Clean Lakes Committee (clc) - Regular Meeting

And for scaring me just a little bit. 6.34. Leon is checking in. 6. Yeah.

Yep.

Ed's here as well. We got a team. It's all good. I believe we see Rob Rolmstein at the final tip. Welcome all. Summer all of a sudden. Well, with a vengeance. It's going to cool off again. You'll see. We'll take a look at last month's minutes real quick. Good. And hopefully you all have a chance to review those. They are exquisite. They're not published these days. After all is said and done.

I have to say, everything is spelled right. Do you understand?

That's pretty awesome right there.

Well, one clarification. It has to do with Bartlett, who was saying that that little parcel of land that's adjacent to his property and abuts the whole launch area, I thought was being given originally to the town and not being offered to you, Bartlett. But was it offered to you by this party?

Well, he offered it to me and then I said, No, I didn't want it because I don't want the liability of trees falling on your house. And he said, and he and I agreed that the best thing for him to do would be to donate it to the town because, and I don't think, I tried to call him a couple of days ago and he doesn't answer the phone. His wife doesn't answer the phone. I'll be surprised.

I may pursue this through the down clerk. We got a notification maybe two years ago of the beginnings of this procedure.

He does owe taxes on it, so I think you can start proceedings.

We'll find him.

Just nail a sign. That's it. This isn't your property anymore.

It's not imperative at this point that we make any corrections on minutes out of minutes. wanted to inquire about.

It's probably the assessor you need to go through.

Yeah. Oh, the assessor. Sure. I hadn't thought about that. But great. Great. Why don't we do that? Any further corrections, questions, elaborations? Can you imagine? Let's take a vote to accept the minutes as written.

I make a motion to accept the minutes as written.

And a second.

Second.

Okay. We'll go remote first. Ed?

Yeah.

Aye. Leon? Aye. Very good. We'll go around the room. Aye, aye, aye. Aye, aye, aye. Thank you. It's not that complicated. It certainly isn't parliamentary, but it's the way we like to do things. Just a review, as we already have, the annual town meeting was very successful. Congratulations, Cammy. and Karen and Rob and everybody else, uh, the, uh, uh, the motions through the, uh, or the funding through, uh, uh, the reservation committee was all approved for, uh, our request. And, uh, many thanks to Mark on, uh, for his role on that behalf. Uh, I also wrote a letter to, uh, Tim Pearson to thank him and, uh, the, uh, Conservation Department for their involvement. And I think that was just great. Updates on that sort of thing really will get to... And the adjustments to the allocations that needed to be available before July. That was big. Very impressive.

Thank you.

I don't know who came up with that. What had to happen?

Well, we didn't have any funding in place for this year. We had funding for a long-legged herbicide, or for the mechanical removal, but not for herbicides.

So they split the article, the CPC article into two, asking for some in FY26 and some in FY27.

Oh, amazing. If they hadn't said anything, By default, they all would have been FY27. But they explicitly said that some of them, this group, was going to be funded from FY26, which means they could be, the funding could be used right after telemeeting. And we need to do these treatments before the end of June.

Well, that was great. Yeah, so it's. because we would have been in the same place we were last year i know yeah once again so that's great that's absolutely great so uh horse training um you got right everywhere it's good that's great and we're just gonna stand out uh sort of a holding pattern so yeah so abby mccarthy was the one running our session she said they're spending this year getting set up like figuring out where they want to do testing in Littleton. So probably next summer testing in Littleton would begin. And she has, I mean, I think she's hoping to do more than just the Reedy Brook. It's, you know, actually spots on Beaver Brook. Did you, were you surprised?

I thought this, the grant money they got was from Patriot, but I can say I want to test actually in Mill Pond as well as Reedy Brook. And then,

Yeah, yeah. So I think it's going to be more comprehensive than we had thought. We all we did the training as well. So my husband and I are going to be doing bacteria testing like multiple times. I know. Yeah, we've got a lot of a lot of a lot of shifts. Monday mornings at 6 a.m. it kind of doesn't matter what town you're in because depending on how it works, you have to show up at the origin place in West Concord. You have to get the equipment. Then you go do the testing sites. So she was kind of like, it doesn't really matter if you're from Littleton. I mean, it's great that we have all these Littleton people doing it, but I don't know that we necessarily get assigned to do it.

It was just, I mean, we said when we could do it, then she fit us into this guy. So we're each doing six times and yeah. By September.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So anyway, so as they set Littleton up, I think our expectations shouldn't be like, I'm going to be the Littleton person because they need people all over.

Why sure. Yeah. So you could go to some other town or Western.

Yeah. I mean, you could be going out of Birmingham to like the head of that.

They've got a handful of sites that they do it. And she has a full assignment from now until through September for each of those sites for each month. for different times. They do two different kinds of sampling.

And you show up on your day and you get where, here's your map and here's where you're going today. So you kind of don't really know. It's just how they've set things up.

Do you have a boat or do you do it from the shore?

You just do it from the shore.

Or you can wade in.

You can wade in. Some you might do from a bridge. There's a pole that you can, you know, if it's a hugely rushing river. But we're talking mostly the acid bit, which is... Yeah, yeah. Not generally very deep. So we learned how to do water quality testing. And then there was the... Bacterial testing. Well, there's bacterial testing. And then there's the sonar. What's it called? The solar. The sensor.

Well, yeah, it's measuring different kinds of... It's measuring different kinds of... Like pH and that kind of... monitoring.

Yeah. I think that's also tested with oxygen. Right.

It's like we use for the, um, Phoenix measurements. Yeah.

So that was interesting.

Yeah. Well, I brought everyone who got involved. I think that's just great.

