Pond weeds are on the run

Department of Public Works employees Jeff Greco (left) and Bill Card adjust one of the paddlewheels on the weed harvester at the town beach on Bare Hill Pond to prepare for its annual launch. (Photos by Sue Fitterman)

Up close, the familiar weed harvester, which went back into Bare Hill Pond Tuesday, shows its age—and a surprising revitalization. Institutional-green paint covers the 26-year-old eroded original metal and years of later repairs by Harvard Machinery. But new orange paddles and the lines of gleaming stainless steel-plated shark’s teeth encased in John Deere-green fittings are clues that the harvester is back from near death and ready for business, thanks to recent care and repair by Geno Vazquez, genius mechanic at the Department of Public Works.

Rust, rocks, and unavailable replacement parts have almost done the “weed-eater” in many times, but when the engine failed on veteran water chestnut warrior Rick Dickson’s final run last fall, the harvester really looked destined for the scrap heap. Temperamental at best, the weed-eater has always needed attention. In a phone conversation, Bryce Larrabee said that when the town contracted his company, Harvard Machinery, to keep it running in the 1990s, he sent someone down every day to check, oil, and grease the harvester.

DPW mechanic Geno Vazquez stands beside the old paddlewheels taken off the weed harvester.

In another phone interview, Dickson confirmed the need for special attention, something Vazquez has given it for several seasons. After the engine failure, the Pond Committee was reluctant to ask the town for a new harvester, which DPW director Richard Nota estimated at $85,000 in 2007 and $140,000 today. Even spending to replace the engine and numerous other parts was up in the air. “That was when Geno said, ‘Let me see what I can do’,” recalled Pond Committee member Jeff Ritter.

What Vazquez could do turned out to be a lot for a little: replace the engine, the cutting bars, the saw teeth, the wiring, and the paddles; refashion bearings and a custom brake box; repair the metal mesh conveyor belt; and modify an existing trailer. “Almost as good as new at nominal expense,” said Ritter. Nota put the cost for parts at $9,000, paid from the Pond Committee budget.

The key to the renovation was the used, liquid-cooled, Kubota engine from a commercial lawnmower that Vazquez found by searching the Internet and elsewhere at night on his own time. He also bargained the $2,400 price to $1,500.

After Larrabee repaired the cutting bars that his company had replaced and strengthened almost 20 years ago, Vasquez installed new, sturdier cutting teeth fittings and replaced all of the worn cutting teeth with new John Deere ones, which do indeed resemble rows of serrated shark’s teeth.

After watching Vazquez reach into a barrel of old and rusty spare parts during an interview in the DPW service bay, it seemed natural to ask if he was always making and fixing things as a child. “It was my grandfather in Puerto Rico. He was a mechanic and I used to hand him his wrenches,” he said.

As a teenager he built his own motorcycle and go-cart. Before coming to Harvard, Vasquez worked for a company that worked on motors—“anything from boats to airplanes.” Now he is responsible for keeping the DPW road equipment going. “Sometimes we have to ‘bubble gum’ them together to get them back in the shop to repair,” he said, recalling all-night shifts to keep vehicles on the road during bad winter weather. “The ice storm was really tough.”

Vazquez and Dickson will keep an eye on the harvester over the summer. Equally dedicated, Dickson has the water chestnuts almost under control with daily 5 a.m. hand-pulling from a kayak and frequent runs with the harvester. When Dickson took over the water chestnut control effort in 2003, the weeds had proliferated from the Clapps Brook area at the southwest end of the pond to around most of the pond. For three years his daily pulls and the three volunteer pulls every season abated the weed spread, but consultation with experts at a Nashua River Watershed Association talk on invasive aquatic species convinced him that a harvester was required to really reduce the chestnut population. When he inquired about the then-retired harvester, he was told, “It’s broken. It was always broken. It will always be broken.” Indeed, when Dickson got the weed-eater put back on the water in 2006, “it ran 10 minutes and died.” Repaired three weeks later, it managed to run for five minutes.

In 2007, with Vazquez’s help, it was more successful, and Dickson attacked the weed growth in earnest. This Memorial Day, when Dickson surveyed the pond, he found only 10 plants beyond the Clapps Brook area, which is still heavily infested. A floating fence across the Clapps Brook cove keeps most of the plants from spreading beyond the barrier.

According to Ritter, herbicides had been tried to control the pond weeds. After herbicides in the pond were banned at the 1983 Town Meeting, the Pond Committee got approval to buy the aquatic harvester in 1984 and also installed a 10-foot plastic underwater mat off the south side of the town beach to control Eurasian milfoil growth. Ritter said that the harvester is effective for water chestnuts and fanwort but only mows the milfoil and doesn’t eradicate it, which is one of the goals of the drawdowns. The mat has begun to deteriorate and will be pulled up this fall after the scheduled drawdown.

This summer, when visitors to the pond don’t step on the sharp-spined water chestnuts on the beach or in the water, they can thank Dickson and Vazquez. Next winter, when the roads have been cleared, they can thank the plow drivers—and Vazquez, who keeps the plows running, too.

Note: The water chestnuts are on the run, but volunteers are still needed to pull the plants from places the harvester can’t reach. The next volunteer town weed pull is Saturday, June 19, starting from the town beach.