Corporate Headquarters
3 Forty Acre Mtn. Rd.
Danbury, CT 06811
P: 203-826-9983
F: 203-826-9984
E: werm_me.com
Water's Edge Restoration & Management LLC. is the leader in using environmentally safe, chemical free processes to control the intrusive aquatic weed problem faced by many bodies of fresh water. WERM LLC. is committed to provide cleaner and safer ponds, lakes and rivers using minimally invasive techniques such as suction harvesting and benthic barrier applications resulting in improving the quality of water-based recreational activities.
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©2009 Water's Edge Restoration & Management LLC. - All Right Reserved
Our Services
Services
Water's Edge Restoration & Management currently operates in the entire North-East quadrant of the United States with expansion plans in development that will result in WERM having licensed affiliates across the country.
WERM' s highly qualified seasoned staff include a Certified Lake Manager (CLM), a trained labor force and a fleet of state of the art equipment. This particular combination creates a powerful environmentally effective resource that can best contain the spread of the invasive aquatic plants.
WERM LLC. offers the following state of the art services:
Suction Harvesting:
Suction harvesting is the mechanical process in which a certified diver tethered to a floating platform, vacuums the bottom of a pre-defined section of the lake. This is accomplished with a suction hose through which the weeds are pulled by the roots into an onion bag atop the manned floating platform. Ingested water then drains out back into the lake leaving the milfoil for proper disposal.
Aquascreen:
Bottom mesh applications work by compressing the aquatic weeds into a stressed configuration and screening out 50% to 60% of sunlight. The mesh is fine enough to prevent weeds from growing, but coarse enough to allow for the natural life processes to continue while preventing new growth without risk to health or the environment. Results are immediate when installed early spring.
Dredging:
Dredging is performed to remove pollutants and accumulated sediments including invasive species of plants from a particular body of water. It is a process that involves the aquatic excavation of bottom sediments and the transportation of these spoils to a dewatering area where the sediment is allowed to dry and is eventually removed from the site.
Water Testing and Monitoring:
WERM offers special service where its licensed professionals are commissioned to test water quality on a regular basis to assure its safety.
Waterfront Custom Maintenance:
Waterfront maintenance can take many forms ranging from: securing docks, repairing dock safety hazards, buoy anchorage service, building geese barriers, installation of recreational equipment to, upon request, building new custom docks and boat ramp walkways.
Frequently Asked and Answered Questions:
WERM LLC. wants you to have all the information you need.
Below are the answers to our most common questions:
What Is The Eurasian Water Milfoil?
Eurasian water milfoil is an aquatic plant native to Europe, Asia, and northern Africa Believed to have entered North America around 1940's. Grows best in fertile, fine-textured, inorganic sediments.. High water temperatures promote multiple periods of flowering and fragmentation. Readily dispersed by boats, motors, trailers, bilges, live wells, or bait buckets, and can stay alive for weeks if kept moist.
Source: Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
How To Identify?
It is easiest to identify when it is blooming or has fruits on it. Eurasian water-milfoil has slender stems encircled by feathery leaves in groups. The stems branch and commonly grow to lengths up to 10 feet. Eurasian water milfoil produces small, 4-parted flowers on a spike that sticks out of the water two to four inches. The flowers are either four-petaled or without petals. The fruit is a hard, capsule with four seeds. The plant stem is often reddish-brown. Look for 12-21 pairs of leaflets per leaf to help distinguish Eurasian water-milfoil from Northern water-milfoil, the most similar native milfoil. The native plant typically has 7-11 pairs of leaflets.
Habitat & Lifecycle.
Eurasian water-milfoil is found in places with lots of nutrients. It likes heavily used lakes, disturbed lake beds, and lakes that get a lot of nitrogen and phosphorous runoff. Warmer lakes can cause the milfoil to flower and reproduce more often in one summer.
What Can I Do To Control Water Milfoil?
One thing that lakefront residents and communities can do is to remove the exposed milfoil in front of their shorelines while the water is drawn down. Raking is an option, but the best method is hand pulling the milfoil and removing the root system along with the plant stem.
An important reminder is that since milfoil can propagate via cuttings, the milfoil that is pulled from the lakebed must be removed from the lake for composting away from the shoreline.
Source: Candlewood Lake Authority
Preventing An Invasion.