But we had, she gave us all t-shirts. So my, my husband puts his t-shirt on and immediately someone stops him and was like, You're doing great work. Tell me all about it. So he's making stuff up. And, you know, people like a fisherman came up and started talking to people. Yeah. People are very grateful to see people out there doing this work.

I mean, compared to what some of those rivers, the quality that they had 20 years ago, 30 years ago. It's like the Charles River.

Yeah. Yeah.

Transformation.

Yeah. Well, the data they'll say they will share like on the acid bed in the summer. 90% of the water could be wastewater coming off of wastewater treatment plants.

Really?

No way. There's like five wastewater treatment plants that flow into the acid bed from down to Marlboro. So. They've improved it immensely in those years, but there's a reason why they asked about, you know, because it gets really shallow and it gets really dried up in the summer. And what water is flowing in there may not be very clean. So it was, you know, you learn something you don't want to know.

We are sort of, well, the cradle of the industrial revolution here.

Yeah.

That stuff doesn't go away anytime soon.

Yeah. Yeah, so you can read up more on the OARS website, because there's a little bit of the history of the waterways and stuff. Because my backyard is Neshoba Brook, basically. So Neshoba Brook starts at Kimball's, flows backside of Goldsmith down Oak Road, which is where we go, and then it crosses over to Powers Road, and then it becomes Neshoba Brook, and that's what flows into the Astovet. So Littleton does, in fact, impact the Astovet River, my backyard. impacts the acid river.

Did you get assigned that?

Yeah, I know. I want to test there.

Well, you've done tests back there, right? With your daughters?

Yeah, my daughter did all this testing last year for a school project. We found all kinds of little creatures. She was horrified. She was little. She just bathed herself in the mud. Oh, my God, it's alive. Well, when Cooper Farm was built, all of that construction, like there would just be huge blowouts and the water would turn milky white from whatever they were doing back there. So you really start to see how the impact upstream of all these efforts. So when you see stuff like that, we got to call it out and let people know, because that just went right into our stream. That goes into the Aztec, that goes into the Concord, that goes into the Merrimack. Yeah. Oh,

Mitigation treatments. I understand things went pretty well last night with you and the CONSCON.

Right. So we are doing a herbicide treatment on Lake Matawanagi Forge Pond this summer. The plan is to do it in early June. Conservation Commission asked us to report on what our planned treatment was, and we showed them, and they were fine with it. I don't know, you know, I don't believe the treatments done on Spectral Pond or Long Lake require approval. I'm assuming that when they permits come up for extensions, they may put other conditions on those too. I don't know. That's when we've asked before why these conditions are there that haven't been on previously. That's sort of the indication.

Do you think it's because the two towns share that water body or is that not even an issue?

That didn't seem to be an issue. No. So we're planning to treat the main plan was to treat the milfoil, Eurasian milfoil, variable milfoil with Priscilla core, which is a systemic and it should last for several years. We also were exploring with the vendor being able to do the fanward with contact herbicide, which would be less expensive. It would only last one season. But the way the, and we are using the Westford's existing contract with the vendor to facilitate the treatment. And there's a minimum of understanding between the two towns to share the cost of it. But the way the memo was written, it limits Ruleton's contribution to $40,000, which is basically half of the cost of the Pasilipor treatment. So it looks like we'll just be doing the milfoil with Pasilipor.

Is that the big problem?

So we have 60 acres of Eurasian milfoil. We have 25 acres of variable milfoil. And we have 14 acres of fanwort. Some of us have all three. And so, yeah, the biggest problem sections are the milfoils. So I think what we'll end up doing, the milfoils shouldn't be there next year. Next year, you know, we had tried last year and then again this year to do equi-harvesting to have a definitive test of that, which we have been able to have two previous times we did it because we were limited And we have CPC funding for that. But the funding was for last year, for this year, and for next year. And so we need to use it next year or it'll be gone. So we'll probably do it next year and we'll end up testing it on the fan work. So since the only fan were there next year, we'll be able to do everything, everything, everything we possibly can to what is there. And we'll see, is it useful or not? So the memo of understanding was approved by both select boards pending approval by the town councils. Wilton town council was already approved it. Westford Town Council is still reviewing it.

I heard they had some comments they were going to get them back to our Town Council. Okay. Or our Conservation Department and Town Council, but I don't think... I haven't seen what the comments are. It doesn't necessarily sound like it's a holdup.

Okay. All right. I mean, it is a bit worrisome because if we have to go through some kind of change again, then that likely will...

Well, I hope that doesn't come fast. We're over that.

Well, you take a ride around just the other day, Monday night, and the weeds are right there now. They're probably about this far from the surface. I had a nice sunny night and I could see the weeds through the water, through the pollen.

Well, that's a lot stronger.

Yeah, it's right there, right there. You know, most of the spots that I always know where they are, you know.

Yeah, they're starting to come up. And you can see the geese are stopping out, you know, 100 feet out and dipping down. And so they've got something to eat there.

Yeah. So I just wanted to say that. Yes.

So we'll do a plant survey in the next week or so, hopefully. We need to do plant surveys before and after. So we'll see what, I think we'll do a combination of what we find this year with what we found last year to determine where to treat.

Now do you have a depth finder in yours or a fish finder on your boat?

Yeah.

So you can see it all when you're driving along.

Yeah. Yeah.

Leon? Yeah? Did you get treatment on spec on today?

No, tomorrow.

Oh, okay. All right. Well, it's in the works then.

Yeah.

Is the second treatment done?

Yeah, it was supposed to be on the 19th, but they had equipment trouble. Couldn't make it out today, but now they're committed to Thursday.

