Front row, seated, L-R: Sam Williamson, Sue Costa, Paul Witting, Paul Nowak
Back row, standing, L-R: Mike Dow, Tom Snow, Dan Mishler, Brian Chamberlain, Jonathan Friendly

Costa to Head LCA in 2009-2010

Sue Costa, a leader of the volunteer effort to control the invasive phragmites plant on our shoreline, has been named president of the Lake Charlevoix Association for the coming year. She succeeds Sam Williamson, the president for the last three years who guided the group as it tripled in membership and took on new responsibilities for protecting the lake.

Costa, a resident of Stillwater Beach, has been particularly concerned with getting members to volunteer their time and ideas to LCA’s work in phragmites control and student education. She told the annual LCA membership meeting at its Aug. 14 meeting, that “my hat’s off to you” for the efforts they have made in these fields.

At the meeting, trustees Williamson, Paul Witting and Jonathan Friendly were given new three year terms. Friendly will continue as secretary and Mike Dow as treasurer. Dan Mishler will continue as first vice president and Tom Snow will be second vice president. Costa, Mishler and Dow are the members of the phragmites committee – the Phragbusters – who have been working with state and local officials on the plan to rid the lakeshore of this invasive grass. (For more about that effort, please click here.

The meeting, which drew 50 LCA members to the Boyne City Public Library’s Community Room on Friday, Aug. 14, heard a presentation from Nowak, a former University of Michigan professor in the School of Natural Resources, about the origins and effects of invasive species ranging from 16-foot Burmese pythons to tiny gobi.

He noted that because northern Michigan was under a mile-high icecap until 12,000 years, its flora and fauna are relatively recently established and easily disturbed by new species that compete for land and food. He noted the effects of the lamprey eels and zebra mussels affecting our fisheries as well as purple loosestrife and phragmites australis.

He drew a laugh by pointing out that the most invasive species in this area is humanity itself, but he backed up the contention by pointing out how the Welland Canal has opened the Great Lakes to commercial ships that often dump ballast waters contaminated with foreign marine life.

Mishler followed Nowak with an update on what LCA is doing to control phragmites by identifying where it is growing – that survey is complete – and marking the stands for herbicide treatment by a commercial contractor and volunteers after Labor Day. He said that the plant had taken firm hold in many Eastern locations beginning 100 years ago but that we are dealing with it on the lake early and that a 95 percent kill rate was possible this year.