Wolfeboro – A team of professional divers aided by a cadre of volunteers will soon be weeding the bottom of Back Bay to clear out water milfoil.

Selectman Linda Murray, a member of the town’s Milfoil Committee, said that she’s hoping for speedy approval by the state Wetlands Bureau for a dredge and fill application for the project to start.

Last year Back Bay was treated with a herbicide and the town had planned to apply for it again this year. But high water this spring, which saw many properties along Back Bay with water in the basements into June, forced cancellation of that project.

Instead the town is hiring a team of three professional divers from Maine to pull the milfoil and is counting on an army of local volunteers with boats to help out.

Murray said 12 volunteers will be needed each day for a two-week period to pick up the milfoil as it is pulled and take it ashore, as well as to net stray pieces of the plant, which quickly regenerates.

Milfoil is a non-native plant which grows rapidly on the bottom of lakes in warm weather. (BOB LAPREE)

She said that Back Bay has been badly infested with water milfoil, a non-native plant which grows rapidly on the bottom of the lake in warm weather, for the last 10 years.

In Gilford, where a planned chemical treatment of Smith Cove is being held up by litigation and an appeal of the process by which the treatment permit was granted, John Goodhue, Conservation Commission chairman, says that he plans to approach selectmen next week with a proposal that the town hire a team of divers to pull the milfoil this summer.

Smith Cove residents obtained the permit to apply herbicide from the State Pesticide Control Board in May but a temporary restraining order obtained by the Winnipesaukee Yacht Club has kept the project from moving ahead.

The process by which the permit was granted has also been appealed to the Pesticides Control Board, which is expected to make a decision next month.

Goodhue says that a Vermont firm he has contacted has said that a team of divers working for two weeks would cost close to $30,000 to remove milfoil from the 25-acre cove.