Lake Health

Milfoil mitigation

Each year since the late 90s, staff from the Craftsbury Outdoor Center, volunteers from the Green Racing Project and the Craftsbury community collaborate to remove thousand of pounds of invasive Eurasian milfoil, M spicatum, from Great Hosmer Pond. Mitigation efforts such as hand picking, hybrid picking, and diver assisted suction harvesting (DASH) can significantly reduce the plant’s visibility in the lake and its effect on lake users, human and wildlife. Read more.

Lake water quality monitoring

In 1984, John Brodhead, of the Outdoor Center, began collecting water quality data for the Vermont Department of Environmental Conservation through the Department’s Lay Monitoring Program. When John retired in 2017, a team of Green Racing Project athletes took on the project. The data is collected weekly, at two different locations, to monitor water clarity, phosphate, and chlorophyll in the lake, It is submitted to the state and is available on the Department’s website. Learn more about the process.

Electric launches

Our use of electric launches for sculling coaches reflects both our concern for the lake and our desire to avoid the use of fossil fuels wherever possible. It’s been a challenge to find electric engines that are reliable, that charge quickly enough, and that provide enough power to keep up with our faster scullers. At present, we are still using two gas launches, along with two electric ones, while we wait for a new electric launch design that should be arriving by the summer 2020.