18 May 2013: Fun and games launching boats

launching_boatI stopped by the State boat launch this morning to see what was going on. As I was arriving some folks were getting ready to leave, having given up on trying to get their boat in the lake. Understandable given that there are rocks sticking out of the water 20′ off the end of the ramp. They had a standard fiberglass bass boat- not a chance they could have gotten it off the trailer no matter how far they backed it in. Then a pickup pulled in hauling a 14″ aluminum boat about the size of mine; even with the trailer backed in off the end of the ramp the boat wasn’t touching the water. Only brute strength and sheer determination succeeded in them getting their boat in the water.

Later in the afternoon I decided to take my boat out for a spin, it has been a while and the water had receded quite a bit from my little dry-dock slip and I had trouble getting it into the water. Finally got her launched and was tootling across the lake when I noticed some people over at Art Enos’s place trying to get their boat in the water. They had a typical bass boat, fiberglass with a big motor and they were having trouble. They finally succeeded by backing into the water fast and then hitting the brakes; each time they did this, the boat slid a little further off the trailer. After 3 such attempts the boat finally floated free. Not what you call a convenient way to launch a boat… and they’re lucky they didn’t get their SUV stuck in the mud. Wish I’d had my camera….

17 May 2013: Dam’s gate is closed.

kelley-headshot2Kelley finally closed the dam’s gate which has been wide open since last October 13th. Must have been done sometime today though I suppose it could have been late yesterday afternoon. I’m not sure what inspired this seemingly magnanimous gesture on Kelley’s part: concern over the drained wetlands? Not likely. Worry for lost wildlife habitat? Nah. Sadness over the unusable status of the State boat launch? Nope. You can be sure whatever reasons motivated him they were selfish and self-serving. He’ll get no thanks from me. The lake is down 56″ below the top of the dam and the crime has been committed. I suppose we should be grateful that Kelley has closed the gate but I’m still angry with him for draining the lake in the first place. Call me ungrateful but in my book it’s too little, too late.

16 May 2013 Lincoln County News Article: Pleasant Pond Mill asks for new dam hearing

paperYet another article has appeared in this week’s Lincoln County News  about Kelley’s request for a new hearing and my objection to it. Seems like every week there’s something in one paper or another. Shlomit Auciello is doing a pretty good job of reporting on a complicated and confusing situation:

Pleasant Pond Mill asks for new dam hearing

No comments on the article at this time.

15 May 2013: Clary Lake Water Monitoring Data Now Online

secchi_diskWe’ve finally gotten around to putting current Clary Lake water monitoring data online. It’s a subset of the data collected by David Hodsdon and Jack Holland and will be updated roughly every 2 weeks from early spring through late fall or as often as David and Jack get around to it. What’s online now includes all the data from 2012 and what’s been collected so far in 2013. That little thumbnail at left is what a secchi disk looks like- it’s used to measure the transparency of the water.

I hope to get some historical data online soon; there’s quite a bit of it. David has been collecting water quality data on Clary Lake since 1975, Jack Holland since about 2001. Both are certified volunteer water quality monitors. Here’s a typical data sheet from a data collection session and here are 3 charts based on the collected data. Graphing the data is helpful because it allows you to see trends in the data that aren’t necessarily obvious from just looking at it. One disturbing trend evident from the secchi disk chart is that the transparency of the lake water has deteriorated markedly in recent years. This trend also coincides with the increase in phosphorus evident from the Total Phosphorus chart. We’ll be talking more about these trends in the near future.

clary-do-levels
2009hydrillacroppedneans
Secchi disk-03-09-2015
Clary Lake TP 9-4-2015

[Show slideshow]

Last spring I accompanied David and Jack on one of their regular water quality monitoring sessions and have put together a short photo gallery of that session: “Our Water Quality Monitors at Work“.