That sounds dynamite.

And this is the second treatment? This is the first bump up.

Okay.

There'll be one more. Yep.

And how are conditions at Speck Pond?

Well, I think we're going to have to do something about the milfoil. We're only treating right now for the fanwort. Yeah. And you treat early enough that you can hardly see the young plants. So if you go out in the pond right now, you'll say... Is the fanwort dying? Where is it? It just takes a few weeks for it to kick in.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

Yeah, I got to check on our contract to see if we're, in fact, covered for milfoil as well. My suspicion is fanwort only.

Oh, no kidding. Well, I mean, it would be another treatment for the... Milfoil.

Using different chemical.

Yeah, and we could afford to do milfoil later in the year, July. Yeah, different chemical, thyquat.

Very good. And the well is being monitored somehow.

Well, I don't know. No? No. That was the plan of record is that we were supposed to do a treatment, and TRC was supposedly going to provide a methodology to do sampling, and the water department was supposed to have agreed to their methodology, and I've got no feedback on that.

Well, we'll stay tuned.

Yep.

Okay, that's great. Things are in the works, I'm sure, at Long Lake through the conservation department. And we're looking forward to seeing how that turns out.

Give me a second. I can give you an update on that. Yeah.

I swam in Long Lake yesterday, and I was swimming out to the buoy. You were swimming. And I was surprised because I've never run over whatever it was. I'm trying to figure out what it was. I think it was a mouthful of foil.

No. It's not. They sent us quotes. or long legs split into two separate requests, one for pre and post management. Their hope is by splitting, they can get some competition on the survey part, but they're, it's well underway.

Good, good. All right. So glad to hear that.

And once this is the conservation department or water department?

Conservation.

So they're requesting quotes?

Yes.

What are they treating for, do you know?

Do you know, John? No, well, no, I haven't been out on the lake yet. I skipped over the Earth Day this year, so we haven't been out, been meaning to.

Or do you kayak out there?

It turned 90 degrees.

Now do you kayak out there?

I kayak all the time. But the floating mounds seem to have died down. Good, good, good. I've got my fingers crossed they don't show up because we don't have a license to do anything about it. There's money standing by, but not until the next year. But no, I think it's very encouraging. And I've actually done a couple of years without treatment. at Long Lake, and we're all in our own. It's not out of control. It's not nearly as crazy as it has been for you guys the last few years. So we're feeling very blessed. Having us to be outside of the system and all the other networks. That's working for us.

It's not invasive-free. I mean, it's not.

You're not going to be. Not with the conditions we've got.

The temperature was 71 in Long Lake.

Okay.

That's probably what it was. I hit 68 and then 71.

Today it was down to 65. Oh, 65?

It was in spots. I don't know that I've ever been swimming in May like this early. But I was out for a while. I did the buoys.

It's so shallow at the beach that it warms up pretty rapidly there.

But out farther it was cool. It felt very refreshing. Nice. Now's the time to swim, not in August.

Okay. Hey, let's take a look at Mill Pond.

What do we got going on there? What's going on is the Mill Pond Dam Removal Feasibility Study. Bartlett and I attended the draft review. Yeah. And we're sworn to silence because they don't want anything to get out that's as draft, that may not be correct. So anything that we heard, the state wants a chance to look it over. So anticipate August, mid-August, for the contract to be done, state do the review, and that can be available for public release. But one of the things I think we need to focus on, because I've talked to several people in Bartlett that's been really active in talking to folks as well, there are people who are against it, and there are people who support it, as you might imagine. The question is, what is the process going to be, Mark? board deciding on whether or not we put in for the grant to remove the dam. I don't think it's going to be a money issue because you have to do the feasibility study before you're eligible for the grant to remove the dam. But will it be a town meeting? Will it be on where you go in and you vote? Would it be the select board just deciding? Because it's not going to be unanimous, I guess, what I've figured out.

I don't know what the process is. I can look into that more, but I don't know what we'd have to do.

So that's what I think we need to work out between now and August, is what the process is going to be to decide. You know, do you give everybody who lives around the pond two votes? Oh, well.

And everybody else gets one? Yeah. The original notion of raising the lake came from the neighborhood, came from the Mill Pond Association, of course. And that was the drive. I think will be split maybe 50-50, maybe not even 50-50 for people who are pro or against the thought of dam removal. But of course, what we need to know is what we would project to be the future of the lake. I mean, what's it going to look like if the dam comes down or if it's reduced or, you know, what happens?

Well, there's people who like it the way it is right now. Certainly. So no matter what... happens when you remove the dam. It's going to be different than what it is right now, right? And people like it just the way it is now.

So did you understand from the meeting, did they discuss whether part of the report will include a description of what the effects would be if they took out and what the current leak would look like? Yeah. what the effects would be downstream, like would the silt be also carried? That will all be part of it. They don't like modeling.

But, you know, that's all interesting to some people, but the bulk of the people just care, what am I going to see when I look at it? One person I talked to, I think he copied you on it.

I think we all were copied on that. We all saw that.

So, you know, you go to his house, he has a little peninsula, beautiful view right next to Mitch's house.

Elliot Putnam? Yeah.

Oh, yeah. He was actually the president back in 2000 when they built the association. And I think his term was, we were looking for some sort of restoration, not destruction. Right. He was the one we're here for. Yeah, he was here. So it's not going to be unanimous. It's going to be all sorts of opinions. Once all the facts come out, it's still going to be this, we can't expect to be unanimous. So then, In a democratic society, how do you get it done?

Well, MassDV, MassDOT owns the dam.

Yes.

So it's probably not a time meeting vote, right? Because they could do it on their own.

