24 September 2013: Confusion around Pleasant Pond Mill LLC’s Notice of intent to file

I spoke to Kathy Howatt this morning to confirm the circumstances surrounding Kelley’s latest “notice of intent to file” and surprise surprise, she said that DEP has NOT dismissed his petition. It wasn’t even clear that she knew about Kelley’s latest notice though she was aware that Kelley intended to hold a public meeting next month. She speculated that this new notice of intent to file was Kelley’s attempt to correct the deficiency in his original filing. However, Kelley already tried to correct the deficiency in his original filing with a public notice back on May 24th. If that wasn’t sufficient, why should this latest attempt be sufficient? Will he actually file another petition on September 27th as his latest notices suggests? What happens to the existing petition? Can he actually file the petition twice? Do the towns of Whitefield and Jefferson have to hold public meetings again? I’m left with nothing but questions: Kelley continues to confuse, obfuscate, and complicate the situation.

So who’s planning on attending Paul Kelley’s October 15th public meeting? Who’s planning to make an offer on the (breached) Clary Lake dam?

23 September 2013: Deja Vu all over again: Pleasant Pond Mill LLC files petition for release from dam ownership. Again.

doh I received a form letter from Paul Kelley today it being notice of his intent to file a petition for release from dam ownership or water level maintenance. Again. Those of you who have been paying attention will recall that back on May 17th of this year Kathy Howatt of the DEP sent Paul Kelley a letter notifying him that his petition was deficient because he failed to satisfy the statutory requirements for providing public notice of his intent to file. Ms. Howatt offered him the opportunity to withdraw the petition and refile it or alternatively, he could wait until the 180 day consultation period arrived and they would dismiss it at that time. Kelley opted to proceed as if the rules just didn’t apply to him. Continue reading →

21 September 2013: Pemaquid Paddlers follow the call of the loons on Clary Lake

canoe Here’s an interesting news item. I got home this morning to find a page from the September 19th issue of the Lincoln County News sitting on my dining room table with a short news item on page 11A highlighted for my attention. Apparently the Pemaquid Paddlers (never heard of them before) are planning to descend on Clary Lake next week. I have no idea how or why they selected Clary Lake for their loon-commune experience or how many paddlers they’re expecting, or for that matter whether they’re aware of the low water conditions they’ll encounter in the channel- or the drained wetlands:

Pemaquid Paddlers follow the call of the loons on Clary Lake

On Tuesday morning, Sept. 24, the Pemaquid Paddlers will mingle with the loons and other wildlife on Clary Lake, a great pond of almost 680 acres straddling Whitefield and Jefferson. Continue reading →

20 September 2013: Updated Lake Water Monitoring Data

secchi_disk The latest lake water monitoring data shows that the water quality has improved considerably from levels seen this past summer. The secchi reading of 13.45′ shows the lake water is the clearest it has been for a few years. I attribute this change primarily to a large infusion of rain water earlier this month. The dissolved oxygen values at the surface and at 23 feet also show that the “fall turnover” has occurred. From late spring through the end of summer the water at the bottom of the lake are oxygen-deficient. Fall weather brings about a mixing of lake water.

FYI be advised that the buoys marking the ledges at the northwest end of the lake are gone. It turns out the 5 gallon jug I set had deteriorated from ultraviolet light and developed cracks, filled with water, and then sank in about a foot of water. The other marker that Brent Duncan set on the other end of the ledge went missing a few weeks ago. This late in the season it doesn’t make sense to replace them, so I pulled both anchors. The ledges are only covered by a couple of inches of water. They’re awash at 42″ below the top of the dam, as are a number of other rocks between the ledges and the shore. Careful out there.

14 September 2013: It’s been down so long it looks like UP to me!

Current Month Water Level Chart

Heavy rains over the past few days have brought the lake up 14.6″ so far from it’s low back on August 30th, most of the rise have occurred in the last 3 days. As of 7 AM this morning, the lake was at an elevation of 147.23′ or 40.92″ below the top of the dam. It’s still rising fast as the ground is saturated and the rate of runoff is high. Peak runoff typically occurs 24 hours after the end of the rain event which will be sometime tomorrow. Judging from the rate of rise in the last 24 hours and the trajectory of the curve I would expect to see the lake rise another 6″ or 8″ over the next couple of days and I wouldn’t be surprised if more than 50 cubic feet per second of water flowing out of the lake by Monday morning. Check out the Water Level Charts and guestimate for yourselves how high the lake will get.

