04 June 2016: Early Summer Clary Lake Water Quality Update

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Clary Lake Total Phosphorus

And it’s not good news. We’ve received the results back on our first Total Phosphorus (TP) sample for 2016, taken last month on May 20th. At 22 μg/L (micrograms per liter), TP is up at levels typically not seen until mid to late summer. The chart at left has been updated to include this latest data point, you can see where it plots up: it’s the first (only) dot in 2016, furthest to the right. We usually take 3 [the_tooltip text=”core” tooltip=”a sample of the whole water column from the surface down to 7 meters” url=”” background=”” color=””] samples of lake water each season for Phosphorus testing, and send them off to the State Lab for analysis. In the early spring, TP values on the order of 14 to 18 μg/L are more “normal” (for some value of the term “normal”) though in recent years they have been trending higher. Last spring on April 30th TP was 14 μg/L and 17 μg/L on April 25th the year before that. TP values above 18 μg/L typically mean an algae bloom is on the way. This does not bode well for water quality this coming summer.

Phosphorus is the primary nutrient responsible for algae growth in lakes. It comes from various sources including runoff containing eroded soil and sediments. Under conditions of low dissolved oxygen it can be released from bottom sediments in the lake. Wave action on exposed bottom sediments can also result in Phosphorus being released into the lake. Low water conditions resulting in exposed bottom sediments and reduced lake volume certainly contribute to higher Phosphorus concentrations.

David Hodsdon, Jack Holland and I went out yesterday morning for our regular biweekly water quality monitoring session. The transparency of the lake water has already dropped from 4.1 meters to 3.65 meters since May 20th . Data collected back through 2012 is available on the Clary Lake Water Quality Data page. Data back to 1975 is available upon request.

03 June 2016: June 1st Deadline Comes and Goes With Nothing to Show For It

We’ve all been anxiously waiting the June 1st deadline when lawyers for Paul Kelley (Pleasant Pond Mill LLC) and Richard Smith (Aquafortis Associates LLC) were supposed to submit a plan to DEP for repairing the Clary Lake dam and raising the water level of Clary Lake. Earlier this spring PretiFlaherty asked for and received several Stays of the proceedings in Superior Court, first on February 29th for a stay until March 26th and most recently on April 14th for a stay until June 1st. These stays were ostensibly to give them and their clients time to work on their proposal without having the lawsuit hanging over their heads. The State agreed to both Stay requests, and their response to the latest clearly revealed DEP’s deep-seated frustration over lack of progress and their belief that June 1st was the latest they could afford to wait to receive a proposal and still have time to get the dam repaired and the lake level restored this summer. We were led to believe there would be no more stays. We have been told that Mr. Kelley has been trying to raise funds to repair the dam. We have been told repeatedly that the DEP Commissioner is deeply committed to getting the lake level restored and the Water Level Order upheld this summer. In recent months, DEP has publicly maintained an assertive stance that gave us reason to feel cautiously optimistic that finally, after years of maneuvering, come June 1st we were going to see some real progress.

It was not to be. At least not yet apparently. June 1st has come and gone and no formal plan to repair the dam has been submitted to DEP. It remains to be seen what DEP will decide to do next. We will know more after the upcoming Status Conference in Superior Court which is scheduled for this coming Tuesday June 7th, at 3:30 PM.

Stay tuned.

02 June 2016: Medius L3C fails to file Annual Report

According to a representative at the Bureau of Corporations, Elections and Commissions, the current holder of the mortgage on the Clary Lake dam, Medius L3C, has failed to file their required 2016 Annual Report by the June 1st deadline. This oversight will cost them $25.

Medius L3C has been shrouded in mystery since the corporation was formed back on March 18, 2015, and today, almost a year and a half later, still little is known about the company. The company has no place of business, no phone number. The owner of the company is unknown; the members, if any, are unknown. It does however have an email address: mediusl3c@gmail.com. The company has had 4 Registered Agents since it’s inception 14 months ago, 3 in fact in the past 7 months. The current Registered Agent is Attorney William Logan of Wiscasset who, ironically, was the Registered Agent for the Clary Lake Association when it first incorporated back in 1995 during the Presidency of Arthur Enos. Inquiring minds have been waiting (patiently!) for Medius to file their Annual Report to find out just a little bit more about the company. I guess they’ll have to wait a little longer.

