Organizers had urged participants to avoid the pond, but the authorities say some trampled landscaping, killed koi fish, destroyed ornate floating Victorian lilies, damaged planters and broke a pipe that caused the pond's water level to fall drastically.
"It kills our fish, destroys our skin, spoils our streams, we cannot drink," says Saturday Pirri, a local palm wine tapper.
But once outside of its natural river habitats in China, Korea and Russia, it is a rapidly reproducing predator with such a voracious appetite it can wipe out entire schools of fish and destroy an ecosystem.
If you use wood that is too soft, the fish could destroy the lure.
A decade ago, Andrew Bentley, a scientist who manages the fish collections at the University of Kansas Biodiversity Institute in Lawrence, received an e-mail asking for help replacing preserved fish specimens destroyed by a fire at a museum in India.
About 175,000 fish were destroyed because of the infection.
The petitioner, Kevin McAllister, who uses the title Peconic Baykeeper, contends that the county program is killing fish and destroying wetlands.
What is certain is that in the last decade of her life, Mrs Root set up a local task force to wage a harsh but ecologically admirable campaign against fish poachers destroying the lake's resources.
According to one version circulated on social media but strongly denied by police, one of the officers had demanded a bribe and the fish was destroyed when Fikri refused.