14 May 2013: Kelley Responds to Town Request for Price of Dam

monopoly_manIf the Whitefield Selectmen are going to asking the voters of the town to consider purchasing the Clary Lake dam, they’re entitled to know how much it’s going to cost, right? You know, the price. That’s a reasonable request, no? Well to that end, the Selectmen handed a  letter to Paul Kelley at the 30 April 2013 Selectmen’s meeting, asking just that question. They asked for a response by the 10th of April. Many of us were there, that was the night the Selectmen held their informational meeting. Well we’ve all been dying for Kelley’s response. Here it is. Spoiler alert: Anyone who expected Kelley to provide an actual price on the dam will be disappointed 🙂

Kelley’s 10 May 2013 Response to Whitefield Selectmen’s request for price of dam

These 2 sentences towards the end of Kelley’s letter more or less sum up the situation for me:

“It is PPM’s understanding that it has the right, under the Abandonment statute, to request “compensation” for the dam. PPM intends to do so, in an amount equal to its associated “costs of ownership” since purchase of the dam from Mr. Arthur Enos in 2006.

PPM considers many of these “costs of ownership” to be proprietary business information, and should the Town wish to secure ownership of the darn via Purchase & Sale Agreement, PPM is prepared to enter a non-disclosure agreement with the Town to fully disclose that information and bargain as to price and terms of sale.”

A non-disclosure agreement? This is so not happening.

13 May 2013: How Low Can It Go?

Some of you will remember seeing a table something like this last year, on the old site:

Lake Rate of Fall With Dam’s Gate Full Open
Inches Below Top of Dam  Rate of Fall in 24 Hours
 0″ to 36″  1″
 36″ to 48″  3/4″
 48″ to 62″  1/2″
 Below 62″  1/4″ or less

These figures were derived empirically which simply means these are based on measurements we made and recorded. They are what they are. They’re averages and on any given day they will likely vary a little or (even a lot) due to changing conditions: lake surface area, the shape of the lake, and most important, the amount of runoff from rain or snow melt. But all things being equal, these numbers should be pretty close most of the time.

Which brings me to the reason for this post: the question of how low can the lake get. I have in the past come to the conclusion that the rock-bottom low water level was from-hydrographic-surveysomewhere around 6 feet (-72″) below the top of the dam. This figure was arrived at after measuring the water depth at the mouth of the channel at the northwest end of the lake. I also came across a fascinating book entitled “The Water Power of Maine” by Walter Wells, first published in 1869. In it I found a table that I’ve reproduced the table at left. It estimates the additional storage in Pleasant Pond (now Clary Lake) as 4 to 6 feet. Coincidence? I don’t think so.

Yesterday afternoon Colin Caissie and I went over to look a the narrow gauge rail road abutments to assess their suitability for the construction of a coffer dam. To get the colin_at_rr_abutmentdistance between the abutments, I waded across the channel (and filled my boots in the process) while dragging a tape measure and found the center of the channel to be 2′ deep. The water level at the time was -54″ below the top of the dam. Adding 24″ to this gives you an elevation of the center of the channel between the abutments of -78″ or -6.5 feet below the top of the dam. The average distance between the abutments by the way is 16.5′. There are more pictures from this adventure in the Spring 2013 gallery.

And there you have it folks. The lake can’t possibly fall more than 6.5′ below the top of the dam and chances are, since there is a gentle slope to the channel on the order of about 1/2 a foot over it’s entire length, the limiting factor likely is the elevation at the entrance of the channel. So if anyone asks you how far the lake can fall, tell `em “6 feet.”

The lake is down -54″ now. It can fall another 18″. Last spring it reached -63″ below the top of the dam. At the rate the lake is dropping, we’ll get there again in 10 days.

13 May 2013: Petitioner’s Response to Pleasant Pond Mill LLC’s request for a new hearing

just-say-noI 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.

12 May 2013: Clary Lake Dam Fund Update and Information

eyesI’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.

The plan is that the dam fund should be used to repair the dam as soon as possible regardless of who happens to own the dam at the time. Our thinking goes that whomever owns it is going to need financial and technical assistance. We’re prepared to offer that assistance. Assuming the Association does NOT own the dam then there are some conditions that must be met to receive our money; the Association will not simply give the money to the dam owner to spend as they see fit. We will discuss the scope of the work and the nature of the repairs as well as the projected costs and if we approve, then we will authorize the work and we will pay the bills. These conditions should not constitute a serious problem for the dam owner; when it comes to repairs we’re open to suggestions and ideas but we must assure that money donated to the Association for repairing the dam is well spent toward that end.