There can be little doubt that the company was formed for the express purpose of taking over the note on the Clary Lake dam from Art Enos (see “Mortgage Assignment“) with the ultimate goal of owning the dam outright through a Power of Sale foreclosure (see: “03 February 2016 Lincoln County News: Result of Clary Lake Dam Auction Unknown“). That didn’t work, and by all accounts, Paul Kelley/PPM are still the record owner of the dam.

What happens now is anybody’s guess.

May 2016 Water Level Chart Archived

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May 2016

I’ve archived the May 2016 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable features of the May chart are the lack of rainfall for the month and the inexorable fall of the lake level despite the gate having been mostly closed on the afternoon of Thursday, May 19th. In fact, after the gate closure, there was almost no noticeable reduction in the rate at which the lake lost water during the month (0.025′ before vs. 0.019′ after). The lake level started out at -47.88″ below the top of the dam and fell an average of only 0.02′ per day (less than 1/4″) ending up at -55.68″ below the top of the dam, for a total loss of -7.8″. The lake fell 28 out of 31 days during the month while remaining unchanged on only 3 days. Not once during the month did the lake level rise. 

I wrote about the gate closure back on May 21st (see: “Clary Lake Dam’s Gate Almost But Not Quite Closed“). I presume the dam operator left the gate partly open to maintain minimum outlet flows as required by the Clary Lake water level order, but clearly the gate was left open too much: in my estimation, net outflows (including evaporation) have exceeded inflows by as much as 5 CFS (Cubic Feet per Second). Any way you look at it, the simple fact that the lake level continues to fall indicates the gate opening is too great: minimum flows are never supposed to exceed inflows. For more information about minimum flows and where they come from see Minimum Flows Explained.

Average rainfall for May is around 3.7″ but we received only 1.79″ of rain for the entire month, considerably less than 1/2 the normal amount. Less precipitation means less runoff obviously; it is likely that if we’d been receiving the normal amount of rain for the month that the lake level would have more or less stabilized once the gate was lowered.

A Quick Reminder: Signup for Post Notices

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Not a working form! Look on the right side of the page!

A quick reminder to those of you who don’t want to miss anything new on the Clary Lake Association website but can’t seem to find your way here on a regular basis, you can signup to receive email notifications of new posts on the site. If you want to try this out, on the right-hand sidebar on (almost) any page on the site, usually right under the Weather “widget” look for the “Subscribe to Clary Lake Association News via Email” item (pictured above). Just enter your email address in the field provided and click the “Subscribe” button. You’ll shortly receive an email with the subject line “Confirm your subscription for Clary Lake Association” that provides a “Confirm Follow” button to click. Rest assured that your email address will not get shared or revealed to anyone. This will not generate spam or unsolicited emails, only notifications of new posts.

Once you’ve subscribed, you’ll receive a single email when a new article is posted to the site including an excerpt to pique your curiosity, and a link to click on to take you to the article. At the bottom of the email is an Unsubscribe link in case you want to stop receiving emails and a “manage your email settings” link to fine-tune how you receive notifications.

I hope you consider taking advantage of this neat site feature; a couple of dozen people have already signed up. This service is provided by WordPress, the people that are write the software used on this site. If you’re a busy person or just can’t remember to check here as often as you would like, try out post notifications. I’ll be posting a link to this post under the “Site Help” main menu heading.

28 May 2016: Happy Memorial Day Weekend

Happy Memorial Day Weekend everyone, from the Clary Lake Association. Just one minor problem: with the lake level down 54″+ below the top of the dam, how are you going to get your boat onto the water?

