Spokane man invents new tool to tackle waterfront weeds

Two years ago, Bret Britz decided he’d had just about enough.

Standing on the dock of his Sacheen Lake house, Britz struggled to pull in a heavy rake clogged up with a thick matte of waterlogged weeds – known by many in the area as muck.

Muck is a constant challenge for homeowners on waterfront properties, with some going so far as to create makeshift rakes out of things like old bedsprings.

The latest in a long line of failed lakefront weed management supplies, Britz’s rake was relegated to gather dust in his shed, leaving him to continue on his search for an environmentally friendly way to clear the weeds that choked the water in front of his property.

Fed up with each supposedly miraculous product he found online, Britz decided to turn his mechanical engineering training on the problem. After several prototypes and a series of tweaks, the Weed Ray was born.

The Weed Ray consists of two razor wings attached to an adjustable pole that skims across the water – like the manta ray it was named for – until it sits above the clump of weeds the user wants to cut away.

Unlike other weed rakes that must be thrown, Britz said, the Weed Ray is designed to help directly target problem weeds with a number of features meant to make the tool easy for anyone to use, such as a lightweight, compact frame with razor blades that safely fold away.

Britz first introduced the Weed Ray at the Spokane Boat Show in January with his business partner and longtime friend, Bryan Garrett.

“We thought it would be a good way to get ourselves out there,” Garrett said Wednesday. “We didn’t expect to sell many because who’s thinking about their weeds in the middle of a snowstorm?”

But to their surprise, Garrett and Britz sold out of their inventory at the show. They even cultivated fans in the Spokane County Sheriff’s Marine Enforcement Unit, which Garrett said occasionally will hand out flyers for the Weed Ray while they’re out helping boaters.

The Weed Ray has another fan in Scott Jungblom, a resource biologist with the Pend Oreille Public Utilities Department.

After his supervisor read about Britz’s product in a Sacheen Lake homeowner’s newsletter, Jungblom knew that he had to try the Weed Ray out. Charged with conducting public outreach and education to residents about the issues muck – and especially the invasive Eurasian milfoil – can cause, Jungblom demonstrated for residents how to use a variety of tools at the fourth annual aquatic plant management fair Wednesday in Usk, Washington.

Muck isn’t just a nuisance for homeowners who must deal with tangled boat propellers. The dense thickets of weeds that grow by docks and shorelines can also pose a drowning risk, and milfoil growths threaten to choke off entire aquatic ecosystems, Jungblom said. In order to clear an area of milfoil, it is important to use a tool like the Weed Ray that can pull weeds out by the root and make sure they are removed from the water to prevent regrowth, he said.

While his department used to deploy boats to treat public boat launches and highly trafficked areas as part of a licensing requirement, Jungblom said, the department has switched to only covering public areas in order to better manage its resources. It now focuses on educational outreach.

Easy-to-use products like the Weed Ray are also important because it limits the use of harsh herbicides, Jungblom said. While some like the Kalispel Tribe strongly object to the use of herbicides, they can be safe to use, Jungblom said. It is when every member of the homeowners’ association contracts to have their properties treated that harmful amounts of herbicide enter the environment, which is something residents should try to avoid, he said.

Garrett said about 40 people attended the informational session on the Weed Ray, and about 10 people came down to the waterfront by the Camas Center on the Kalispel reservation, where the fair was held, to try it out.

Having the option to try out the Weed Ray is a big benefit of being a local product, especially since most rakes must be purchased from out-of-state and can be difficult to return, Garrett said.

“Almost every product is out of Michigan,” he said, laughing. “It’s like only people in Michigan and Wisconsin have to deal with weeds.”