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I was pleased to see the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, Patricia Aho, recognize the Maine Volunteer Lakes Monitoring Program on her official blog. Jack Holland brought this to my attention the other day with the comment “I would agree with the “trained” statement, but question the “provided with equipment” statement. The Clary Lake Association has been a participating member of the VLMP since the very start of the program back in 1975. See our Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program page for more information.
December 30, 2013
Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program
I was excited to meet with Scott Williams and Roberta Hill of the Maine Volunteer Lakes Monitoring Program (VLMP) earlier this month. Often noted nationally as the gold-standard of citizen lakes monitoring, VLMP is a network of over 1,000 volunteers located across the state that have been trained and provided with equipment to collect data from Maine lakes. Their scientific data on water quality indicators is critical assistance for DEP. We cannot do our work without VLMP and rely on their quality science, passion and training to ensure thousands of volunteers (some of whom count their service in decades!) are engaged and eager to assist each year. With a very small budget, the work of VLMP is an outstanding service to Maine by being at the forefront of keeping our lakes healthy and safe. DEP is proud to support VLMP’s work to protect Maine’s lakes and look forward to continuing this successful partnership.
via Commissioner’s Corner, Office of the Commissioner, Maine DEP.
There is an article in this week’s Lincoln County News about the appeal filed by Pleasant Pond Mill LLC in Lincoln County Superior court. The article, written by Dominik Lobkowicz, does a pretty good job of distilling the 27 page filing into something manageable. I spoke to Mr. Lobkowicz yesterday afternoon shortly after receiving word of the filing but before I’d had a chance to look it over. I sent him some of my thoughts on it in an email last night, a few of which made it into the paper. Those that didn’t are probably best left unpublished anyways.
There’s a article in this week’s Lincoln County News by Dominik Lobkowicz about the 
The Maine Lakes Society
David Chase has compiled a pretty cool video contrasting the water levels of Clary Lake between 1997 and 2013. He has posted it on the Clary Lake Association Google+ Community. He did it using a Google Earth flyover “tour.” Very impressive, and the comparison in water levels between then and now is stark. Thanks for sharing David!.jpg)
There is an article on the front page of this week’s Lincoln County News about the recently issued water level order for Clary Lake. I was interviewed at length yesterday morning by the reporter, Dominik Lobkowicz and I gather from statements in the article that he also subsequently interviewed Paul Kelley, who continues to posture and complain as if people still cared about what he thought:
I have set up a 
With the lake level higher than it’s been in several years, it follows that outflows from the lake should also be at levels not seen for quite some time. Well I had occasion to measure the outflow from Clary Lake this morning, out of curiosity as much as anything and sure enough, based on my calculations the current outflows as of the time of this writing are on the order of 83 cfs (cubic feet per second). The raw figure I arrived at was 98 cfs but it is customary to scale that figure down by as much as 15% to allow for flow losses resulting from friction on the sides and bottom of the stream which inevitably result in uneven water velocity and a lower overall flow value.
I’ve been a little busy this week so I’m just now getting around to posting about the latest article in this week’s Lincoln County News. This one covers the recently submitted final comments on the .jpg)
At my request, Beth Callahan has forwarded me a compilation of all the comments received by the Department on the DRAFT Clary Lake water level order. These include 3 emailed comments sent directly to Beth Callahan that, through understandable oversight, never made it to the Service List. These include emails from Senator Christopher Johnson, Steven Sheppard of the 
Paul Koenig of the Kennebec Journal has written yet another article that has appeared online today and should be in the print edition tomorrow. According to the article, Senator Christopher Johnson, the US Fish & Wildlife Service, and the National Marine Fisheries Service also submitted comments. I was not aware of this. I’m looking into it. In the meantime, here’s the article:
There is a new article by Paul Koenig in yesterday’s Sunday January 5th Kennebec Journal about Pleasant Pond Mill LLC’s travails in obtaining more time to comment on the Draft water level order. I was interviewed for the article by Mr. Koenig on Friday. I didn’t get a Sunday paper but a few people who did said they didn’t see it in the paper so it may only have appeared online. In any case, here it is:
The Town of Whitefield has been publishing a monthly newsletter since last July and they’re quite enjoyable. If you happen by the North Whitefield Superette you’ll find the latest issue on the counter, free of charge. Otherwise they’re available online on the 
The DEP responded in record time to Pleasant Pond Mill LLC’s motion to withdraw, reconsider, or elucidate sent to the Service List earlier this morning. I expected a quick response, but I didn’t expect them to dismiss it so perfunctorily and with so little fanfare. They did not bother with a procedural order, they simply sent this short email:
At 9:33 AM this morning Paul Kelley of Pleasant Pond Mill LLC sent a message to the Service List in which he filed a 5 page Motion with the Department of Environmental Protection addressed to Hearing Officer Heather Parent and Project Manager Beth Callahan. If anyone had any questions as to whether Paul Kelley was going to quietly submit to the Department of Environmental Protection’s water level order, this should dispel them. I certainly didn’t have any. The Motion is as follows:
Long about this time of year it is customary to reflect on the past and consider what the future holds so I thought I would do just that. It makes even more sense now considering we’ve reached not just the end of another year but for all intents and purposes, the end of the Clary Lake water level petition initiative as well. This is a huge milestone that seemed almost unattainable just a few short weeks ago. It’s amazing how one’s outlook can change so quickly.