.

We haven’t always been happy with the way the alliance has handled Chautauqua Lake’s yearly maintenance. Closing meetings to the public is a step with which we vehemently disagree. But the hiring of GEI Consultants, reconfiguring the alliance’s board to make its membership more accountable to lakeside property owners by adding more elected officials into the mix and what the minutes show as pretty frank discussions that involve evaluating lake management techniques and the relevance of tools used on other lakes to Chautauqua Lake are promising.

GEI Consultants’ year-end recommendations could go a long way toward answering those who voiced concerns over weeds in the lake this summer.

It’s the Chautauqua Lake Watershed and Management Alliance’s time to shine. Let’s see if it can rise to the occasion.