That's an interesting... It's not a dam that we own. But we don't want them to do that. We want the town to decide if it goes down or not.

Or maybe not. I mean, I don't know.

Well, that's kind of...

There's an article in the New York Times from May 7th, which I can send around if people have it. It's about, it's called America, the undammed. It's about damned removal. And there's a case study. This is very interesting because they talk about, it's in Pennsylvania. This one guy went and advocated, they got it removed. People were freaking out. It's going to look awful. And it did initially. And he moved, removed 18 tires from it, you know, and like, But within weeks, it just had transformed. It's a really interesting case study. I think there's a lot of education to be done. They also then, they started, because in the spirit of restoring, they're adding native plants, shrubbery along the shorelines and things like that and really trying to transform it. And now people love it. But it's huge change. It's a huge change management initiative for sure.

So the program manager for the state is willing to come here and talk to us about previous experiences, as you're saying. But I'm just anticipating in the end, we're still not going to win everybody over, and it's only fair that people know ahead of time what is the decision process. Sure. Well, who wants to live with a marsh all the time? Well, yeah. But I think when you... That's not a big draw. When they tell you about what happened in previous jams that they removed, I think you'll see that it's not... Well, I'm curious. ...not a marsh. Well, whatever it is there's going to be some people that don't it won't be a lake anymore no that's not true either that it may still be a good-sized pond you mean it may still be i don't want to get into all that all right perhaps we're going to do we're going to do some town meetings and have people on town meetings this means something else public uh discussion forum.

Well, it's great that you guys at least got an earful.

We'll get it probably around April 15th.

The contract will be done... You said April 15th, May 15th, all of those are...

It'll be done at the end of July, but the state's got to look at it a little longer.

Something to think about.

What happened with the last restoration of Mill Pond? Didn't that go to town, vote something, and

Yeah, but I think the town had to spend money.

Yeah. Oh, we had a big buy-in. When we first started, it was about a 20-year process. When we first started, we partnered with the Army Corps of Engineers, and everything was covered. It was all just part of your taxpayers.

But we had a little... In-kind services, too.

Oh, we did. We did. We had so much of in-kind services. In-kind services were more of a part of the Long Lake restoration. Right. And the vegging and everything, the Army Corps of Engineers admittedly said, you know, we'll take care of probably 75% of this. The town will be responsible for 25% of the cost. For the remediation or for the study? But initially it wasn't any cost at all for the Army Corps to come in and do plans and analysis and everything else. And it evolved so that the town was footing maybe 30% and the Army Corps was going to do 70%. And we had to start paying for the planning as well. And the thought being that now we had buy-in, we'll have some leverage. Well, that didn't really come to pass. We had no leverage. We never had leverage. It was not an equal partnership. It was the feds and some little town in Massachusetts. But the big issue, of course, was dealing with the spoils, trying to figure out where to put. But there was a plan. There were a number of plans over the years. But the plan that the Army Corps finally brought forth is kind of a trial run to the state. The state shot down. They were living with administration. And they said, you know, you're citing examples of things from Milford. They did a big restoration out there. They said we wouldn't have approved that. So, you know, you're modeling after that, but we don't want any part of it.

So at the time that the plan was put in place, there was, my understanding is that there was general consensus that it was acceptable, but that was in the early 2000s. And then the Corps of Engineers said, we have to go. It's always been controversial. We have to go away, and we can't work on this now, and they came back. Right, right. four years ago and said, okay, now we can come back and work on it again. And they revisited it with DEP. And at that point, you know, sea change and DEP, and they said, now we don't condone it.

They, of course, advocated from the outset, the new administration, the DEP, that the dam removal would be something they would they were entertained.

Yeah, a few years ago.

And the thing that Elliot sent was the report from 20 years ago, right? That was...

He sent us the report. Yeah, but it was... It came out in 2023, the final report.

Is that what Elliot sent? Like, with his email? No, he sent some stuff. It was something from, like, 20 years ago. Like, we all wanted it to be, you know, something else to happen, the dredging. It was like, well, we can't do that. That's not on the table anymore, right?

We had a tough time about... It wasn't the dredging at all. It was getting rid of it because of the poison in the water, right?

Well, it wasn't even so much poison. What are you going to destroy in order to save Milfon?

I understand.

It was kind of the equation.

A lot of it was, too, no one wanted to dig tainted mud. I thought that was a tangent.

No, that was a tangent. Because near one of the railroad tracks in Basin 5 or something like that, they supposedly found some PCPs or something like that. Yeah, they did not. But, yeah, it really never materialized to anything. All a bunch of rumors. But people were very excited about the dredging. The dredging process itself was going to be horrible. But we were going back and forth as to whether or not it would be a... A wet dredge, dry dredge. A wet dredge, dry dredge. You know, during cold weather, you could actually... uh, channel, uh, the flows from, from, uh, the streams, uh, around side the basin, basement one and two, and then get in there with machinery. Yeah. So it's all good.

As you said, it's not going to happen. That will never happen. This particular thing we're looking at is removal of the dam and report will be out August 15th. And we just now have to figure out how we get to done either some decision process that is equitable that after education, people make an educated decision.

Do you want it?

It doesn't matter.

You don't care.

No, I do care. I do care. My interest is the water below the dam.

Right, you've been always talking about that.

I'm looking for, you know, cooler water, faster moving water.

Are there trout there now?

Yes.

And they are not helping?

They're healthy, but it's just at the top limit of what a trout will live through. It's there because two weeks ago they stocked it, for one. But the state did a survey in August, which is long after they stocked it, two years ago, and they found that they were still living in that part of the stream.

It's healthy, but how do we keep it healthy? Yeah.

