No clue about milfoil

For about 40 years, we have owned a vacation place on Lake Winnepesaukee in Moultonboro, N.H. They had a serious milfoil problem caused by overdevelopment of vacation properties and poor control of effluents. Harvesting procedures they first used to try to solve the problem compounded the problem. Finally, a little boy drowned by getting trapped underneath the milfoil. Then they got serious about solving the problem.

They hired a firm from Maine, which goes by “ACT,” that uses a chemical procedure that really works. Furthermore, it does not bother the fish, as I know from my own fishing experience there for many years. A big point in New Hampshire’s favor is that there was never any surcharge to boaters for solving the milfoil problem. The cost fell to the towns involved.

So what is wrong with Maine? Why are we talking about harvesting milfoil and imposing a sticker requirement on boat owners? People in the town office cannot tell me that it is actually a law, but they insist I will be fined if I do not display the sticker on my boat. So is it a law or not? If I have to pay for and display the sticker, then it ought to be absorbed in the cost of registering the boat. This year’s sticker says “resident 2003,” so it looks like a resident poll tax that was banned several years ago.

The developers of this program don’t have a clue about what the problem is or how to go about solving it, so they are stealing money from the public to waste on their silly deliberations.

Fred H. Irons

Orono