Alliance Staff

Ossipee’s Selectmen have agreed to accept the State’s offer to split the cost of a program in which invasive variable milfoil will be hand-pulled from Leavitt Bay and Phillips Brook by professional divers this spring.

The New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services has agreed to provide State funds toward the cost of having professional divers remove the milfoil that has infested Phillips Brook and Leavitt Bay.

In what may be a repeat of last year’s events, a series of significant late season rainstorms has increased the lake to a flood level when it should be at its lowest to accommodate winter ice.

The logic is inescapable: unless state funding is increased, the more that milfoil spreads in Ossipee Lake, the more that local communities will have to pay to control it.

Professional divers have been hired to hand-pull milfoil from Danforth Brook to upper Danforth Pond, and volunteers are needed to work from boats to assist them.