1. Public awareness of the necessity to remove weed fragments at boat landings.
2. Manage "outside" boats and trailers that may spread the weed from other bodies of water.
3. Commit to the protection of plant beds from personal water craft and boaters..ripping up the plants will spread them.
4. Prevent indiscriminate and sloppy plant control that disturbs these beds and allows floating pieces to reestablish and grow.
5. Institute watershed management programs to keep nutrients from reaching lakes and stimulating milfoil colonies.
Source: Sylvia Lake Online
Our Company
Waters Edge Restoration & Management is a green limited liability corporation registered in the state of Connecticut.
Mission Statement:
Water's Edge Restoration & Management is dedicated to preserving lifes most precious commodity WATER. To accomplish this WERM utilizes chemically free, ecologically friendly systems to ensure water quality for life sustaining and recreational purposes.
Citizenship:
WERM LLC. understands the importance of giving back on a local basis and to its business constituents. Employees are encouraged to offer their time, knowledge and caring to a cause in which they believe. They decide how the resources available could best be used to help local communities.
Water's Edge Restoration& Management also contributes to many large-scale projects that impact the world by providing research materials to researchers. The company is the promoter of corporate citizenship initiatives to raise environmental awareness, and a "green site" with environmentally focused tips.
Internally, WERM LLC has set up a recycling program that provides homeowners, nurseries and landscapers with harvested weeds as an organic fertilizer. The company is also exploring alternative end uses that include such potential gradient applications as facial creams and medicine.
Our People
Our Management:
Jason Houghtaling, President and founder of WERM was inspired to start the company because of his passion for water and the environment. For three years, Jason held many senior project management positions with companies that serviced property owners in the management of their lake front properties. Jason is a member of the North American Lake Management Society (NALMS) and Northeast Aquatic Plant Management Society (NEAMPS). Interestingly, Jason’s career began as a successful NASCAR driver.
Bruce Lockhart, CLM, Executive Vice-President and founding member of WERM has an unmatched professional background having served over 10 years as Executive Director of Candlewood Lake Authority, as well as Michigan’s Upper Peninsula as Director of Parks and Recreation for Menominee County. In 1995 Mr. Lockhart organized and served as founding President of the Connecticut Federation of Lakes, Inc. He is also a charter member of the New England Chapter of the North American Lake Management Society representing the state of Connecticut. As head of Lockhart Environmental, Bruce developed an expertise as well as gaining a lot of experience in the control of invasive aquatic plants.
is Vice President Marketing overseeing all marketing, advertising, promotional and public relations activities for WERM. Additionally, he is responsible for eco-imagination environmental initiatives and the company’s expansion into secondary uses of the invasive plants harvested.
He began his career with Karalekas & Company Marketing & Management Consultants as a senior marketing officer having moved up from executive assistant to the President before joining WERM LLC.
He is a graduate of Hofstra University with degrees in International Business.
Sebastian Czuszel
Board Managers:
George S. Karalekas is the CEO and the Chairman of the Board, a post he was elected to in February 2009. Mr. Karalekas has held several senior level management positions, including roles with two of the largest multi-national advertising agencies-Grey Advertising and DMB&B (D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles). He also served as Director of Advertising & Marketing for the Canada Dry Corporation for five years and as Media Director for four National Presidential campaigns. He has been heavily involved with companies who are committed to eco-friendly environment, among the General Electric, Met Life, Bristol-Myers Squibb and General Motors. Mr. Karalekas is well versed with aquatic weed problems as a property owner on Candlewood Lake for 33 years.
Amy Chin, Vice-President/Secretary of WERM has degrees in Biology and Marine Sciences from Northeastern University. Her background includes working as a research biologist for the National Institute of Health (NIH) and at Harvard University in the area of "fish" data base management. Amy's professional background in water related activities encompasses a full range of activities. Among them, Aquacultural Manager involving raising fish for human consumption as well as water quality monitoring for aquatic life. Amy also is a scuba certified diver (PADI) and an American Red Cross Professional Rescuer and CPR/First Aid Instructor.
Research
Candlewood Lake Authority:
The Candlewood Lake Authority provides lake, shoreline and watershed management to foster the preservation and enhancement of recreational, economic, scenic, public safety and environmental values of the Lake for the City of Danbury and the Towns of Brookfield, New Fairfield, New Milford and Sherman in cooperation with the State of Connecticut and Northeast Utilities.