Earlier today there was a jet ski out on the lake. Not sure where they put in, but they’re small enough you can horse them into the water about any place. The only boat I’ve seen on the lake beside my own in recent weeks put in at the private launch over on the Enos property.

2016 Clary Lake Association Annual Meeting Scheduled

This year’s Annual meeting of the Clary Lake Association will be on Saturday, August 6th at 2:00 PM at the home of Erin Grimshaw and Christina Bishop (and their three sons) located at 739 Gardiner Road (aka Route 126) in Jefferson. Their home is located about 1/3 of a mile west of (towards Whitefield) the intersection of Route 126 and 215. Most of you will know the place: this is the house at the lower end of the old MacDonald hay field overlooking Clary Lake (picture, below left), and at the end of a looooong driveway. Andy Goss built it a few years ago; Erin and Christina have owned it since 2013. Here’s a Google Map showing the location. If you need help finding the place call 207-549-5991 for directions. The rain date, on the off chance it is raining on Saturday, is the same time, same place, next day. I can’t remember the last time the Annual meeting was rained out. I don’t know if it’s ever happened.

DSC_0502 (Custom)As usual, there will be a pot luck supper at the conclusion of the meeting so bring your favorite casserole, salad, desert, bread, dip, road kill, or what have you and plan to stay awhile and socialize.

We’ll be sending out the 2016 Spring/Summer Newsletter in a couple of weeks or thereabouts, and will include some additional information about the Annual meeting and what to expect. Included in the newsletter will be a membership form for the upcoming 2016/2017 membership year. Dues are still only $25 per year and the membership year runs from annual meeting to annual meeting, therefore in order to be able to participate in this meeting, you have to be a paid-up member for the coming year.  We encourage you to mail in your membership form prior to the annual meeting. A lot of you like to renew your membership at the meeting, and that is fine too but we ask that you come a early to register and get settled as we have a lot of business to conduct and will want to start the meeting promptly at 2:00 pm. The registration table will be setup by 1:00 pm. Continue reading →

21 May 2016: Clary Lake Water Quality Monitoring Resumes for 2016

IMG_20160520_084140 (Custom)On Friday May 20th David Hodsdon and I (Jack Holland was not able to join us) were finally able to resume Clary Lake Water quality monitoring for 2016 albeit a month later than we had planned, but still within the allowable time frame. Better late than never as the saying goes. We had originally planned on starting a month ago, but our YSI Pro 20 digital dissolved oxygen meter which the Association purchased through donations a few years ago failed to pass routine calibration which is performed each spring by Maine VLMP technicians. They first thought the problem was a bad probe but swapping it out for a known-good probe didn’t solve the problem. YSI Technical Support suggested it might be water in the cable connector housing so they let the unit sit around disassembled for a few days to dry out. After that it started working intermittently. They ran some more tests on it over the next week finally certified it for use with the instructions to “keep an eye on it.” We got it back midweek last week.

This first time out, the DO meter worked flawlessly (and we hope it continues). With a secchi disk reading of 4.1 meters (13.25′) the water clarity is excellent, and about normal for this time of year. But be warned: it’s early in the season yet, and the water quality can and will deteriorate. The lake has yet to “stratify” meaning that it is pretty homogenous (well mixed) and there is no thermocline yet: the temperature from the surface to the bottom only varied 2.5° Celsius. This means that if you were to go swimming now you’d think the whole lake was cold, not just 6′ down like during the summer. Likewise, the dissolved oxygen reading only varied 2.6 mg/l from surface down to 7 meters. Continue reading →

21 May 2016: Clary Lake Dam’s Gate Almost But Not Quite Closed

IMG_20160521_094122 (Custom)Late last Thursday afternoon for reasons known only to himself, the Clary Lake dam owner closed the dam’s gate to within about 7″ of completely shut. As you can see from the picture at left, there’s still quite a bit of water flowing out of the lake but the mill pond behind the dam has considerably more water in it than when the gate was wide open. However, while the water may be backing up behind the dam, the lake level is still falling about 1/4″ per day. Remember, water only flows down hill and there is a mile and a half of meandering channel down which the water has to flow to get from the lake to the dam. With the gate wide open and the lake this low, I suspect the water level right at the dam itself has been as much as 2 feet lower than out on the lake, perhaps even more. I’ve actually measured a 3″ difference when gate was wide open and the lake was almost full. Albert Boynton whose family owned the dam in the 1920’s and who was actually born in the little red house on the dam told me once that after a morning of sawing lumber, the upper mill pond would have fallen considerably; when they returned from dinner, it would be full again.

