May 3, 2022

Baltimore

In seventy days I’ll start to row my Eleven Laps Around the Finger Lakes. My boat still rests in its winter quarters in the barn out back, my writer’s hands are soft, my arms feel like the jellyfish you see on the late-night ads for Prevagen, and my oars need a bit of varnish. But other than that, I’m rarin’ to go.

I’ve written about this before, namely the efficacy of mental preparation in lieu of physical exertion…me, sitting behind a keyboard with a cup ‘o Joe instead of flogging a rowing machine and lifting some weights. I could crow about how of late I’ve replaced the morning’s Apple Danish with a bowl of Grape Nuts, but you’d not be convinced that this is material progress. Neither am I.

But by mid-May I’ll be up at Lake George and will be able to “train” most mornings….as if rowing 2.2 miles up to Brian’s each morning for coffee and an Apple Danish (…oops. No, wait. Let’s make that a bowl of Grape Nuts) counts as training. But getting on the sliding seat and awakening the musculature, such as it is, will be a start. I’ll be ready.

Keen-eyed readers will note that my written-in-pencil plan has already changed by a couple of days. I’d like to time my lap around Keuka Lake with the weekend of the Antique Boat Show in Hammondsport (7/16). I was there last summer for the ultra- rainy day version, so I’m certain this will be a lovely weekend. Parenthetically, for those of you who have not visited either Hammondsport or the Finger Lakes Boat Museum https://www.flbm.org/, each is worth the trip. The Museum resides in the former Taylor Wine Cellar- an incredibly elegant site- and their collection ranges from fishing skiffs to Fay Bowens and everything in between.

Way cool, and wonderful people.

Right now my Lake World is abuzz with tension between those who plan to test Procella, an herbicide intended to eliminate Eurasian Milfoil on Lake George, and those who believe that the environmental impacts of Procella have not been sufficiently explored. It’s a tough but important debate. As truly excellent environmental organizations face off against the very authorities charged with the protection of the lake, I feel like I’m watching an argument between two best friends who agree on a Destination but differ in the all-important Route. There’s that old saw that says, “The best compromise is one where neither side is totally satisfied,” but the trouble with this one is that the next step is binary: the chemical is either going into the lake in a test, or it’s not. Right now, it seems like it will.  

I’ve got a lot of reading and listening and learning to do in this conversation because while milfoil is indeed a serious threat to the Lake, our hubris and urgency for quick fixes have gotten us into big trouble in the past. As a beloved business school professor once said in a class on Decision Analysis, “A decision not to make a decision is a decision.” My gut tells me that there would be no overt harm in holding off for now while conducting the research and testing sufficient to answer the questions on the table; the downsides of a too-hasty application are significant and the costs of deferring, for now, seem minor?

I read this article in the May 7^th edition of the Orlando Sentinel; compared to our Lake George situation, it’s an apples-and-oranges situation, I think, but like so much of today’s news, you have to read it to believe it…..    

Ya’ gotta love the language here, right? “…a few thousand….trash fish…were impacted…” After all, what’s “a few thousand” when there are probably so many more? And….what’s the fuss about, anyway? After all, these are “trash” fish. And does “impacted” mean…ummm, like, they were killed?

I’m imagining that this is the kind of story that those urging great caution in the Procella debate fear could emerge if we run too quickly towards a solution to our milfoil problem. But then, this is Florida. It could never happen here, right?

Like I say, there’s lots of reading and learning still to do as this topic explodes in my own back yard. I expect that I’ll learn a lot more about environmental challenges and policy and advocacy during my row across a wide swath of New York.

Last summer, for example, I learned how the Keuka Lake Association and other environmental allies, along with every municipality surrounding this 22-mile gem of a lake, banded together to enact effective septic regulations that will protect and preserve their lake for the future. Their commitment to these regulations came from their hard-won experience that prevention is a lot more effective – and a lot less costly - than remediation after it all goes bad.

What a terrific model of collaborative commitment the Keuka Lake community presents for Lake George…and others! Rhetorical Question: What will it take for the Lake George basin to act as the ecological entity that it is rather than as the political patchwork that we have made it? Keuka discovered that Harmful Algae Blooms (HAB’s) are better prevented at the source(s) then combatted at the shoreline. I worry that unless and until we adopt the best practices of our neighbors, we’ll have to live through the tragedy of environmental degradation before we get to the work of remediation and recovery, even if that will be possible. What a shame.

Whew. Enough for now. Gotta’ get back to training for the row. This is about a row, remember? J