The process to apply herbicides on Chautauqua Lake this year is convoluted, to say the least.

Give the DEC credit, it’s trying to make an elongated process work. And the agency is trying its best to work with municipalities that have applied herbicides in the past.

But the process – start earlier in order to work through the process to arrive at jurisdictional determinations that the treatment area is a wetland, which then starts a different level of review and a new application for an Article 24 permit that takes more time to work through, all in order to meet nature’s treatment deadline of early April for curly leaf pondweed – makes very little logical sense. Everyone involved is jumping through hoops that didn’t need to exist because new general permits that will be used next year for these treatments aren’t ready for this year’s treatment season. It’s got to be frustrating for people like Glenn Sullivan, the contractor used for herbicide applications on the lake on behalf of town supervisors and mayors, and for Robert Freese and Chad Stainszewski, the DEC officials leading the permitting process for DEC Region 9. We may end up in the right spot, but from the outside looking in it feels like a hassle.

There should have been a delay on the effective date of the Freshwater Wetlands Act until 2026. One of the issues raised both in private meetings with the DEC and publicly by those who work on Chautauqua Lake on a regular basis was whether or not the DEC would be ready to administer the Freshwater Wetlands Act. The fact that the two permits that would ideally be used on herbicide permits on the lake this year won’t be ready for use until after this year’s treatment cycle has led us to this place letters that say one thing but really mean another because it’s the process that the DEC has to follow.

The process used to apply for herbicides worked fine for the past several years. It would have worked fine this year, too, until all the new permits that DEC officials talked about for the better part of a year to assuage everyone with concerns about the Freshwater Wetlands Act were in place to implement the Freshwater Wetlands Act – an act, we would argue, is still being improperly applied to freshwater lakes like Chautauqua Lake.

Once again, state lawmakers put the state in a bad position with aggressive timelines it couldn’t realistically meet. Maybe they’ll learn their lesson that it’s better to give plane builders time to build an airplane so that it flies well rather than have to take off missing vital parts – like wings.