ISDA denies permit for weevil project

SANDPOINT — A long-awaited project to determine the effectiveness of weevils in beating back Eurasian milfoil in the Pend Oreille has encountered another snag.

Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper and EnviroScience were planning to launch the bio-control project this summer, but they cannot secure permit approval to possess milfoil, which is needed for the weevil-stocking program.

The Idaho State Department of Agriculture said it cannot grant the permit because state law prohibits the transportation of viable milfoil fragments unless they are going to be destroyed.

“The noxious weed law doesn’t have provisions for transport,” said Tom Woolf, ISDA’s aquatic plants program manager.

Although biological controls are used extensively throughout the state, none of the bio-control agents involve the use of viable noxious weed seeds or plant material, Woolf said.

“Under our law there’s no exemptions,” he said.

Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper, which is coordinating the project, is exploring its options and seeking legal advice on how best to proceed given the ISDA’s take on the matter.

Waterkeeper centers its work on uphold rules and laws protecting quality.

“We also are very committed to addressing the invasive milfoil situation in Lake Pend Oreille in an environmentally friendly and sustainable way, which the native weevil could provide,” said Jennifer Ekstrom of Lake Pend Oreille Waterkeeper.

The project was originally intended to get under way in 2009, but milfoil growth was stunted by a deep drawdown of Lake Pend Oreille, a hard freeze that occurred before a layer of insulating snow had accumulated and other factors.

Stocking protocols call for the milfoil to be within a couple feet of the water’s surface.

Ekstrom said the project was postponed last year because the U.S. Army Corps’ Engineering Research & Development Center was conducting its own weevil project in the Pend Oreille River.

“Since all the research so far on weevils shows that it’s ideal to have more than one season of stocking in the same locations, it was decided at that time to postpone the project again,” said Ekstrom.

Waterkeeper and EnviroScience planned to stock as many 50,000 weevils in a half-dozen spots on the Pend Oreille River where the insects had already been stocked. A stocking site on Lake Pend Oreille was also being considered.

The project also has a research component.

Ekstrom is hopeful the impasse can be resolved.

“It’s more important than ever to find sustainable and environmentally friendly solutions to our milfoil problem,” she said.