The rapidly rising water has likely caught a few people by surprise, myself included. I woke up this morning to find my dock (which is sitting on stilts) barely above water and the ramp leading to it had floated away. I’ll be out later today searching for it and will have to move my dock in closer to shore lest it too float off in the night. Other people with moored docks and floats might find them inaccessible for the time being. On a brighter note, there were a number of people who were facing the predicament of getting their boats out of the lake. This lake level rise should make it easier. Currently at the state boat launch there’s 1.7′ of water over the foot of the ramp- still less than the design value of 2.3′ but a lot better than it has been. Tomorrow afternoon I would expect the there to be at least 2′ of water over the foot of the ramp if not more. Here’s your chance folks.

As welcome as this water level rise is, it’s important to note that the lake is still drastically low. At 40″ below the top of the dam the Great Meadow is still devoid of water and the vast wetland will offer no welcome haven to the flocks of migrating water fowl looking for a place to lay over, later this month. I’m not exactly sure how much rain we received over the past 3-4 days but we’re approaching 6″ total so far for the month, and it’s not even the middle of the month. Kelley is going to wish he had made repairs to the dam while he had the chance.

10 September 2013: Clary Lake Association receives Exempt Charitable Organization status

The Clary Lake Association has finally received Exempt Charitable Organization status under the State’s Charitable Solicitations Act. We applied for exempt status back in July. I thought it prudent at the time to curtail our solicitations activities while our application was pending review. In accordance with our new-found status I have added back the donate button on the “Donate to the Association” page as well as put a donate button back on selected pages. My wife Margaret, who is the chair person of the Fundraising Committee, will be most pleased.

Let the fund raising begin!

05 September 2013: The loon being cared for at Avian Haven didn’t make it :(

loon2_icon

Back on August 14th I posted about a loon that had crash-landed on Route 215. Taylor Holland found it and arranged for it to be delivered to Avian Haven up in Freedom. I emailed Diane at Avian Haven yesterday to follow up on the loon, and today I received the following email. Sadly, whatever had been ailing the bird turned out to be fatal:

Hey, George. Funny you should ask – you were on my list to contact today. I’m sad to say that the loon died Tuesday night. Throughout his stay here I kept hoping there would be some optimistic update I could send, and I postponed getting in touch when there was little if anything positive to report.

I’d consulted with two wildlife veterinarians in other states who specialize in loons; on the basis of x-rays I sent, there was agreement that your bird likely had an untreatable fungal infestation of the respiratory system. You might recall that the initial blood work suggested an overall debilitated state; those parameters improved slightly for a while with supportive care and readily-available food. Continue reading →

01 September 2013: Upcoming 2013 Watershed Survey Training Workshop September 20th

At the Association’s annual meeting last month, the membership voted to work on updating the 2001 Clary Lake watershed survey. To that end, about 10 people volunteered to take part in the survey. To that end, the Department of Environmental Protection is giving a workshop for volunteers to train them how to identify, monitor, and mitigate non-point sources of pollution in lake watersheds.

The 4.5 hour workshop is free and will be held from 10:00 AM till 2:30 PM on September 20th at the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitor Program’s Brackett Environmental Center facilities in Auburn (I’ve added an event on the Clary Lake Association event calendar). The VLMP has setup a page with more information about the workshop. If anyone wants to attend, give George a call at 549-5991 or email him at gsfergusson@clarylake.org.

29 August 2013: Planned Site Migration (Final) UPDATE 4

computer_repair [UPDATE 4] 2:30 PM 30 August: Fairpoint DNS servers are now updated. I’m glad to be able to put this migration behind me. We’re on a new “virtual machine” server with half a dozen other relatively low-volume sites with plenty of server resources to go around including gobs of disk space. Moving on…

[UPDATE 3] 7:10 AM 30 August: The Fairpoint DNS issue continues. There were some other sites involved in last night’s move and none of them are accessible to people using Fairpoint DNS servers. In other words, Fairpoint customers more than likely can’t get to this site yet. That is outrageous. I’ll be filing a ticket with Fairpoint later. At first it looked like one Fairpoint server was working- NS2. However it has not fully updated either so I’ve set my own servers to Google’s public DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

[UPDATE 2] 9:55 pm 29 August: It appears the DNS problem was/is limited to Fairpoint customers as a result of two misconfigured name servers NS1.MYFAIRPOINT.NET and NS3.MYFAIRPOINT.NET which are failing to respond properly. I solved the problem on my network by manually setting the primary DNS server to NS2.MYFAIRPOINT.NET which is responding properly. The TTL (time to live) on Fairpoint DSL name servers is set to 19 hours which is a bit outrageous. I’ll be speaking to them. If this sounds like so much gibberish and you’re reading it, don’t worry about it. If you found Clarylake.org was unavailable for a day and then suddenly started working, that’s why. Sorry for any inconvenience.

