Watershed Survey Update

The following is an update on the September Watershed Survey from Sandy Mason, who has been working tirelessly to coordinate these efforts to improve the quality of our lake. If you're on Facebook, be sure to also "like" and "follow" the WLA there for more frequent updates from Sandy as well. 

Thanks to the 27 hardy volunteers who performed the survey and their willingness to show up regardless of the fact that Hurricane Dorian was just off the coast on September 7 and no one knew that morning what the weather would be. The training that morning took place at the Viles Arboretum, and the Cushnoc Brewing Annex was willing to be the turn in location for all of the survey books at the end of the day. There was a total of seven technical people to head each team, three from DEP and four others who were hired for the day. I’m happy to say that the survey was almost totally completed that day except for the White & Bradstreet property, which we arranged in advance to do on a weekday as it is 25 acres, and some remaining property on the Young Road and Weeks Mills/Albee Road area. Wendy Garland, Amanda Pratt, and I did those on September 17. I am also happy to report that White & Bradstreet’s “junkyard” passed with flying colors as they have spent about $100,000 to meet DEP requirements over the last several years. I can assure everyone that there is “no oil leaking from junk vehicles, etc.” In fact, their’s is a fine way to show how to do things right.

Now Rob Deschamps has taken on the huge task of entering all of the data onto Excel spreadsheets and coordinating the photos taken of each site, and I can’t thank him enough for volunteering for this critical job. Rob is finalizing this with Amanda now.

The next step in this process is preparing a final report on the survey, which generally costs about $3,000 to $5,000 and takes several months to complete as all the data needs to be analyzed, categorized, and printed; graphs need to be prepared; and recommendations made. However, in order to move this along more quickly and save money in the process, Amanda from DEP said she would help Rob, Alison Ames, and me to write the report. We are now moving into this stage. When the report is completed we will be able to start the process of contacting the property owners, City, State, and Road Associations to let them know the problems identified to begin correcting them. This also keeps $3,300 remaining in the survey account.

The FINAL step in this process is a Watershed Based Plan, which must be done by technical people from several sources. This will be a comprehensive plan for the lake overall. Such a plan is estimated to cost up to $30,000 and is generally paid for with grant money. However, upon checking into grants, this could take up to 2 ½ years if we wait for grant funds. With this in mind I had a meeting with City Manager Bill Bridgeo on September 19, and he was in agreement that this was too long to wait and we should proceed to raise the funds ourselves. He also said he would be very willing to help with this and arranged for me to give a presentation to the City Council meeting on September 26. The Council was also very supportive when I shared some of the DEP's presentation showing the tremendous negative effect on property values by algae blooms.

Upon DEP’s recommendations I have been in touch with Jen Jespersen from Ecological Instincts to come up with an estimated cost for doing the Plan, as it is impossible to begin raising funds until we have that estimate. She is working on this now.

None of this would have been possible without the physical and financial support of so many WLA members, and we are ever so grateful.