October 2011 Archives

When we think of Lake George as a source for recreation, fun, and beauty, Lake George is one of the friendliest lakes in the world. But when we reflect back on some of our tragic drowning accidents in recent years, all of a sudden the Lake doesn't seem so friendly.

In 2009, New York passed a law requiring all people on boats smaller than 21 feet to wear personal flotation devices (PFD) from November 1 to May 1. This means motorboats, sailboats, kayaks, canoes, rowboats, and paddle boats. It's a good law -- the LGA wants to remind folks that it is about to go into effect for this year. (Of course we'd REALLY like to see you ALWAYS wearing a PFD!)

If you go out on your boat and don't wear a PFD because you don't like the way it makes you look or feel, please go PFD shopping! Today's PFDs fit better, look better and are easy to move around in. And if you ever think of going swimming or sail boarding during the cooler months, ALWAYS wear a thermal wet or dry suit.

Here are just a few reasons why it is so important to wear a PFD, especially this time of year:

1. Cold water lowers your body temperature. (Colder than 70 degrees F can cause hypothermia.) The water temperature is now 60 degrees in parts of Lake George. Your body can cool down 25 times faster in water than in air. If your body temperature goes too low, you can easily pass out and drown. Even if you become helpless from hypothermia, a PFD will keep you afloat.

2. If you run into trouble during the late fall and early spring, there is less boat traffic around to help, and response by rescue crews can be slower than during summer months.

3. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, 9 out of 10 drownings occur in inland waters, most within a few feet of safety. Most of the victims own PFDs, but they die without them.

4. PFDs can help you stay alive longer in cold water. They let you float without using energy and they protect parts of your body from cold water.

5. Over the past several years, Lake George has experienced several tragic drowning accidents involving swimmers, paddlers, and people renting pontoon boats. Could a PFD have saved them? There is no way to know for sure, but none of them were wearing one.

Also... as winter approaches... here's a few more cold water safety tips:

- If you find yourself accidentally thrown into cold water, don't swim unless you can reach a nearby boat, fellow survivor, floating object or the shore. Even good swimmers drown while swimming in cold water. Swimming lowers your body temperature. Also, distances on Lake George are deceiving.

- If a nearby floating object is large, pull yourself up on it. The more your body is out of water, the warmer you'll be. Keep your head out of the water to lessen heat loss and increase survival time.

- If you are wearing a PFD, put your body in the HELP position - the Heat Escape Lessening Posture. It will reduce the amount of body surface area exposed to cold water.

1. Draw the knees up to the chest. 2. Keep the face forward and out of the water. 3. Hold the upper arms at the side and fold the lower arms across the chest, (or hug yourself and put your hands under your armpits.

But... if the HELP position turns you face down, instead: bring your legs together tight and your arms tight to your sides and your head back.

- If there are others in the water, HUDDLE together for warmth.

Sources: U.S. Coast Guard website for information, and bottom two graphics
Photo credit: Top photo: Copyright Carl Heilman II

What should you do with leftover or unwanted pharmaceuticals?

Until recently, consumers have been told to flush them down the toilet, or pour them down the drain.

But now scientists are beginning to find low levels of drugs in surface waters throughout the U.S. Some drugs pass largely unaltered through wastewater treatment plants. Drugs from heath care facilities and farms can also find their way into the water.

A nationwide study conducted in 1999 and 2000 by the United States Geological Survey (USGS) found low levels of drugs such as antibiotics, hormones, contraceptives and steroids in 80% of the rivers and streams tested.

Fish are being adversely affected, and drug-resistant bacteria could develop.

So... what do you do with those unwanted drugs? Where available, the best option is to take your medications to a local collection site.

The Third National Prescription Drug Take Back Day is Saturday, October 29, 2011 from 10:00 am - 2:00 pm. The Warren and Washington County sheriffs offices are participating. Find the location nearest you here.

Help spread the word.... and print out and place the poster above in your office.

By the way, most household hazardous waste collections will not accept pharmaceuticals.

If you can't make the collection day on Oct. 29, then the LGA recommends you follow these steps to dispose of drugs in the trash:

1. First add water and then salt, ashes, dirt, cat litter, coffee grounds, or another undesirable substance to the medication. This will help to avoid accidental or intentional misuse of the drugs. Avoid crushing pills as some medications can be harmful in powder form.

2. To prevent consumption by scavenging humans, pets or wildlife, do not conceal discarded drugs in food.

3. Hide all medications in an outer container, such as a seal-able bag, box or plastic tub to prevent discovery and removal from the trash. Seal the container with strong tape.

4. Dispose of drugs as close to your trash collection day as possible to avoid misuse and/or misdirection.

The Lake George Association is very grateful to Warren County for passing a new invasive species transport law - the first county in all of New York State to do so.

The law makes the introduction and transport of aquatic invasive species into Warren County waterbodies illegal.

This new law is SO important because Lake George is SURROUNDED by INVASIVES. The Great Lakes have 184, the St. Lawrence River 87. Lake Champlain has 49, the Hudson River 91. Lake George has only four.

The LGA spent several weeks providing information to the supervisors to help them draft the law. We commented on the pubic hearing about the law. (See LGA Executive Director Walt Lender here in the photo.)

The LGA also recently represented the Lake George region at a state assembly hearing in Albany regarding invasives. We urged the state legislature to quickly move forward to ban both the TRANSPORT and the SALE of invasive species.

