Posted on June 30, 2025
Unwanted plant growth in Waverly Lake is making its annual summertime comeback, and the Albany parks department will deal with the problem as it did the last two years.
The city budget for the coming biennium, which starts July 1, contains for the first time “dedicated funding” for Waverly Lake maintenance, but as far as I could find it doesn’t show a dollar amount.
The overall parks and recreation budget of $34.5 million for 2025-27 includes about $12.2 million for materials and services. I watched the parks budget presentation on May 22, twice, but no one on the city budget committee asked about the lake maintenance amount.
If memory serves, Parks Director Kim Lyddane mentioned the amount in a recent post on social media. I can’t find the post now, but in my memory it was around $20,000 a year. (If that’s wrong I expect to be corrected forthwith.)
In the last two summers, the city hired a company to deploy floating plant harvesters to scour the 9-acre lake. Each time the operation cleared the water of algae and whatever other aquatic growth had turned the surface into an unsightly mess.
On a bike ride Friday I noticed that except for patches here and there most of the lake was still clear, but the southwestern part was fairly well covered with growth.
Expect the covered area to grow in size until, later in the summer, the harvesters show up.
The view of Waverly Lake along the pathway at its western end on Friday, June 27.
