Plans for the 2024 watershed survey are well underway. We applied for a grant from Maine Lakes and Lake Stewards of Maine to help cover the cost of the project and yesterday we received a nice letter (at left) and a $350 check from them. We’re especially grateful for the support of these two organizations; the total cost of the project is expected to be around $2000 so this financial assistance is most welcome. If you have trouble reading the letter, here’s a link to a PDF.

We have approximately 15 volunteers gearing up to assist with the survey; they’ll be undergoing training in the next couple of weeks. The survey itself will be conducted on Saturday, May 4th and letters have already been sent to approximately 350 people who own land in the Clary Lake watershed describing the project and giving them an opportunity to opt out of the survey if they wish. As stated in the letter, our volunteers are only interested in locating and documenting areas of significant non-point source pollution within our lake watershed. Once the survey is completed, a report will be prepared and recommendations made regarding how to fix the problems we have found. If necessary, we will work with landowners to find reasonable, cost-effective solutions. However, acting on our recommendations is completely voluntary and no one will be compelled to take any action. Information gathered in the survey will not be used for any regulatory purposes. We don’t expect many people to opt-out.

The featured image is a “Hillshade” image of the southeast end of Clary Lake. It shows ground relieve much better than aerial photographs. You can see several old gravel pits and gullies in stark relief. Images like this are being used to identify areas of interest in our watershed.