Do they stock it every year? Yes. Oh.

Well, not as much as they used to because they said it's not accessible and they're all about getting people to catch fish. Their mission is not to reestablish a trout fishery. They want to get fishing creels.

Fishing what?

Fishing to creels. They want people to eat these fish because then people will buy more fishing licenses and that keeps them business. It's a business, really, the whole trout. That's the sport. Yeah, and it's great for kids. That's why I think we need to give the trout fisheries to kids.

It's an opening day, go there and catch some fish. Recreation is great and, you know, Mill Pond is not lending itself to recreation right now.

Well, some people like it. So, you know, I don't want to make any comments about the current and what I want to do because I feel like I need to be independent.

Oh, as I think we all should be at this point, because it's a big process. I was actually, two weeks back, I was out in Greenfield, and there was a ceremony that I attended where some conservation land was being dedicated by a family, parcels that they've had for years and years and years, and I thought they'd give them to the town in a sort of park area. And they had them. up until about 2014, I guess, up above where they lived. And it was a stream that ran through it. They dammed it up and it was actually a runoff for the water supply. It went over to, where is that? An industrial area. And it powered water-driven turbines and stuff like that. And then it was a swimming hole. But they dismantled the dam scoured out everything. The flow of the stream alone just scoured out everything. But of course, Milton, it's a number of basins that's going to be more marshy and so on. But it was interesting. It's going on all over the place.

Since our last meeting, I did talk to the conservation trust that went to the meeting. I gave them a state-approved summary. All along, released information from the state. But mainly the focus was they own property under Milton. And a lot of the trustees weren't aware of that. And so they had a keen interest in what's going to happen.

That's great. Do you know if part of the report will be the process for removal, like what it requires? Like, does it require just the time to ask them, the time you can vote, you know, an active legislation? I mean, is that any of their report, or are they just...

No, they went through how the dam would be removed, what they would have to cut, and then what the result would be. But they didn't talk about...

The process of getting there.

The DOT was there. The DOT had like five people in the meeting. They owned the dam. So they're well aware of all this too. They were noncommittal to DOT about whether it should be done or not. So it doesn't seem like they're driving...

can you ask to mark's point like who they would think would be the decision maker going forward then who gets to decide and if there's any guidance on process if it's discussions with the president is the program manager from the state from the department of

Most of them don't happen due to the public being against it. It's a minority of ones that actually go through the next phase. So it's really up to the town. Yeah, the state could take it down if there was some defect in the dam, but there's not a defect on the dam. So it's really a desired thing. The state would like to do it for the benefit of migratory, not migratory fishing, but so fish can move from one area to another. And what I didn't understand was in the statement from the state, it must have been somewhere inputted by people who put in for this grant, L-E-L-W-D. It said for the downstream industrial something or others. In other words, for the safety of people downstream. It was a very short statement. Do you remember what that was, Bartlett? No, I don't. It said for the free movement of fish and the something downstream. And it gave the impression that, you know, dam broke. But none of that is really relevant. There's nothing wrong with the dam.

There's a page where they list the reasons for the seven different dams across the state. Yes, that was right there. All they say is what you just said about fish moving up and down, and then critical infrastructure. Critical infrastructure. Protecting critical... Now, I don't know... To me, that meant...

anything downstream that, you know, if the dam broke.

Yeah, the bridge under Mill Road, the bridge under 19. I'm sure some massive failure.

But I think their wells on Taylor Street are affected by Mill Pond, and they'd really rather not have the dam there to improve their water quality.

Well, they applied for the grant.

Yes, I know.

Okay. I thought that came up in the discussion as well, because LELWD was part of it. and they claimed they had no reason one way or the other. They said their wells were well far away from the middle pond and there was no effect. Yeah, that discussion . So anyways, I think we really need to figure out how the town is gonna decide to do it. I don't think any impression DOT really cared one way or the other. The state would like to have it removed, but they wouldn't do that without

And some of the seven dams are high priority because they were structurally unsound. They present a danger to the public. Ours does not. So it's low priority.

Yeah, and most of them were a lot bigger.

And would have a larger impact.

Downstream, probably. Larger impact downstream, initially. Yeah.

It just seems, looking at Nelpon, that it shouldn't exist, right? Like, that's how I think about it. Like, it wants to be a swamp and a stream running through it. That's what it wants to be.

Well, it was an intermittent, you know, pond network for ice means, actually. Right, right.

Gardening and ice, right?

Yeah, it was farms.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

You get the annual drop of nutrients and everything else. It just worked great like that for years. Yeah, a real working area, though.

Was the dam used to power a mill?

No. Never? Never, never. Really? It was never left up in place. Years and years and years ago, I think Leon unearthed a map that had a mention of mills that were water-powered. Okay, so...

Yeah, was Parley powered by a mill there?

No, they went to electric back in the early 1900s. But prior to that, it was a brisk mill up until 1815. And then a big blow happened where a lot of trees blew down to a hurricane or something. And then it converted over to a lumber mill. It's been lumber ever since. The big blow of 1815. The earliest map shows Millville.

So it was, when it was dammed originally, it was not meant to be all year round.

Oh, it was just dammed in the winter.

It was just dammed in the winter. And then in the summer, even when there were camps there, it was, they would let it go.

And so. Oh, I know I was years before that. Yeah. It was farmless.

Yeah. Okay. When the camps were there, the dam was not where it currently is. It was over.

On the other side of the freeway. Yes. And then they put four and five in. In the 50s, right? Late 50s, right? So then they put it behind it.

Right, so we can remind people, this was all temporary. People put this here. God did not make this.