We also anticipate and are willing to help with other unavoidable expenses associated with repairing the dam such as the costs of designing and building a coffer dam between the narrow gauge rail road abutments, State permitting requirements, etc. We have set up a discussion list to talk about these issues and kick around ideas. If anyone is interested in participating in the list, get in touch with me.

As for when all this might happen… I’m sorry to say probably not for a while. Mr. Kelley (perhaps understandably) has not acknowledged our offer to purchase the dam but sadly, he  hasn’t responded to our request for permission to get an engineering assessment done on the dam either though it’s been almost 2 weeks since the letters were sent. This is truly “cut off your nose to spite your face” behavior on Mr. Kelley’s part because he would benefit greatly from a current engineering assessment. Given how far relations between Kelley and the Association have deteriorated, it is extremely unlikely that he will entertain letting the Association get involved in dam repair planning and execution anytime soon. Perhaps as the reality of a DEP enforced water level order approaches, Mr. Kelley will become more willing to negotiate. In the mean time, we plan, we collect money, and we wait.

Perhaps people will remember this article in the Lincoln County News last August:

How soon we forget eh?

Dam Fund Progress: [progressbar url=”https://clarylake.org/data/dam.txt” rounded=”0″ width=”400px” color=”green”]

09 May 2013 Lincoln County News: Whitefield selectmen to look into so-called flowage rights

confused_0Yet 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.

Whitefield selectmen to look into so-called flowage rights

There’s really nothing confusing about it. At issue is whether anyone in their right mind would want to own a dam without also owning the right to flood upstream property that they don’t own. If you owned a dam without also owning the flowage rights, why you could find yourself being sued by any one of a 108 lake shore property owners (or all of them) for flooding their property without the right to do so. It’s really simple. If you own a dam, you need the flowage rights. And DEP agrees. And so does the AG.

09 May 2013: Clary Lake Dam Repair Fund Update

smiley-face_0With 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.

The check was for $1000.

I’m pretty much blown away by the Norman’s donation and wish to publicly thank them for their generosity. I’ve known this was coming for a few days and have been thinking in the back of my mind how I would acknowledge what they’ve done. Finally, I just decided to write this post.

I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Beverly D’Urbano for her generous donation of $50 to the fund and for being the first person (besides me) to try out our new online PayPal donation processing system! The dam repair fund, which a few days ago stood at $152 is now sitting pretty at $1202.

Make that $1302, Mary Shaw just donated $100 to the Dam fund!

Make that $1402, Bill Donovan just donated $100 to the Dam fund!

Dam Fund Progress: [progressbar url=”https://clarylake.org/data/dam.txt” rounded=”0″ width=”400px” color=”green”]

And….. we’re off! Remember: No amount is too big, or too small. Give Generously, and Give Often 🙂

09 May 2013 Lincoln County News Article: Dam Owner, Petitioner Spar Over Status Of Breach

newspaper-salesman-1flip-customShlomit 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 🙂

Here’s a link to the paper’s online version:

LCN: Dam Owner, Petitioner Spar Over Status Of Breach

Here’s a PDF hosted on Google Drive:

Dam Owner, Petitioner Spar Over Status Of Breach

09 May 2013: Petitioner’s Comments on Clary Lake Assessment (minimum flows recommendation)

bam-customI 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:

Petitioner’s Comments on Clary Lake Assessment (minimum flows recommendation)

Here’s the revised Clary Lake Assessment if you want to follow along. The other document in the release were comments by the Maine Emergency Management Agency regarding their hazard classification of Clary Lake dam. I wasn’t going to submit comments on them, but they’ve sure got Paul Kelley’s undies in a bunch so maybe I’ll take advantage of the 30 extension to the comment period and write something up.

08 May 2013: Pleasant Pond Mill requests new hearing

kelley-headshot2Taking 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.