Our latest invader... the Asian clam... poses the most serious threat of all to Lake George's environmental, recreational and economic health. It was most likely introduced into the lake by the simple act of someone dumping an aquarium or bait bucket, totally unaware of the trouble that would ensue.

Asian clam is legally sold all over the United States at aquarium stores and bait shops, yet can very quickly wreak havoc in lakes like Lake George - filling the bottom of sandy bays with sharp shells, clogging water intake pipes, reducing the phytoplankton and zooplankton that fisheries need to thrive, providing excrement that feeds large slimy algae blooms, and increasing calcium levels, making a more inviting environment for other invasives, like Zebra mussels.

When the clam was first discovered last August, a task force was quickly formed to study options for battling this invader.

The task force took as its warning the devastating experience of Lake Tahoe, where the clam was discovered in 2002, but action was delayed until 2008. (The bottom 4 pictures here show Lake Tahoe, and are courtesy of Brant Allen of UC Davis.) Tahoe's infestation rapidly grew from just a few acres to over 200 acres.

Now Tahoe's beaches have dense mats of sharp shells and algal blooms dominate what were once beautiful and clear bays. Eradication there is now impossible and they spend hundreds of thousands of dollars just "managing" the problem.

With the new Warren County law, we hope people will now pay closer attention to the threats of invasive species, both environmentally and economically. We don't want them, and the LGA is doing everything we can to fight them!

We're about to enjoy a few days of Indian Summer here in Lake George, but we all know winter is not far off. Thinking about winter got me thinking about the birds, and the amazing journeys some of them take this time of year, and the connections between birds and lake-friendly living.

The LGA just finished working with the Southern Adirondack Audubon Society on a joint volunteer project along the shores of West Brook that run through the West Brook Conservation Initiative project. We pulled out invasive shrubby honeysuckle (see the volunteers pictured here, hard at work!) and replaced it with native plants that are better for the birds, and the ecosystem of the Lake.

It was really interesting to me to learn why the invasive honeysuckle (pictured below, courtesy of Chris Evans, River to River CWMA, bugwood.org) was so bad for the birds. The LGA's Director of Education, Emily DeBolt, compares the berries of the invasive plant to fast food for the birds -- full of sugar, delicious to eat, enticing to look at, but not very nutritious.

What the birds really need, especially this time of year, are plants that can provide higher fat content. The dogwoods and northern bayberry we planted have very high fat content. The birds need fat - to build up their energy reserves for either their fall migration or for staying here and making it though the long cold winter. We also planted winterberry, red chokeberry, swamp rose, buttonbush, and eastern ninebark. These plants also provide cover for the birds next to a water source... also a key to their survival.

This morning I started snooping around for more connections between birds and lake-friendly living ... here are seven interesting tidbits I found:

1. Birds can be indicators of an ecosystem's health. Changes in bird populations can tell us that something serious could be happening in the larger environment. (Volunteer bird counts help... like the annual Loon census the LGA helps to coordinate on Lake George.)

2. When birds are removed from a food chain, rampant reproduction of certain insects can result. A normally harmless insect becomes a very annoying pest. As the insects feed, local plants suffer, and a crucial balance in our ecosystem is lost. Read more about Lake George's complex food webs here.

3. Migrating birds can usually survive bad storms, high winds and predators. People and the changes we make to the landscape present a bigger threat to birds (and to water quality too.) Humans, it seems, are the ultimate invasive species. Many of the lake-friendly landscaping methods we follow, like maintaining vegetative shoreline buffers, will not only improve water quality, they will preserve the birds as well.

4. Pesticides present additional complex problems. Their many direct and indirect effects on our ecosystems are only now beginning to be understood.

According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, millions of fish and birds are estimated to die from pesticide exposure each year. Also USFWS cites a recent study of major rivers and streams: one or more pesticides were detected more than 90% of the time in the water, in more than 80% of fish sampled, and in 33% of major aquifers. The National Audubon Society suggests these pesticide alternatives.

5. Our national bird, the bald eagle, has most certainly felt the effects of pesticides. In recent years, bald eagles have spent a lot of time on Lake George and Lake Champlain; even in the winter, these semi-migratory birds have chosen to remain, feeding on fish and ducks in ice-free areas. It is really a joy to see them!

We can help protect and preserve their potential roost and nest sites by retaining mature trees and old growth stands, particularly within a half mile from the water. National Fish and Wildlife Service also recommends that people take care to stay at least 200 meters (330 ft.) away from eagles when they are nesting. Read more about the birds of Lake George on the LGA website, including the peregrine falcon, the great blue heron, loons, and other waterfowl.

6. One should never intentionally feed bald eagles or waterfowl. Artificially feeding bald eagles can disrupt their essential behavioral patterns and put them at increased risk from power lines and collision with windows and cars. Feeding geese and ducks presents a number of water quality and health problems... read more here.

7. Other birds though we certainly help when we feed. I was happy to find out that the type of seed my husband and I have used is one of the best you can use - sunflower seed. According to Cornell Lab of Ornithology, sunflower seed attracts the widest variety of birds, and so is the best choice to offer. The worst, they say, is an inexpensive mixture of red millet, oats, and other "fillers" that most birds will spurn. The wasted seed then becomes a breeding ground for bacteria and mold that can harm the birds.

I also feel a bit less guilty about ignoring a few fall gardening chean-up chores after learning from Cornell that its a good idea to let seed bearing plants remain standing throughout the winter as a food source. They did say though that I still need to remove any rotted debris to prevent the harboring of pests and diseases.

That's it.. just seven little tidbits of info about birds and Lake George for today.... let me know if you have some others!!!