It's been an iteration for years and years and years, but unfortunately it was too much to restore for us, and then of course the state the sentiment of the state turned against the thing in the first place, so dredging won't happen.

I would be interested in how much they're considering, you know, if they had, if this had happened 30 years ago, right, it would change into a stream and it would just flow and the flow wouldn't be any different, there wouldn't be any more carried through, but now that we've got 10 feet of siltation in there, if they remove the dam, I imagine the new flow through there is going to, this is all siltation, it's very loose, right? They'll all move into the wetlands downstream. They'll talk about the effects of the wetlands.

They'll talk about the silt, how much silt will be there.

Of course, if they're heading for the dam, all that silt would be down part of the wetlands right now anyway, so.

No, it wouldn't come through all at once. It wouldn't come through all at once.

Do they do any projections for if the dam isn't removed? What's it going to look like in 20 years? What's it going to look like in 30 years? People should be considering that.

I think that's on us.

Is that something we could... I'm just thinking about education here. If we don't do anything in 20 years, you're going to be looking at A real swamp. No, like it's going to be...

I think you're going to see acorns go in there from the oak trees around it. I think you're going to see pine cones go in there. They're going to sink into that mud. They're going to start to grow. If you go to the end of Gay Road, okay?

In Littleson?

No, in Groton. I used to live there always. If you took Gay Road and you come up to Route 40, Right in front of you used to be open, but now it's all treed in now. Trees coming up everywhere. And it's just the circle of life.

I mean, there's three feet of water there in the mill pond right now, which is not very good.

We're going to get rid of most of that.

Well, if you're saying... Once they leave, right? Oh yeah. But she's saying if we, if the dam was left in place, what's it going to look like?

It's going to look the same way, but worse every year.

Well, I don't know because I think I expect that, you know, the reason that it's filled in from 12 feet to three feet is because of all the nutrients that were flowing in from verifying. And now that that's all cleaned up, I don't see it really changing much. I mean, it'll eutrophy the same way that all of our other lakes are eutrophying, but not at the rate that it was.

So what I heard somebody ask was, why can't we get chemicals too? Why can't we just fix it like that?

It would have no effect. Why? Because there's such a concentration of nutrients that you can't, right? And where did that... Chemical treatment wouldn't do anything.

Well, I mean, that's true for all the lakes.

I mean... Is that logical? No, no. There's such a concentration there. We discussed that early on. It was never, never a possibility. No, dredging was really the solution.

That is true for all of our lakes. Forage Pond has so many nutrients in it. It would take generations for... all those nutrients to disappear, even if there weren't continual flow of phosphorus, nitrates into the... So all the lakes really have that same problem.

All I'm saying is different scape. Different scape. All lakes are aged lakes. They're old lakes. They've been surrounded by developments. They are nutrient-rich, and they're impaired.

No plant has the problem that it has no depth. The other lake's half of it.

When the whole thing is invaded, not just underneath.

But really, you have each of our lakes is unique. Long Lake is essentially a dam, a foul beaver dam. That's pretty much what generates most of Long Lake. That's unique. You guys have the whole mill. It's a whole different gig. But Mill Pond really was intermittent in its initial founding. And five basins that are all extremely shallow always were. It was intended for harvesting ice.

Not long-term recreation. Well, that was true 100 years ago. But, I mean, once they put the the dam in, it was a pond. It was. They skied on that. They water skied.

They had water skied. I remember swimming there in the 50s. Did you go up there? No, my uncle lived in the current pond or the old pond? The pond as it was in 1953. Not the current one? Not the current one. Not post? We just walked down Warren Street from his house and walk off the dock into the water.

Does anyone swim there now?

I don't think there is there anymore. I think it's under 495. Oh, okay.

Oh, great. Okay.

But nobody swims in Mill Pond.

I haven't seen anybody swim in Mill Pond.

And even after dredging, there was never a dream that anybody could ever swim there.

Right.

And so the curious part of this is that the land under the pond is owned by the town. So that is another factor, you know, the lake and everybody. Sometimes it's just, like if you look at the tax maps, nobody pays taxes on low, long.

I think there are lots, adjoining lots that go out into the lake. There are some.

Yeah, there are some. There are a few. The only way they could get a subject system was to actually have land under water.

that kind of imports the gold. But most of it, 90% of it is owned by a town of the Conservation Trust. So, you know, if you look at Orange Pond, what's the story there? The lake, who owns it?

The state.

The state.

The state owns it. Pretty calm. Up to the high water level. Each of our water bodies is unique. Both are.

I have a hundred here.

Okay.

So I think that's one of the reasons the town will get involved is because the land that's going to be exposed is town property and the conservation trust as well. They may have thoughts of other things they could do that would be a greater benefit to the townspeople than the current situation exists. Like I said, we just got to figure out how we're going to decide. We just got to bumble along and ask for support.

Well, I think it's not, it's not, It's not, it's the report isn't pro or, or against dam removal. It's what if there's dam removal? That's really all we're addressing.

Is there any talk of just opening a gate?

Yeah, I brought that question up. And, uh, well, first of all, it doesn't open, but even if it did get fixed, they said a couple of things. They said, uh, it wouldn't allow the fish passage because the water would be so, such velocity coming out of the zolia. like a one foot, two foot square. And then, and also the full-time job for somebody to keep that two foot square hole open with all the stuff that's flowing down through there. And the third thing was, if there's a lot of rain, so the lake level would rise and lower and rise and lower without any control. So if we got a lot of rain, then the lake level will come up and that may be a problem for some residents who work at the town.

It's not going to come up higher than it currently is. No, it wouldn't come up higher than it is.

If they open that area, would they say that flooding would be an issue?

