I have just sent my response to Kelley’s request for a new hearing to the Service List. It’s short. DEP has already defended their decision to conduct the bathymetric survey and have decisively ruled on Kelley’s repeated objections to it. Kelley apparently can’t take no for an answer. DEP was not willing to revisit and revise the survey at my request and I see no reason now why they should approve Kelley’s request to reopen the hearing which would only waste valuable time, resources, and money.
Petitioner’s Response to Pleasant Pond Mill LLC’s request for a new hearing
As usual, Since Pleasant Pond Mill LLC is not on the service list, Kelley will learn of my response by reading this post unless someone cares enough to send him a copy of my email. Far be it from me to add his address to the Service List. That’s DEP’s job, they maintain the list and publish it. I just post to it. One of these days DEP will wise up to the fact that Pleasant Pond Mill LLC is still represented by PretiFlaherty in name only.
Incidentally, today is the drop-dead day for Kelley to supply the State with proof that he has sufficient right, title, and interest in the Clary Lake dam to satisfy the statutory requirements for transferring the the property under the Petition for release from dam ownership or water level maintenance. As I understand it, if he can’t show that he owns the flowage rights, they’ll dismiss his petition. What are the chances Kelley has been able to come up with the flowage rights in the last couple of weeks? I’m guessing slim to none. Stay tuned.

I’ve received a few questions from people about how, when, and under what circumstances the Clary Lake Dam Fund monies will be spent. I’ll try and clear that up in this posting. First, I’m happy to report that Bill Donovan from over on the west shore of Clary Lake donated $100 to the Dam Fund bringing the balance of the fund to $1402 which is almost 1/3 of the way to our $5000 goal. Have no fear, when we are close to achieving our $5000 goal we will simply raise it; the $5000 goal was just an initial target. Bill’s donation was a good-faith gesture; he and a few other people that have donated money have said they will donate more money when the time comes to actually spend it. Yeah.
Yet another Lincoln County News article in this week’s paper, this one by Dominik Lobkowicz about last Tuesday night’s Whitefield Selectmen’s meeting. Good article. Worth reading. I was at that meeting along with Sue McKeen. We didn’t talk, we just listened. The theme of this post is “Confusion” which is what that thumbnail at left is supposed to represent. The article isn’t online so I scanned it and the photo of Mr. Kelley didn’t come out too well. Sorry.
With all the doomy and gloomy petition stuff I’ve been posting of late, it is a real pleasure (that’s me smiling at left) to be able to provide this update on the Clary Lake Association fund raising initiative. Don and Lucy Norman of Jefferson stopped by the other day to talk to me about making a donation to the Clary Lake Dam Repair fund. They hoped that by putting some “seed money” in the fund that it would encourage others to contribute. This afternoon, Lucy called to tell me that she had just dropped a check off with our Treasurer, Linda Gallion.
Shlomit Auciello has written another excellent article for this week’s Lincoln County News on the ongoing Clary Lake Water Level Petition. The in-depth article covers the matter of Kelley’s recent request for an extension of the deadline for comments and my objection to it and quotes my letter to the DEP objecting to the request almost in it’s entirety. The Clary Lake Water Level Petition story has certainly arrived, it is now entertainment for the masses. People will be clamoring for the next installment 🙂
I have just submitted my comments on the Clary Lake Assessment (minimum flows recommendation) which was one of the two documents included in the ADDENDUM to the bathymetric survey released by the Department on 09 April 2013. I’m not sure my comments are really worthy of a BAM! thumbnail but it seemed appropriate. This is the 3rd submission this week. A short 3-word summary of my position on the new Clary Lake Assessment: Almost Good Enough:
Taking advantage of an offer made by the Department when they issued Procedural Order #5 dated March 4 2013, Paul Kelley has requested a new hearing. I only scanned the letter so I don’t have much to say about it now. I will have more to say later I’m sure. I am assuming that DEP will grant the request since they gave us the option of calling for a new hearing but I suppose it’s always possible that they will decide his request for a new hearing is not justified and deny it. We’ll see. In any case, I guess I’m not surprised he has taken this step.
Today is the due date for final comments on the bathymetric survey. I’ve just submitted mine. Not a lot to say about this. As I state in my letter, I stand by my original comments but agree with the Department decision that putting more time and energy into this is not warranted at this time. There are bigger fish to fry.
Some of you may have noticed some odd behavior on the site in the past 24 hours including getting dumped into your profile page when you thought you were going to look at say, water level charts. It turns out that an upgrade of a slightly buggy piece of software turned out to be even more buggy, and what’s worse, the bugs didn’t show up till the next day. Hate when that happens. Anyways, despite the fact that it provided some nice functionality, I’ve uninstalled it. You shouldn’t notice anything different except for the look and feel of the log in, log out, and forgot your password pages.
I’ve sent my formal response to yesterday’s request by Pleasant Pond Mill LLC for an extension of time to reply to the material released by the Department on 9 April 2013. It was the most enjoyable letter I’ve had the pleasure of writing in months. I suppose I should thank Paul Kelley for the opportunity to put it out there for the world to see just what I think of him and his shenanigans but as much fun as it was, it was a waste of my and everyone else’s valuable time. I don’t take kindly to that. Neither does DEP. I am confident they will tell Paul Kelley what to do with his request for additional time to comment.
In yet another letter with more foot notes than actual verbiage, Paul Kelley makes a formal request with the Department for an extension of the time to file comments on the Clary Lake Assessment currently due May 9th. Mr. Kelley seems to be objecting to comments made by Mark Hyland of the Maine Emergency Management Agency that the Agency has no opinion on whether the dam should be breached, whereas Mr. Kelley maintains that the dam is already breached. Mr. Kelley wants to put everything off until June 6th to give Mr. Hyland time to respond to a letter Kelley is supposedly hand-delivering to him today.

It took a little head scratching but I’ve implemented an online Membership Signup and Renewal system. I know I said I wasn’t going to bother with it till later this summer but it turned out to be simpler than I expected, once I grokked the internals of PayPal transactions.
Shlomit Auciello has written an excellent article appearing in this weeks
A lot of ground was covered in last night’s 2 hour Whitefield Selectman’s special informational meeting. There were 26 people there not including the Selectmen. Paul Kelley was there. I wasn’t sure if he was going to show up. I’m glad he did. These are the highlights of the meeting from my perspective.