While his partner worked deep below the water’s surface, Anthony Gilchrist was high and dry. Together, they were removing Eurasian watermilfoil from the floor of Lake George.

“He’s got this big four-inch suction hose and he is down there basically grabbing the milfoil by the roots and putting it up the pipe, and then it is coming up onto the boat,” Gilchrist said as he scooped the plants off the table on the boat and into a bucket.

Since 1986, the invasive species has spread to numerous spots around the Adirondack lake. The dive teams removed 94 tons of it in 2020.

“If you let it grow too much, it turns the whole area of the lake into a swamp with all of the biomass and everything that’s there,” Gilchrist said. “This bucket right here might be 30 plants, but these 30 plants at the end of the year can fragment into thousands of new fragments and lead to thousands of new plants, so we need to stay on top of it and get this out,” said Lake George Park Commission Executive Director Dave Wick, whose organization oversees the project.

Wick says milfoil and other invasive plant and animal species threaten the lake’s ecosystem, recreation and the local economy.

“They can even affect local recreation by crowding out local bays where you can’t swim or fish and boat, so it becomes a problem,” Wick said. “If you let the problem get away from you, you will never get it back.”

Wick says milfoil is one of five invasive species identified in Lake George, and this is just one of the efforts to control their spread and keep new ones out. Eight years ago, the park commission and its public and non-profit partners launched a mandatory boat inspection and cleaning program that has stations around the lake.

“We look at the exterior of the boat and we look under the trailer and make sure there is nothing hanging off the bottom of the trailer,” said Mike Archambault, an inspector at the Million Dollar Beach boat launch.

Since the program’s start, officials say no new invasive species have been found in the water.

“I feel satisfied. We are really doing our best,” Archambault said. “This site right here is the busiest on the lake, and we inspect, I am going to say, 15,000 boats a season.”

Lake George’s program has been praised by environmental groups across the state, including the Adirondack Council.

“Having Lake George make that a policy helped us in showing the rest of the park that it was possible, and really something that they should be trying to do,” said John Sheehan, the council’s director of communications.

In June, state lawmakers passed a bill that would make boat inspection programs mandatory on public water bodies, but it was never signed by former Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

The state’s former invasive species law expired in June.

While the council criticized Cuomo in its State of the Adirondacks Report released this month, Sheehan says they are optimistic Gov. Kathy Hochul will be more supportive.

“We really want to see this signed as soon as possible, and we believe this will really make it possible for the state to encourage people to do the right thing,” Sheehan said.

“The idea is the more we can protect all of our lakes, the more we can protect each individual lake,” Wick said.

Because eradication efforts are more costly, Wick believes anything that prevents invasive species from getting in makes perfect sense.

“I have been coming up to Lake George since I was a kid and it has always been the Queen of American Lakes,” Wick said, referring to Lake George’s often-repeated nickname. “It is pristine and it is gorgeous, and if we can do anything we can to protect the lake for the long term, that’s what we need to do.”