Not flooding, but it wouldn't... The hole isn't big enough to let all the water through during higher water when there's heavy rain or something. So they said it was back up behind the current dam. So if we left the dam up and just opened the lower outlet, they'd be variable... lake height.

Just be too variable. It would be too unpredictable. Too unpredictable.

And here's something I asked, and I never thought of this before, because I brought up what would happen if we used open water sluice gate, and that's one thing they said. And then the state came and said, it really hazards the wildlife to lower the lake water in the winter, because a lot of things that are living and nesting in the water that's now exposed are dead, as well as the weeds.

No, it doesn't, because I shat there one day, as I walked around the lake, okay? When we lowered ours, okay? And I watched, and a clam moves. The clam moved in. You could see it, the path of the clam that was going to the water. Things move, and that's why you have to do it at a certain rate, okay?

But everything- And we have to be done by certain times.

Right. Everything moves towards the middle with the water. It's life, you know? Well, I mean, there's always going to be something dying, you know? There's always fish that die, you know, and stuff like that.

But, yeah, it's impactful.

How would we get to that answer? It's a good question. Who would know?

I'm looking for it.

Okay. There must be some You know who it is.

The moderator would probably know. It's one of those rules on what goes on.

On town meeting.

They probably come up and tell me some things in town meeting and other things are in.

Oh, I don't have a warrant, but that would be the select board.

So that's the one I see, the select board just beside me.

It would be interesting to find out of the five towns that have done it how they got it pushed through. And it would be interesting to ask the people who are working on your project.

And who owned the dam. Because I think that informs it. Like I know it was just removed and very old dam, but I think that was the town owned dam.

I think in a lot of those cases that actually did happen. The dams were in need of repair and they weren't safe and there wasn't a willingness to pay what it would take to...

Right, but there was still a process. I'm sure they had to still get some kind of approval from the people who lived around it.

And that's mostly who kind of cared. Everybody right there. It's not anything that's going to happen.

But it's more the way to go around the lake is the point I was trying to make, is because it's town land underneath, and people, townsfolk say it may be a great place to have a walking path for handicapped or whatever that

I don't live on the lake, but I have an opinion. I think the lake should be free. I think the water should be free. Get rid of the dam.

So now we've got to take what everybody wants, and then we come to an average of what they want, or some people will just be unhappy.

I don't know. That's democracy. Part of the decision depends on what it costs the town, right? Because if it's free to the town, then it's probably a subport vote. Right. the select board might be able to do it, but if it's asking the town for money, then it's definitely a town meeting.

So the feasibility study was not the cost share that was direct from the state. So I'll have to find out for the next grant after this, is it a hundred percent or is it town has to chip in something that would play in it then? Okay. I'll get you that answer. I can get that answer tomorrow.

All right. All right. So Dave had a great today. He was on track, I guess. Let's, you know, figure it out here. Dave, you're on track for getting the herbicides? Mm-hmm. Long Lake, kind of in limbo a little bit.

Well, I think things are happening.

Okay. Well, I think behind the scenes, we're not seeing it.

Oh, I haven't got, you know, it's not like we're in the water like it's that fun, but I do have a news item. Okay. Somebody brought this to my attention a couple weeks ago. There is a public notice from the highway department that they're taking bids on dredging the frog pond area. Okay, great. And doing the work there to remove invasives from the pathway, replacing the pathway with a new plan. That's great. And a bridge in the lowland areas there where the path is now under water.

It's a shambles. It looks like Mill Pond.

It is, really. It's... But the vids are due tomorrow. Great. Maybe that means there'll be action this fall or at some point. So that's great.

And Spec Pond is doing well. They're going to have their treatments tomorrow.

The awarding of the contract for the Frog Pond restoration is on the agenda for the sub board for Tuesday. Oh, excellent. Excellent. I don't know any more other than that.

Just the public notes.

Well, we're going to sign the contract on Tuesday. Pretty much. And I sent you something.

Yes, I was just about to bring that up. The Lake Advantage grant. I think Leon sent his in today.

Yes. I have to talk to the water department because they have to apply for They would be the ones that are applying for that grant. So I will get on to see.

I will have something for you by this weekend.

So the conservation department will be applying for the Long Lake grant, but Nick Finn has produced a funny weave.

So the water department will apply first.

I'm not positive they're going to apply, but I will follow up with them whether they are, will or not. Yes.

But they would apply for, they would be the ones that would be, I think Pondscom would apply for longer. Yes. So.

And that was, it was an invasives management grant?

It's to do a lake management plan.

Oh, okay.

So we're working on an IMA with Westford for a longer term for Forge Pond that'll cover future years. That will probably be coming up more towards July. We don't, there's no rush.

the moment since we're covered for this year yeah yeah oh the time pressure is kind of you can just now a little bit but yeah that's great oh and and really that's uh that's what i got uh well i can see a motion 200. so um you should have that's only 7 30 chad

I don't like that. I'll give a home so I can hang out.

Do we have any update on the dredging permits? No, no news on it. So they did the sediment sampling early in April, and they said that they had to get the results from the analysis lab. determine if there were any VOCs. And if there weren't, then they didn't have to do any plant sampling. And if, but depending on what they found, they might have to do plant sampling. Do we know what they found?

I do not.

So that would be useful to know because, yeah, that'd be good to find out.

Is water testing happening this summer?

That was another question. We've got to be starting that now.

Is that the water department who's doing that?

That is through our water department, usually.

The plan was in May, June, July, August, September. Well, yeah, it's almost a plan. Well, right.

Right. Two months last year.

Well, have we talked to them about it?

I haven't pursued that, but I can.