Continue reading →

05 May 2016: Black Crappies firmly established in Clary Lake

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Black Crappie

Well, we knew that. We’ve known for a while now that Black Crappies were being caught in Clary Lake, and I’ve written about before (see: 28 May 2015: A Black Crappie caught in Clary Lake) but I had not actually caught one myself until yesterday when I hooked this 11″ specimen. Unlike the bass that I catch, I kept this one and had it for dinner last night. It was not bad.

Black Crappie are firmly established in most waterways in other parts of the country, especially down south (in Louisiana they’re called “Sac-a-Lait”) and they are generally considered to be an excellent pan fish, good eating with firm white flesh. However, here in Maine they are considered an invasive species and they are not native to Clary Lake (for that matter, neither are large and small mouth bass which were introduced in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s). Apparently sometime in the last 10-15 years someone introduced them into Clary to “improve” the fishery. It’s clear from the size of this one that we’ve got a firmly established breeding population of Black Crappie in Clary Lake.

I sent a picture of the fish I caught to Jason Seiders, a fisheries biologist with the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife and he responded that his staff will be conducting surveys of the Sheepscot River drainage this summer, focused mainly on assessing bass populations and confirming the presence of black crappie. Black Crappie are a very prolific fish and they can pretty much take over a water body. It is believed that they will likely affect Clary’s small mouth bass population the most.

Jason Seider’s final advice: don’t be afraid to keep all the Crappie you catch. For what it’s worth, I caught this one on a 6″ rubber worm but I expect you’ll be able to catch them on about anything you throw in the water.

02 May 2016: State Agrees to AQF Request for Stay of Proceedings

[dropcap]Back[/dropcap] on April 20th I posted about how Aquafortis Associates LLC (“AQF”) filed yet another Request for Stay of Proceedings in the matter of the ongoing appeal of the Clary Lake Water Level Order (see: “Lawyers for Kelley, Smith file Yet Another Motion For Stay of WLO Appeal“). That latest Request for Stay was dated April 14th and requested a stay of proceedings until June 1st to give the parties additional time to try and arrive at a settlement. When I reported on this matter, the State had not yet responded to the Motion though I anticipated that they would not object to the stay request. On April 22nd they did respond, and as expected, they did not object. Continue reading →

April 2016 Water Level Chart Archived

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April 2016

I’ve archived the April 2016 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable feature of the April chart is that the lake level stayed pretty stable around -34″ below the top of the dam for the first 15 days of the month (despite the dam’s gate being wide open) after which point it began to fall steadily, ending the month at -47″ below the top of the dam. All in all we received only 3.33″ of rain in April which is less than the average monthly precipitation of 3.78″. This lack of rainfall has contributed to the dry conditions we’re seeing now. Most of the rainfall occurred in the first half of the month, with 2.68″ falling by April 15th which explains the relatively stable water level during that time. Only an additional 0.65″ fell during the second half of the month.

Clary_Lake_and_Meadow_Depth_Map_version_1.3I’ve added a new statistic to the monthly water level chart, that being the volume of Clary Lake at its current level as a percentage of full. This new data has been added to the middle “narrative” portion of the Current Water Level Charts page. The figure comes from a volume analysis I’ve been working on this past winter based on the Clary Lake Depth Chart (at left) that I prepared from data collected by DEP during their September 2012 bathymetric survey and additional [the_tooltip text=”LIDAR” tooltip=”Lidar (also written LIDAR, LiDAR or LADAR) is a surveying technology that measures distance by illuminating a target with a laser light. Lidar exists as an acronym of Light Detection And Ranging. LIDAR data is typically collected from planes.”  url=”” background=”” color=””] data I obtained from the Maine Office of GIS. In theory calculating volumes from a contour map is pretty straight forward and is a task most land surveyors are familiar with, but the size of Clary Lake presented some challenges and there turned out to be a considerable learning curve to the GIS software I used to extract the information I needed for my calculations. I finally got it figured out.

