Paul Kelley attended the Whitefield Selectman’s meeting last Tuesday night to see if the Town would be willing to assume responsibility for the operation of the Clary Lake Dam and its water control features in the event of an emergency. You may recall that finding a designee is was requirement “H” of the Water Level Management Plan called for in the Clary Lake Water Level Order. The Order suggested that such secondary designees may include but are not limited to the Town of Jefferson, the Town of Whitefield or the Clary Lake Association. As usual, Lincoln County News reporter Kathy Onorato was there covering the excitement:
Clary Lake Dam representative says he’d ‘bail’ if Whitefield assumes responsibilities
The Attorney General’s office sent me a copy of an 
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 Those that didn’t are probably best left unpublished anyways.
Pleasant Pond Mill LLC and Aquafortis Associates LLC, represented by Anthony Buxton of PretiFlaherty, have filed an appeal of the Clary Lake water level order in Superior Court, Lincoln County. The sole respondent is the 
I have sent the following missive off to the Editor of the Lincoln County News with the expectation that it will be published in next week’s paper. I’m posting it here, now, because I don’t want to wait that long to get my opinion out in the open. I also want to get a few more of my thoughts down on paper, so to speak, while it’s all fresh in my mind..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:
Now that the State’s Water Level Order has been issued, the dam owner faces a number of daunting tasks and a challenging time line to complete the work of bringing the dam property into compliance with the Order. The Clary Lake Association has made it publicly known that we are ready and willing to assist the dam owner in completing this work but to date they have not expressed any interest in having us help them. It also remains to be seen just how willing the Membership really is to help Mr. Kelley with his problem. Nonetheless the Clary Lake Association is confident that sooner or later we will be asked for help or even asked to take over ownership of the dam completely and feel therefore that it is in our current best interests and long term goals to start acting like the stewards of Clary Lake that we claim to be.
There is an article in today’s Kennebec Journal about the issuance of the Final Clary Lake Water Level Order. While it contains a few mistakes, it’s pretty much factually accurate and contains a link to the actual ORDER document. I did speak briefly with KJ correspondent Paul Koenig about the order, shortly after it was issued. I gave him a few choice quotes which apparently he found not to be particularly quotable…
At a little before 2:30 PM this afternoon the Department of Environmental Protection issued the FINAL Clary Lake Water Level Order. I have scanned it quickly as have a couple of other people and we can’t see any changes between today’s final order and the Draft order issued back on December 19th. I will be reading it over carefully again shortly.
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 
Well Mr. Kelley did finally submit his written comments at 4:40 PM this afternoon, but only to a subset of the addresses on the Service List which incidentally didn’t include my address or the addresses of a number of other people. I’m sure this was a mistake and I would prefer to think that Mr. Kelley is just email-challenged rather than that he intentionally left a number of people off the distribution list.
I have submitted comments to the DEP On behalf of the Petitioners on the 
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 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.
At 2:15 this afternoon, Beth Callahan sent out the Department’s Procedural Order 9 being their response to 
After much consideration and after re-reading the motion several times, I decided that I must object on principle to Pleasant Pond Mill LLC’s request for an extension to the comment period. To that end, I have just sent Petitioner’s objection to the Service List. It’s time for these delaying tactics to stop. That said, I fully expect Ms. Parent to grant an extension, but not for 30 days.