Don't feed the lake
The Eurasian water milfoil in Candlewood Lake is able to grow because the lake has the nutrients in its ecosystem to support that growth. Those nutrients can come from a variety of sources, some of which we can't control. However, one that we have control over is our use of lawn fertilizers. The same nutrients in lawn fertilizers that make your lawn grow faster and greener may be helping the algae and plant growth in the lake to do the same. After a rainstorm, fertilizers can enter the lake through runoff from the lawns of waterfront property or from a home in the lake's shores should those fertilizers wash into storm drains or stream that to Candlewood Lake.
Once the nutrients are in the lake's ecosystem they become part of the cycle. An aquatic plant may use some of those nutrients return to the lake's ecosystem. Using a zero or low phosphorous fertilizer, if you must fertilize, is one small thing you can do to reduce the risk of unwanted nutrients entering the lake's ecosystem.
Biofuel Potential of Another Invasive Species Investigated: Eurasian Milfoil
A few months back the idea of using kudzu for biofuel was receiving a good deal of attention, with one entrepreneur attempting to market kudzunol. Now another invasive species in the US Northwest is being investigated for use as a biofuel: Eurasian Milfoil. The water plant has been infesting rivers and lakes for three decades now, and a good deal of money is spent removing it every year. What if that plant could be put to better use? Thats the question that was asked by a couple from northeast Washington asked:
...got the idea while I was reading a document about biodiversity. I made a note in the margin, asking how can you come at problems like milfoil and handle them more comprehensively? [...] I mean, we already have this stuff. I was wondering if we could use it for something.
Read more about the research at :: Herald.net
Affiliations
WERM LLC. is proud of the relationships it has built with leading agencies and organizations across the country. We utilize these partners to expand, enhance and gain knowledge in order to provide the latest techniques, treatments and controls on aquatic issues.
NALMS:
The purpose of the Society is to forge partnerships among citizens, scientists, and professionals to foster the management and protection of lakes and reservoirs for today and tomorrow.
NEAPMS:
The purpose of the Society shall be to assist in the management of aquatic vegetation:
Woodridge Lake:
Connecticuts premier private lake community.
Litchfield Hills has been rated one of the cleanest bodies of water in the state, a lake so clear you can often see the bottom in five to ten feet of water -- with a five-mile shoreline, graced by sandy swimming beaches, lovely homes on generously portioned lots, all of it centered around a new and spacious clubhouse.
Crystal Lake:
Mission:
It is the Mission of the CRYSTAL LAKE ASSOCIATION OF ELLINGTON, CT, to inform everyone of the issues and news pertaining to Crystal Lake and the surrounding watershed.
Purpose:
The Purpose of the CRYSTAL LAKE ASSOCIATION is to preserve, protect and improve Crystal Lake and it's surrounding area and promote the general welfare of the property, it's owners and residents.
Connecticut Federation of Lakes
The CFL is a partner, a resource, a sounding board, a clearing house and even an advocate in local, state, and national matters as they pertain to CT lakes. The CFL wants to help you in your efforts to protect your lake, pond and/or watershed to be healthier now and in the future.
The CFL is the Voice for Connecticut Lakes.
The mission of the CFL is to work with you and for you for healthier lakes and watersheds on local, state and even federal levels.
Friends Of The Lake
Friends of the lake is a non-profit organization founded in 2003 to improve the conditions on Lake Lillinonah for the recreational enjoyment for those who use it, and for the long-term environmental protection of this beautiful section of the Housatonic River.
Lake Lillinonah Authority
The Lake Lillinonah Authority is funded by the towns of Bridgewater, Brookfield, New Milford, Newtown, Southbury, and Roxbury to oversee environmental, safety and recreational needs of Lake Lillinonah.
Lake Waramaug Task Force
The Lake Waramaug Task Force is a non-profit organization of volunteers and scientists that provides leadership in restoring and maintaining the ecology and water quality of Lake Waramaug and its watershed.
Candlewood Lake Authority
Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce
The Greater Danbury Chamber of Commerce is the largest regional business advocacy organization in northern Fairfield county representing the ten town Connecticut business community of Bethel, Bridgewater, Brookfield, Danbury, New Fairfield, New Milford, Newtown, Redding, Ridgefield, Sherman and the surrounding area.
Media
Contact
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Water's Edge
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