Currently, at -47″ below the top of the dam, the lake is about 66% full and the area has shrunk to about 473 acres of about 62% of its size when full. Continue reading →

20 April 2016: Lawyers for Kelley, Smith file Yet Another Motion For Stay of WLO Appeal

Attorneys for Aquafortis Associates LLC (“AQF”) have filed another Motion For Stay of the WLO appeal until June 1st. The motion was filed on April 14th and states that AQF, Pleasant Pond Mill LLC (“PPM”), and the Department of Environmental Protection have been “cooperatively working to resolve the issues that are the subject of Aquafortis’ appeal of the Department of Environmental Protection’s (“DEP”) Water Level Order for Clary Lake Dam (“CLD”), including issues that impede repairs to the CLD.” Continue reading →

09 April 2016 BDN: What an early spring means for Maine’s lakes

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Clary Ice Out

You’ll recall that the ice went out on Clary Lake on March 13th this year, the earliest since we started keeping records in 2001. Well there’s a great article in today’s Bangor Daily News about the potential impact of an early spring on lake water quality. Basically, warmer than usual weather coupled with an early ice-out result in water temperatures rising higher, sooner, and lake stratification taking place sooner as a result. Stratification is the process whereby the water in the lake separates into a warm, generally oxygen-rich upper layer and a colder, generally oxygen-deprived lower layer. You’ve all experienced lake water stratification when you jumped into nice warm water only to discover that 4′-5′ down the water is a whole lot colder. One impact of oxygen deficiency in a lake is the release phosphorus from bottom sediments which leads to algae growth. The article is short and informative and worth a read:

BDN: What an early spring means for Maine’s lakes

The excessively low water conditions we’ve been experiencing on Clary Lake for the last 5 years or so have also had a severe impact on water quality, compounding the effect of the normal seasonal lake water cycles, resulting in more, and more severe, algae blooms. This is in part due to severely diminished lake volume, loss of wetland habitat, and erosion and sedimentation of bottom sediments around the edges of the lake that normally would be covered by a protective 4′-5′ of water.

The CLA will be starting it’s water quality monitoring activities next week. There is water quality data for Clary Lake going back to 1975 (available by request). You can view the water quality data back to April 2012 online on our Clary Lake Water Monitoring data page.

March 2016 Water Level Chart Archived

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March 2016

I’ve archived the March 2016 Water Level Chart (at left). The most notable thing about the March water level chart is that while the lake level has been generally falling since the beginning of the month, it has still been significantly higher throughout the whole month- indeed, throughout the whole winter- than in any of the last 5 years. Part of this is due to a very early ice out (March 13th) and above average rainfall for the first 3 months of the year. The dam’s gate has been wide open since January 4th. As high as it has been, it has still been generally lower than the lower-limit (2′ below normal high water mark) specified in the Clary Lake water level order.

I spoke to David Hodsdon the other day about resuming our water quality monitoring activities. He’s going to send the Association’s YSI Pro20 digital dissolved oxygen meter off to be calibrated tomorrow (a yearly VLMP requirement) and as soon as we get it back we’ll set a date to hit the lake and start collecting data again. To that end, I launched my boat this morning- the earliest I’ve ever gotten it in the water. We try to collect data every 2 weeks during the recreational boating season, typically between mid-April through October. This will be David’s 40th year as a Volunteer Lake Monitor. Way to go David!

