10-13-2025 - Agenda Packet City Council - Regular Meeting

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b) Curlyleaf Pondweed and Eurasian Watermilfoil Delineation Survey. Kieper stated the purpose of this item reviews the areas mapped and treated during the season. See the attached "2025 Curlyleaf Pondweed Delineation Survey" and "2025 Eurasian Watermilfoil Delineation Survey" maps. Curlyleaf Pondweed (CLP) is a winter plant, the first plant to come up, and is surveyed in late April. The DNR wants treatment before the native plants come up so that the damage to the native plants is minimized. There was an exceptionally large acreage to treat this year. The District treated 59.17 acres of CLP where the previous 5 years averaged 18.9 acres. No one is sure why. The District's lake management company reports the significant CLP expansion was directly related to the winter and spring conditions. CLP across the state showed a 30 to 60 percent increase. Later in the year, Eurasian Watermilfoil (milfoil or EWM) comes up. The Delineation Survey map shows 23.50 acres of EWM. Our District's lake management company takes the map, makes recommendations on where and how to treat, and applies to the DNR for a treatment permit. Thus, they treated 23.50 acres of EWM this year, where treatments in the previous 5 years averaged 16.3 acres for EWM. The District's lake management company recommended various plots to be treated with a contact, contact/systemic blend or a systemic herbicide, and evaluate results based on the 2026 delineation surveys. There were questions and a discussion. c) 2025 Aquatic Plant Survey of Carman Bay. Kieper stated the purpose of this item reports on the District's objective to control Curlyleaf Pondweed (CLP) and Eurasian Watermilfoil (EWM) and -protect the native plant community as evaluated by an end of season aquatic plant survey, also known as a Point -Intercept Survey, which is, in effect, our "scorecard." (The "Carman Bay 2025 Aquatic Plant Survey" is available on the CBLID webpage, on the City of Orono webpage.) The survey, conducted annually on our 201-acre bay, collects plant and other data from 161 points. It is very technical, and meant for the DNR to evaluate how we did on controlling invasive species, and whether we harmed the native plants. We are only allowed to chemically treat two invasive species, Curlyleaf Pondweed and Eurasian Watermilfoil, provided we don't harm the native plant communities. From all this data, the health of the native plant community is evaluated by comparing the observed data to what would be expected if the community was undisturbed by environmental change influenced by direct or indirect human activities such as herbicide treatments or other stressors. The data points are taken in aggregate, and not looked at individually. Our goal is to maintain EWM and CLP each to a littoral frequency of 20% or less. The attached "Point Intercept Survey 2018 - 2025" demonstrates a protected native plant community each year and in the aggregate. EWM frequency for 2025 is at 7% and CLP is 2%. There are a number of indicators in the report that show, over eight (8) years, a diversity of native plants and that the overall native plant community is not changing. This clearly demonstrates a protected native plant community. There were questions and discussion. There was a question by Ricks, our City Liaison, regarding a claim of 700 DNR permits being pulled for chemical treatments in Carman Bay. Kieper said he has researched this and found that there are 16 resource numbers for all of Lake Minnetonka, and that Carman Bay shares a "lake resource number" with the rest of the Upper Lake. The data of 700 permits from DNR is for the "lake resource number" for the entire Upper Lake, which includes Carman Bay as well as Priests Bay, Cooks Bay, West Upper Lake, South Upper Lake, Smithtown, Phelps, East Upper Lake, Old Channel Bay and Spring Park Bay. All 10 of these bays share the same resource number. Carman Bay accounts for only 201 acres of 4,200 acres of the entire Upper Lake. Kieper sorted the data by Carman Bay addresses and found that 55 properties with 63 DNR permits over a ten (10) year period, from 2016 to 2025, were for Carman Bay homeowners. The cumulative acres approved for treatment over 10 years was 18.3 acres. These permits are for herbicide treatments around homeowners' private docks. It does not include the LID's treatments, and also does not include "pulling weeds." The Carman Bay LID does bay -wide herbicide treatments, with two permits a year for CLP and EWM only, totaling 20 permits over ten years, some before the LID was formed. 9-25-25 CBLID Annual Meeting Minutes DRAFT V.2 10-3-25 77