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9.e Discussion on letter of support for Big Marine Lake AssociationSCANDILA Staff Report Date of Meeting: January 16, 2018 To: City Council From: Neil Soltis, City Administrator Re: Letter of support for Big Marine Lake Association grant Background: Mike Blehert. President BMLA is again applying for an Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) grant from Washington County and is seeking a letter of support from the City of Scandia. Issue: Should the City provide support to the BMLA grant request? Proposal Details: The following information was provided by Mike regarding the 2017 program and plans for 2018. I corresponded with you last year regarding the Big Marine Lake Associations (BMLA) work to kill and reduce to acres of Eurasian Water Milfoil (EWM) in Big Marine Lake (BML). I'm pleased to report that results for 2017 were excellent. The BMLA is again applying for a grant from Washington County to continue this work. Our long term goal is to reduce EWM in BML to less than five acres per year and progress has been excellent. As you may recall, this project started in 2009 and really took off in 2015 when large state grant funds were first available for ideas generated by Lake Associations, Counties and other groups. That is, the grant ideas came from the bottom up rather than dictated by the state. The program and Big Marine Lake (BML) in particular has been successful in that we have spearheaded ideas that have reduced EWM in BML from 38 acres in 2014 to 6.2 at the end of 2017. It's also exciting that the largest remaining area of EWM in BML is one acre. Compare that to 5 to 20 acre spots in each of the last nine years. The root ball injection idea that the BML tested last year worked very well. It took until late June to refine the equipment and application procedure so we'll be ready to use it in late May and June in 2018 when the EWM is shorter and easier to inject with a long lance. We had planned to employ divers to inject the root balls, but for a variety of reasons injection was easier and safer when applied with long lances from a pontoon boat. This will be especially important in future years as size of the areas are further reduced. The small areas will still need treatment to stop the EWM from repopulating and coalescing into larger areas. I would like to attach your response to the 2018 grant proposal in early February 1. A copy of the letter approved by the Council in 2017 is attached. Options: 1. Approve a Letter of Support for the 2018 grant 2. Take no action on the request for a Letter of Support Recommendation: Option 1— Approve the Letter of Support