29 March 2016: Aquafortis Associates LLC Files Amended Petition in Superior Court

Attorneys for Aquafortis Associates LLC have finally filed an amended petition in the Superior Court appeal of the Clary Lake Water Level Order. You may recall that back on January 25th the Court issued an Order granting the State’s Motion to Dismiss and gave Aquafortis Associates, LLC 21 days to file an amended petition. Rather than filing the amended petition, they instead appealed the Superior Court ruling to the Law Court on February 16th, followed not quite 2 weeks later by Requests for Stays of Proceedings of both the appeal and the underlying Superior Court action. The appeal was subsequently dismissed by the Law Court on March 1st, and the 30 day stay requested on February 16th ended last Saturday, March 26th. The amended petition was filed yesterday, March 28th. Yes, it has taken a lot longer than 21 days for the amended petition to be filed; the reason for this is explained quite well in the cover letter accompanying the amended petition. Here’s the amended petition; it’s 23 pages and a rather large file, but interesting reading:

The most significant thing about this amended petition for me is that Paul Kelley and his company Pleasant Pond Mill LLC are not parties to it. This is because the Court’s January 25th Order granting the State’s Motion to Dismiss resulted in Mr. Kelley being removed from the proceedings. With that exception, this amended petition is not a whole lot different from the proposed amended petition filed with the court last summer.

So what’s been going on?

Continue reading →

20 March 2016: IFW Commissioner Opens Fishing Season Two Weeks Early

DSC_1146From the Department of Inland Fisheries & Wildlife webpage:

“Effective Thursday, March 17, the 2016 Open Water fishing season began, two weeks earlier than usual, per an amended rule by the Commissioner of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.”

“The amended regulation allows bodies of water that were closed to open water fishing until April 1, 2016 to become open to open water fishing effective March 17, 2016.”

“Anglers throughout the state may now get a chance to enjoy the early spring by fishing on their favorite waterway earlier than usual.”

The two men who hit Clary Lake last Friday (picture above) no doubt wish they’d waited for warmer weather! The wind coming down the lake was very strong and bitterly cold, causing them to quit fishing early. The waves were breaking over the back of the boat as they were trying to maneuver it onto the trailer. At least there was enough water for them to launch and retrieve their boat.

15 March 2016: The Story of a Performing Arts Community on Clary Lake

The Whitefield Historical Society and the Jefferson Historical Society are putting on a program this coming Sunday, March 20th at the Whitefield Townhouse on Townhouse Road in Whitefield. Below is the cover illustration of the Whitefield Historical Society’s latest newsletter.

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A performing arts community settled at the eastern end of Clary Lake beginning in the early 1900s. Clockwise from 12 o’clock: Ann Ward; Lucy Lee, a reader; Percy Hunt, baritone, and his wife, Katherine Ridgeway, a reader performed together on the Redpath Lyceum circuit; France King Ward, Crawford Peffer and his wife, Ella Harding, soprano; F. Morse Wemple and George Fergusson, baritones, who taught voice with Percy Hunt at the New England Conservatory. Mr. Peffer owned the New York and New England Redpath Lyceum and Chatauqua Circuits. Katherine Ridgeway and Ella Peffer went on to establish the Katherine Ridgeway Camp for Girls on the northern side of the lake. Descendants and people who knew them are encouraged to come and share their memories

George Fergusson, pictured above at 11 o’clock was my grandfather. He came to Maine and bought our property on Clary Lake in 1922. I well remember from my childhood days visiting with Percy Hunt and his sister Lucy Lee who lived across the road from the Highland Cemetery in a house now owned by Fasano, the Ward Sisters whose house and property on North Forty Lane is now owned by the Relyea family, and Morse Wemple whose property at the east end of Clary Lake was owned for many years by the Stickney family and is now owned by Glenn Bruce MacDonald. I never knew the Peffer family but understand their property was located just north of the Wemple property. The Robbins property on Clary Lake is part of the old Peffer place. They probably owned that nice red cape out in the field just up the hill from the Wemple place.

My sister and I have worked closely with Marie Sacks this past year to help her collect the information and materials she’ll be using in her presentation. I’m really looking forward to this!