The announcement of a $42,000 DEC grant to the Chautauqua Lake Partnership was easy to miss earlier this year, coming as it did only a couple of days before a judge announced Freshwater Wetland Act regulations the CLP and Chautauqua Lake Property Owners Association had been fighting in state Supreme Court had been annulled.

But the grant, which is paying for a study by North Carolina State University researchers that has now begun, could end up having as big an impact on the lake as the temporary nullification of the Part 664 regulations.

Part of the study assesses the three main methods we deal with invasive weeds on the lake – either mechanical harvesting, herbicides or leaving the area alone. Researchers have designated 10 areas in the lake for this part of the study: three harvest-only zones, three areas with no management and four herbicide only areas. There are also designated herbicide application zones and habitat protection zones delineated. Researchers will study what happens in those areas in an effort to inform future lake treatment plans.

Researchers also want to investigate how methods of dealing with invasive lake weeds and the way nutrients cycle through the lake possibly lead to harmful algal blooms and use years of existing data to form a sustainable management plan for the lake’s littoral zone, the transitional area of the lake where dry land meets open water.

In the end, the CLP wants to use this study to help move beyond the lake maintenance we have all come to know and, sometimes, love toward bringing the lake’s plant community back toward native-dominant plant communities.

Studies sometimes get a bad rap because too many of them arrive in our collective consciousness full of sound and fury but end up signifying nothing. One reason many of us detest studies is it’s been so hard to get organizations on the same page to turn the studies into action. In our opinion the CLP’s work this summer in conjunction with North Carolina State University, supported by the DEC, should be different. That’s especially true if we’re entering a new era of cooperation between lake agencies.

We have limited dollars each year with which to maintain and, hopefully, improve Chautauqua Lake’s ecology. This summer’s CLP/North Carolina State University work could help that limited money be spent more efficiently and with better results. It’s a study worth doing – and implementing.