Now that the lake level staff gauge installation has been approved by DEP, the remaining requirement of the Clary Lake Water Level Order already under way but yet to be completed is a Water Level Management Plan [WLMP], defined in Special Condition #5 of the WLO. The Board has been working on it off and on for most of the winter and it is now in the final review stage. We’ll make it available as soon as it is finished and has been approved by the DEP. Copies will also be posted at the Whitefield and Jefferson Town Offices.

One of the requirements of the WLMP is that we develop a procedure for alerting people 1) of possible flooding events and 2) repair or maintenance procedures on the dam that are expected to appreciably affect lake levels. We propose to 1) post notices on this website and on Facebook and 2) send email notices to those people for whom we have email addresses and by postcard to those people without email. We’re in the process of setting up this notification system now and will start testing it in the near future. I’ll soon be adding a page on this site to keep track of water level related events and notices sent.

We are required to provide notice only to littoral and riparian property owners (people who own property either adjoining the lake shore or along the outlet stream) but we’ll probably include all CLA members regardless, because we can. Once initial testing is complete, don’t expect a lot of emails from us! While we understand the need for people to be kept informed of what’s happening with the dam and the importance of being able to contact people around the lake in the event of significant water-related events, we’ve no intention of micro-managing the lake level and we honestly don’t expect a lot of significant water-related events worth notifying anyone about to occur on anything like a regular basis. The most likely reason for a notice to be sent would be potential flooding from a significant precipitation event such as a hurricane or tropical storm which is expected to result in a rapid and significant lake level rise, and significant outflows from the dam though exactly what constitutes “significant outflows” has yet to be determined. We also don’t expect there to be ANY repair or maintenance procedures that will appreciably affect the lake level, but if there are, we’ll certainly let you know about them.

I’ll start sending test emails soon, perhaps as early as this weekend, and I will post a notice here and on Facebook when an email is sent. If you think you should be receiving an email but haven’t, please check your spam folder and also email me as we may not have your email address on file. The testing phase will probably involve 2-3 or more emails and take about a week, depending on how much trouble we have getting everything working right. If you do receive an email, all you need to do is open it, and click on the link provided. We appreciate your cooperation! At some point we’ll also send out a test postcard to those people for whom we do not have email addresses on file. For obvious reasons, we’d like to keep the number of postcards we have to send to a minimum so if you get a postcard and also have an email address, please consider sharing it with us.