Back in 2001 the Clary Lake Association with the assistance of some DEP staff conducted a survey of Clary Lake’s watershed for the purpose of identifying sites of non-point-source pollution within the Clary Lake watershed that were contributing polluted runoff (sediment) to Clary Lake. The Association volunteers were: Arolyn Antognoni, Robert Antognoni, Jack Holland, David Hodsdon, Trudi Hodgkins, Jean McWilliams, and Tim Harkins. The Steering Committee consisted of 3 Association members, Jack Holland, David Hodsdon, and Ed Grant. The Survey and resulting grant proposal submitted to the DEP was a joint effort on the part of the Association, the towns of Whitefield and Jefferson, the Knox Lincoln Soil and Water Conservation District, and the Department of Transportation to implement put in place erosion control measures. The grant was awarded on 21 July 2003 and work commenced in 2004.
Well that was some time ago. The Department of Environmental Protection is now encouraging lake associations to update their watershed surveys and furthermore to put them into digital form utilizing currently available mapping systems. To that end what I’ve done so far is take the existing site data collected back in 2001 and mapped it. I’ve added some fields for latitude and longitude, photographs (if available), and other data used in formatting the records for online viewing. By using a specialized spreadsheet that generates KML data files, the data can then be viewed in mapping systems as Google Maps and Google Earth. Here’s the actual Clary Lake 2001 Watershed Site Data in spreadsheet form with the extra information I’ve added. The trick has been supplying the correct geographic reference data- latitude and longitude- since that data was not collected in the 2001 survey. There are about 14 sites I’ve not been able to locate on the face of the earth yet, and no doubt, some that I have located are wrong. We’ll be refining this data as time goes on.
The Clary Lake Watershed Survey Base Map loads a map embedded in a web page using Google Maps as the mapping engine which is a pretty cool interface for viewing maps. To get more control over the field and to turn on and off different categories of icon, click on the “View Larger Map” link at the lower left hand corner of the map. You can tell which sites have pictures associated with them because the icons have a black dot in the middle.
If you want to view the Base Map in Google Earth (really the preferred method if you ask me) then download the KML file (actually it’s a .KMZ file) and load it into Google Earth:
Here’s the original 2001 Clary Lake Watershed Survey Report. Worth reading:
This is the map of non-point-source pollution sites identified in 2001:
Here’s the actual in spreadsheet form with the extra information I’ve added.