Dog Lake Closure Won’t Affect Most Activities

By Scott Sandsberry, Yakima Herald-Republic, Wash.

Jul. 17–YAKIMA — Campers and anglers arriving at Dog Lake next Wednesday will see ominous “Dog Lake Closure Notice” signs warning them of an herbicide spray project that will close the lake for that day and the next to fishing, swimming and drinking.

Here’s a little secret: You can still camp at the popular recreation lake east of the White Pass summit and you can still fish. You probably shouldn’t swim in the lake on Wednesday, but that’s about it. And whatever you do, the Forest Service won’t ticket you for ignoring the closure.

The Forest Service action is a public-safety closure only, meaning it’s up to your discretion. And any dangers of the spray project — a Yakima Weed Control Board project funded by the Department of Ecology to control an invasive water plant called milfoil — are basically only to the milfoil.

The amount of the herbicide being used — dicholophenoxyacetic acid, generally referred to as 2,4-D — will be such that it “won’t come close” to the amount that could pose a health risk for humans, said Dick Jacobson of the Yakima Weed Control Board.

“Other than discouraging people from swimming on the day of the treatment — and the (herbicide label warning) doesn’t say you can’t, it just advises against it — the impact on the public should be minimal,” said Terry Whitworth, the Puyallup-based pest-control specialist contracted by the DOE to do the spraying.

Whitworth said he had recently treated Blue Lake in Thurston County with the same herbicide with a far worse milfoil infestation than Dog Lake.

“We treated the whole lake, not just spot-spraying,” Whitworth said on Tuesday. “I was up there yesterday at Blue Lake to do a follow-up, and I saw fish and tadpoles and frogs everywhere. I could see them better because a lot of the weeds were gone, and there was plenty of life there, and people were fishing.”

Both Jacobsen and McLain said fishing — or eating fish caught, even on Wednesday — poses no health hazard.

“It won’t affect the fish. You can still eat the fish,” said John Easterbrooks, regional fish program manager of the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. “They did the same thing at Fio Rito (a Kittitas County lake) a week ago. We didn’t hear of any problems. We thought we’d get calls from people saying, ‘Hey, there’s some people going around Fio Rito with an outboard motor, but we didn’t.” Boats using internal combustion engines aren’t allowed at Fio Rito Lakes.

Kelly McLain of the Department of Ecology said Wednesday’s spraying project at Dog Lake would probably be done by mid-day, meaning that by Thursday afternoon even swimming would pose no safety hazard.

The Forest Service and the DOE have been trying for several years to remove the milfoil at Dog Lake with scuba divers removing the weed by hand, but that has been ineffective, according to Jodi Leingang of the Naches Ranger District.

“A lot of it is because we cannot see the milfoil below some of the other vegetation in the lake, the water can be very cloudy and there’s a very short season up there in which to do it,” Leingang said. “The county weed board has been proposing this treatment with milfoil for several years.”

For more information on the project, call the Yakima Weed Control Board at 574-2180.

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Copyright (c) 2008, Yakima Herald-Republic, Wash.

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