[UPDATE 1] 9:03 PM 30 August: The migration has taken place but there are some residual DNS problems resulting from poorly configured servers most notably with Fairpoint. This is making the site unavailable to some users. Most notably, this is affecting ME so I’m on a proxy now. Patience folks.

Back on the 18th of August I posted about a plan to migrate this website to a new server. I thought this would have taken place by now but it turned out to be a little more involved as there are a number of other sites that share the same virtual machine and they all needed special attention. Anyways, the transition plan has been refined and tested and we’re ready to implement it. Theoretically nobody should notice a thing as the cut-over will take place late tonight when traffic is particularly slow, and it should only involve a few minutes of downtime. There may be a short period when the domain name clarylake.org doesn’t resolve properly. If you get a “Non-existent domain” or “page not found” error you may need to clear your browser cache, close and reopen your browser, or just try again later. Long before tomorrow morning arrives we’ll be back fully operational.

24 August 2013 Lincoln County News: Montsweag Dam inspection report is in

finger-in-dike David Hodsdon sent me an article from last week’s Lincoln County News about a recent inspection of the Montsweag dam in Wiscasset. The inspection was conducted by Wright and Pierce Engineering Company. Of particular interest is the last paragraph which describes the permitting requirements for the making the repairs:

“The inspection report of the dam indicates the repairs discussed in the report would be exempt from DEP regulatory permitting under the Maine Natural Resources Protection Act providing the activities do not require dredging of sediments and all improvements will take place within the footprint of the dam. Should dredging activities or other improvements change the dimensions of the Dam below the high water mark it would require review and permitting with both the Maine DEP and the Corps of Engineers, according to the inspection report.”

Continue reading →

23 August 2013 [UPDATED] Branch Pond Water Level Petition Public Hearing

I went to the Branch Pond water level petition public hearing today and ended up spending most of the day there, and took a few pictures which I’ve uploaded to the Summer 2013 Album. I had not initially planned on staying too long but I had particularly wanted to hear Peter Newkirk of the Division of Environmental Assessment give his presentation and that turned out to be after lunch. He was there primarily to explain how he came up with the 1.7′ maximum annual fluctuation figure, and to defend it if necessary. No defense was necessary as nobody really questioned it. I was actually surprised there wasn’t more discussion about it. I finally left around 3 PM at which time the hearing was beginning to wind down.

I found the whole hearing interesting and I’m glad I went. It was particularly interesting to compare it with our own public hearing: this one started at 9 AM and was scheduled to run until 5 PM and be followed by a public comment period starting at 6 PM. Furthermore, all the testimony had been pre-filed, commented on, objected to, and ruled on DAYS BEFORE today’s hearing. Today was to allow the presentation of the testimony and evidence with opportunity for review and cross examination in real time. For comparison, our hearing started at 5 PM and ran for 5 1/2 hours and was over, and there were a number of people who didn’t get a chance to speak at all. I was even cut short in my testimony. Clearly, DEP learned a lot from the Clary Lake hearing process and have implemented improved procedures. Someone had to go first and I guess it might as well have been us paving the way.

Surprisingly, there were no representatives of the press there.

[UPDATE] OK, so there were representatives of the press there, Channel 13 News apparently sent a crew over likely late afternoon after I had left:

http://www.wgme.com/news/top-stories/stories/wgme_vid_18429.shtml

23 August 2013: Branch Pond Water Level Petition goes to Public Hearing Today

talking-heads-custom Branch Pond Water Level Petition goes to Public Hearing today, the hearing is at the China Elementary School in China on Route 9. The hearing starts at 9 AM and runs ALL DAY and into the night with the public-comments section starting at 6 PM. I’m going to attend it for a while this morning but I have some other responsibilities to attend to later in the day.

21 August 2013: Algae Bloom Update

There was a thick green scum driven up against my dock this morning by the gentle current flowing around the lake, it is the carcasses of the cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) that were blooming a few weeks ago. As they die they float to the surface and get driven towards the shore where they collect. Dying cyanobacteria also release various toxins into the water. In high enough concentrations these toxins can kill fish and other wildlife. It’s not that bad here on Clary Lake but it does make for an unpleasant if temporary condition.

This is the end of this algae bloom but I would not be surprised given the hot weather and excessively low water conditions to see another bloom later this fall- typically they’ve been appearing in September or early October.

20 August 2013 Kennebec Journal Article: DEP says no timetable on Clary Lake water level decision

newspaper_bw-custom Paul Koenig has written an article that appears in today’s Kennebec Journal. I was interviewed for the article late last week.

DEP says no timetable on Clary Lake water level decision

The notion that a “historic” mill building located down stream from and designed to accommodate the outflows from Clary Lake and use them to generate power should after over 100 years suddenly be at risk from high water damage is bad enough. Concluding that the water level of Clary Lake should be drastically lowered so as to severely restrict outflows to protect this building is just wrong. To then impose these flow restrictions on the dam property via restrictive covenants is ludicrous.