Yeah. I mean, and we're... People have... are ready to facilitate it. You know, get them out on the lake. Yeah.

We have trained water quality testers now.

Hold on. That reminds me. I guess there was a brief mention at the CONSCOM meeting last night that no action is being taken immediately on that parcel of land that CONSCOM... Long, long, long, long, long lake shore draft. but they are planning, I guess the next step will be a meeting, a combination meeting with and the solar board.

Which parcel?

Between the docks. The dock issue.

The dock issue. The dock issue.

So it's just status quo.

Okay.

If people have taken out their docks over the winter, they're saying you can put it back in again for now.

Yeah, I had heard from one resident on the lake who might be your neighbor that it seemed like they had gotten to a point where people were feeling closer to, like there was some compromise being made and then it was. Sure, it's a long lasting thing.

I think this was just suspended. I think there were three people that were absent from the cons con meeting. Three members weren't there, so certainly nothing was going to be discussed in any degree. and it has been tabled for months now, but it doesn't seem as urgent as it was last fall.

They weren't approving what's happening now, but they're willing to allow for now, but the status quo.

I see. For mowing, they said, we're not going to encourage you to mow. Was that what it was? Got a little long-winded. And then it stopped abruptly.

Did they talk about Cobb Pond? No.

Well, I didn't hear you. There was a whole other segment later on.

I think the Cobb Pond Association applied for herbicide treatment for Cobb Pond. They're not going through CPC. They're paying for it.

Well, they came and got advice on it. And the Conservation Commission was encouraging. And the group said that Solitude said that they would get the permit for it. And they said, fine, when you have the permit application ready to submit, come back. The thing I wondered was, whether Solitude was talking about WPA notice of intent permit, or they have to get Well, so we have permits, water, Wetlands Protection Act permits for doing herbicides on our lakes. And when the vendor does an actual treatment, they have to get a permit from the state for that specific treatment in addition to the WPA. So I didn't know what Solitude was talking about. Yes, we'll get the permit for the treatment, or if they were saying, We will handle the notice of intent and work to get the overall approval for the herbicide treatment. It was assumed that they were talking about the latter, so presumably they are.

Why is Cobb's Pond not in our purview?

It doesn't have any public access, I don't think.

You can get there through conservation land now. I've been there.

Not near going up 119 to the right down where cobs used to be, right?

Yeah, it's behind the oak meadow and the horse farm there. It is a swampy mess. I mean, it's just, do you ever fish there?

No, but that's a perfect example of a shallow pond and they can use herbicides. So it's that different than no pond.

I'm not a professional and I can't tell you, but it was on the table from the outset.

And it was like, no, it was never entertained. That's one of the things that it's, you know, if the conservation commission allows them to use herbicides in that lake, then there's going to be no pond folks saying...

The head of the water department, who was our advisor at the time, said it would be a waste of herbicide.

I don't think there's a reason why they couldn't apply to do it. right, for a mill pond?

Well, the question is, does it work or not? And people in Compton think it's going to work. So that's something else we should look into rather than dismiss it offhand.

It would work. It would have to be, I mean, it would get rid of the plants that are up to the surface and everything else would be the same. But if that was the objective, then yes, it would work.

It would just still be a three-foot deep pond.

Yeah, well, yeah. Compound has, they said that it was full of lily pads and they wanted to... Is that considered invasive? No, it's not. They made the case for... Consider it a nuisance. Modestly reducing the amount of lily pads that are in there. And they... We're careful about how they presented it.

Are there any houses right on there?

Because conservation trust managers are conservation restriction on the houses.

I know there's a well right there too, right? No, there's not. They wanted to put a well. It has not put a well. Because they don't have access. I also wanted just to call out Your work here and the town meeting report of the annual town report and the lovely Clean Lake Committee annual report.

Thank you.

Thank you, John.

Good job. Old town. I hope I never have to revisit that.

If anyone wants to look at it, too.

Well, I read it. Very good. Maybe I'll read it.

It was fun to see it in print in the big book.

It was a tough year. And I appreciate everybody sticking through. It was not good, but it gave us motivation to move forward. I think that's all good. I would entertain that motion.

Motion to adjourn.

We're still setting records. Oh, enjoy the sunset. Lay on. Yeah. Hey, Dave, we're signing off, man. You all set?

We need the date for June.

We do indeed. Thank you for bringing that up. And Ed's there, too. Ed, you still on this?

Yeah, I'm here. Can you guys hear me?

We can. That's great. Wednesdays are good? Good with me, yeah. I'm good with Wednesdays. Okay. What week is it going on?

Yeah. 17th, 24th?

Maybe we should hit the 17th.

Earlier before July?

Yeah.

Give us a little bit of time.

How about the 24th? I'll be on vacation. 17th.

Okay, 24th. It's likely we won't be in July.

So the whole thing is the June, what I'm worried about here, the only thing I'm worried about is we lose our funding right again on July 1st for the herbicides or we're okay?

No, the CPC funding is.

Okay, so then I'm not worried then. I'm not worried then.

Chuck's not worried. Put that at the meeting minute. You got that.

Well, I'm not worried because I was worried about, you know, how like we lost it right there at the last second last year.

Yeah. Let's say the 24th.

I'm not sure that I can make the 24th. No.

He has an open round. Open office. The 22th? No, the 24th.

Thursday? I think I can do the 24th.

Yeah?

There's nothing in the evening that day.

Not yet, anyway.

So, yeah.

Let's call it Thursday the 25th then. Okay.

I got my e-mail reading on last Monday. You did? Yeah. And you're walking around? Yeah. And it's just, they shaved it.

Thank you, everyone.

Thank you, everyone.