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.
Complying with the Water Level Order will involve a lot of money and a daunting amount of work on the part of many people and while we may all personally relish the prospect of this work, it is daunting nonetheless. Success depends on a committed and coordinated group effort which in turn requires organization and planning. Failure is not an option. It is our belief that full adherence to the conditions specified in the Water Level Order and implementing the water level regime contained therein are crucial steps to meeting the goals of the Clary Lake Association of protecting and preserving Clary Lake, now, and into the future. To this end I have setup the Clary Dam Project. This is a collaborative, interactive, computer-mediated discussion group for the express purpose of facilitating the exchange of information and ideas between like-minded people with a common goal. Continue reading
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 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.
It has come to my attention that a few people have been unable to register for this site because they are using one browser extension or another to block tracking code, cookies, malicious javascript, etc. One such extension which I myself use on some sites is 
information. This effectively thwarts the robots and is standard procedure on websites that want to restrict registrations to real people. I’m sure you’ve run across them before. A typical reCaptcha graphic from our site is shown at left. The solution is simple: disable your blocking systems temporarily, long enough to get registered; then you can turn it back on if you want and 
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 
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:
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 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:
