Back around the beginning of April I posted about how the Damariscotta Lake Watershed Association (DLWA) is gearing up to conduct a Watershed Survey. To kick it off they scheduled a workshop to train volunteers how to identify, describe, and characterize typical non-point sources of pollution. When I learned about the training I contacted Garrison Beck, Senior Program Manager at DLWA to see about sitting in on the training. He thought it was a fine idea. The workshop was scheduled for April 26th at the DLWA headquarters over on Damariscotta Lake.

Yesterday Colin Caissie and I attended the training session. There were a couple of dozen people there including a number of technical folks from DEP and some other DLWA members who had been previously trained. It started at 9AM and we spent the first 2.5 hours being lectured to about types of erosion and typical mitigation techniques, and then we broke out into groups of 3-4 volunteers and a technical lead person and then headed out for 3+ hours of field work. We headed for home a little after 3 PM having.

A non-point-source (NPS) watershed survey is all about locating and categorizing soil erosion- type, size, severity, etc., and making recommendations for how to go about mitigating it. It was a totally worthwhile experience and I’m glad I went. I told Garrison that when/if I got a chance in the next month I’d come down and spend a few hours working on the survey. They need all the help they can get given the size of their task: Damariscotta Lake watershed is about 29,700 acres (46.5 square miles) compared to Clary Lake’s 6,272 acres (9.8 square miles) and they have THOUSANDS of lakefront properties to evaluate whereas we have 108. A daunting task. Their goal is to get the entire watershed surveyed by the end of May and they’re going to need a lot of help to meet that goal. I’ll let folks know if/when I decide to go down and help out in case anyone wants to go along for the ride and learn something about identifying, categorizing, and mitigating non-point source pollution sites.

I had hoped to learn more about phosphorus transport mechanisms. I guess I’m going to have to do some more research on my own. The Clary Lake Association conducted a watershed survey and we’re gearing up to conduct an update later this year. So far there are about 10 Association members signed up to work on the survey. If anyone wants to get involved in this initiative, send me an email or use our Contact Form.