He also submitted an additional document which seems to be a summary of his objections to the bathymetric survey. Not too sure what to call it so I’ll just use his RE: line

08 May 2013: DEP Grants PPM Request for extension to file comments

The following email just came in from Beth Callahan, project manager for the Clary Lake Water Level Petition. DEP is granting PPM’s request for an extension. So much for the power of positive thinking.

Dear Mr. Kelley,

 The Department has considered your request for an extension of 30 days to reply to review agency comments that were sent to parties on April 9, 2013.  The Department will allow no more than 30 days from today’s date to review and comment on the documentation.  Please submit your comments regarding the review agency documentation no later than June 7, 2013.

On the bright side, it’s only 30 days and it will fly by as have the last 30 days, and the 30 days before that.

08 May 2013: Petitioners Closing Remarks on the Bathymetric Survey

bugsToday 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.

Petitioners Closing Remarks on the Bathymetric Survey

I have no idea whether Paul Kelley intends to submit additional comments about the survey or not. I wouldn’t be surprised as he can’t really afford to pass up any opportunity to lob another wrench into the works, not that it will do him any good at this point. Kelley’s thrusts at the Department’s midsection are easily deflected it appears. We’ll know by the end of the day if he’s going to take another useless and futile jab at them over this issue.

Next Up: Tomorrow I’ll be submitting Petitioner’s comments on the Clary Lake Assessment (minimum flows recommendation) or perhaps this afternoon if I can finish them up. I assume we’ll hear from DEP soon denying Kelley’s request for an extension to file comments. It would be appropriate I think for them to put off responding to him until about 4:55 pm tomorrow afternoon, leaving him with 5 minutes to submit something. That’s what I would do 🙂

Is everyone happy with me posting documents to Google Drive? It’s a whole lot more convenient for me, my only concern is whether people are having trouble viewing and/or downloading them from time to time. If you are, please let me know.

08 May 2013: Bizarro Web Site Behavior Resolved

613_confusionSome 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.

This is a good time to remind everyone that the site will be down for scheduled maintenance tomorrow morning Thursday, May 9 at 11 AM UTC (7 AM EST). The site will be down for no more than an hour, hopefully. Try not to panic.

07 May 2013: New Water Level Chart finds a home.

Water Level Chart from December 2011 to the Current Date

I’ve  decided this new water level chart will live on the Current Water Level Charts page along with the Year to date chart and the Current Month chart. All 3 charts are updated daily. It’s become a ritual.

This chart has garnered a lot of attention since I first posted it yesterday morning. It had quite an impact on me and apparently on many other people too.

07 May 2013: Petitioner’s Response to PPM request for additional time to comment

haha-transparentI’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.

Petitioner’s response to PPM request to delay comments

Ironically, Paul Kelley will have to download my response from this web site unless Anthony Buxton is nice enough to forward emails sent to the service list to him, as he is still the official contact for Pleasant Pond Mill LLC.

06 May 2013: Pleasant Pond Mill LLC requests extension of deadline for filing comments

darth_vaderIn 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.

Seems like yet another patently obvious attempt by Mr. Kelley to stall, obfuscate, and delay petition processing. I will be drafting a response to Kelley’s request vigorously objecting to it on as many grounds as I can think of, which is a whole lot. Anyways, here’s Kelley’s request:

There were two other documents attached to the email, a copy of the comments from MEMA and copies of emails Kelley previously obtained by FOA request. You’ve probably already seen them but for sake of completeness, here are links to them:

Kelley apparently has figured out how to send email to the Service List directly as opposed to sending them to PretiFlaherty and having them forward his correspondence to the list. I guess my chiding him for that behavior paid off. Congratulations Paul. Now there is no pretense at all that Kelley’s correspondence is being prepared by anyone but Kelley himself.

06 May 2013: A Year and a Half of Water Level Records

I got to wondering what a water level chart showing all the water level data I have collected since the 19th of December 2011 to today would look. The result isn’t pretty:

water_level-small

With the exception of May and June of last year and a few days in March and early April this year, the lake has been lower than -40″ below the top of the dam since I started keeping records. It will take a long time for the wetlands to recover from being “ravaged” to use a term Mr. Kelley seems to like so much.

I’ll update this graph periodically. I haven’t decided where it will live.