Nothing is free

  IF, and that is a big IF the Lake Commission makes the recommendation to go ahead with the skimmer you need to know if the board agrees this will be costly. We budgeted $50,000 for a used harvester. A brand new skimmer will cost more than that plus with the condition of our lake algae we will need someone assigned pretty much as a full time job running the machine until we catch up, which will take some time. We are looking at overspending our budget not including the extra man-hours. There is also labor involved in disposing of the algae when it is dropped at the landing so the work continues. Our G.M. budgeted hours for operation of the harvester but I doubt it will cover the scope of work we see ahead of us at this point.
  I have mentioned before, using rough numbers, every $24,000 we spend interprets into about $10.00 in dues. That is an easy rule of thumb when figuring what your out of pocket cost will be. that being said, if I were a prospective buyer and saw the lake as it is now it certainly would not appeal to me. I think you all know I am on board with the skimmer unless there is some unforseen problem that pops up during due diligence.
  We have spent a huge amount of money on the lake already and every solution brings a different problem. We have dredged, given alum treatments, tried aerators, thrusters, pumping into the lake, many years ago a weed harvester, triploid carp, we are working on bioswales, it goes on and on. We will keep trying but this is a impoundment lake and it will always have problems. All we can do is keep plugging away with proposed solutions.
Ken