The mill pond dam head wall leaks and the original outlet weir has been filled with concrete, severely limiting the amount of water that the mill pond can accommodate. These issues were pointed out in a 2003 engineering study conducted for Pleasant Pond Mill LLC, the original owner of the mill property. The study recommended reopening the original outlet weir. This step has not been taken.

The KJ provides opportunity for people to comment on articles. I recommend you do so.

18 August 2013: One Year Anniversary of the Water Level Petition Public Hearing

one-year-later Yesterday was the one year anniversary of the Public Hearing for the water level petition, held on August 17, 2012 at the firehouse in Jefferson. So much has transpired since then, it really seems a lot longer but it has been just a year. This seems like a good time to take a step back and consider where we are and what has transpired. Clearly we are a lot closer to a getting water level order on the Clary Lake dam but I can’t say as I’m particularly happy with how it’s gone. Sadly, the rhetoric around this issue has been ratcheted up by both sides and that has not been particularly helpful either. Going forward I’m going to do what I can to keep things more civil.

While we’re closer to getting a water level order, is a real solution to this mess that more or less satisfies everyone involved still a possibility? What does a real solution even look like now? I believe the answer to those questions are Yes, and I don’t know. I remain open to a dialogue. We will see what happens.

Barring unforeseen events, this will be my last post for a couple of days until after the move. Be well everyone.

17 August 2013: Planned Site Migration

computer_repair I’m going to be moving the site to a new server in a few days. The picture at left is misleading, the site actually runs on a VM (virtual machine) in an IT operations center someplace on the East coast and we’ll just be moving to another VM in the same operations center. There shouldn’t be any down time to speak of but there may be 10 or 15 minutes that the site is unavailable while the DNS updates. I’ll post an update ahead of time.

17 August 2013: Metaphyton growth on the rise?

Many of you heard David Hodsdon talk at the Annual meeting about Metaphyton algae, those green clouds of cotton-candy-like algae that seem to move around the lake. They’re unattached and drift with the winds and current. I spotted some growing on my shoreline a few days ago and the patch has grown considerably since then. The bright green is where the algae has reached the surface. There are numerous smaller patches. Clumps of this stuff can get pretty large but there’s no indication that Metaphyton growth is becoming a problem, but it is an interesting phenomena for sure.

15 August 2013: Observations on PPM and AQF Comments

thinker I’ve had a chance to reread and ponder (like the chump at left) the comments posted by Tony Buxton today and I have a few observations to make before I move on. First, very little of the document has anything to do with the actual restrictive covenants themselves, which is what this exercise was all about I think. In fact, only one paragraph on the first page addresses them at all. I particularly like this part:

1. Declaration of Restrictive Covenants:

“As consideration for PPM agreeing to be bound by the Restrictive Covenants, AQF agreed to waive certain of the claims it may have had prior to adoption of the Restrictive Covenants against PPM for damage from flows of water in excess of 50 cubic feet per second.”

So we’re to believe that Richard Smith coerced Paul Kelley into agreeing to be bound by the covenants in exchange for waiving the right to press claims he “may have had” (or might not have had?) for high water damage to the mill building. Really?

Buxton offered no rebuttal of my assertion that Kelley’s Covenants are invalid and will have no effect on the ability of the Department to place and administer a water level order on the Clary Lake dam. The rest is of no consequence.

15 August 2013: [UPDATED] Response of PPM and AQF to Procedural Order 8

bamboozle This just in to the Service List: Tony Buxton himself has responded to the request for comments in Procedural Order #8 and I’m posting it only having skimmed it. So far, I like mine better.

Response of PPM and AQF to Procedural Order 8

OK so I’ve had a chance read Mr. Buxton’s comments carefully, several times. I still like mine better. I can only imagine how Ms. Parent will enjoy reading this.

15 August 2013: Petitioner’s Comments on Kelley’s Restrictive Covenants

bugs Moments ago I posted the Petitioner’s Comments on the Restrictive Covenants that Paul Kelley recently placed on the Clary Lake dam to the Service List. I can’t wait to see what Kelley comes up with. I mean, I am holding my breath. I am on the edge of my seat. I am- Oh well, you get the idea. If Kelley follows his standard procedure and waits till the last minute, we can expect them sometime shortly before 5 PM. So hours to wait, ho-hum. No need to guess what I think of these covenants, here are my comments:

Petitioner’s Comments on Kelley’s Restrictive Covenants

And no, there’s no particular significance of a Bugs Bunny thumbnail on this post. I just happen to like the little guy.