Clean Lakes Committee (clc) - Regular Meeting

635, right on set.

We'll come to order.

Leon, I think you're the only one out in the ether today. But if you can hear us, we can hear you now. So we will call this meeting to order. And thank everyone for coming out. Happy summer. It's been damn pleasant so far. A little bit of rain because we needed it. And we'll jump right in. We'll need to run down the agenda. It's malleable, but everybody's had a chance to read the minutes. I have no objections to anything. Anybody else have something to add? Delete, correct, all quiet. I would accept a motion. I move we accept the minutes and a second. Jerry Sings. And all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed? It is unanimous. Thank you. Water quality testing. We'll jump right in because that happened today. Started, we'll be running three months this year, June, July, August.

Five?

Not enough money.

Michael said we were going to do five. Well, you told me three.

Yeah, Mike said three today.

Well, he must have lost some money on his way from our lake to yours.

Well, if it was five, is it going to October?

No, September. June, July, August. September. Oh, yeah, it was supposed to start in May. Well, that would have been.

The dream was to start in May and have five months of data. But the reality is the budget calls for three months at this point. But it really went. smoothly at long night. I trust everywhere else it was okay to.

What are they testing for? Coliform?

Actually a range of things this year, but coliform is on the list. Dissolved oxygen, nitrogen. Yeah. And it's like getting a couple of different categories.

Phosphorus, isn't it?

Phosphorus. Temperature, of course. And they record the conditions. a couple of different heights so uh at the surface and i think at 13 feet or 14 feet maybe maybe 15 that's a long way but certainly deeper for you guys yeah they were doing the probe at three different levels yeah and sampling it too that's where all the money goes And you have two different locations?

Two locations, two levels of samples, and three with the probe.

Yeah, lots of lab costs, so, unfortunately.

Is that the only testing that happens for Longleg Beach, or they did the rec?

Oh, they do all the park and rec tests for beach. Every day, right? On a daily basis. Good. That's for California, right? For California, yeah, definitely. See if anybody's running in there with their diapers on.

Happened to me. I'm just going to test it every day. Westford tests Forge Beach once a week. No kidding. Yeah. I think we're daily.

Because of Camp T, I think they do it daily.

Oh. Okay. So far as I know. But I can't be positive to that. As far as I understand.

That's a park and rec thing. It's like stuff that lifeguards are doing. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. That's Park and Rec and Westford as well. Yeah.

And they usually close things down pretty rapidly if there's any risk at all. Right. And of course, testing takes weeks. So they should close for a few days and cross their fingers it all goes away. But happy to see water quality tests back up again. And Lauren was participating.

Michael, Lauren, and our new summer aide.

Lucas? Lucas, I think you're right. That's right.

Michael who?

Michael Gregan, the water department.

He was the guy that gave us the pitch one time about the water sampling. He was sitting right here.

And I think that was on two months of testing last year.

Oh, right, right, yeah.

He's the environmental engineer.

All good. We can move on to the, wow, Mill Pond Dam Removal Feasibility Study Results. I don't think they're published, but there are preliminary results.

Did you get my email? I have something I wanted to do. I do. I did. I have it. So, it's still, the final's not out yet, so we can't really go into detail.

Is the study done?

No, it's the end of this month, I believe, but participated in two reviews with them. So there's one interesting thing I think I can put out there, which is sort of like a big picture sort of issue, and that is there's actually three dams, not one. And we'll show the picture. And if anybody thinks it's going to turn into a river, riverine, riverine environment, it will not. It's just a matter of how big the pond is going to be. So, I mean,

You're saying at Mill Pond there are three dams?

Yes, and let me describe to you what that would be.

John, can you make the display the slide only for us, please?

I don't know. Well, while we're waiting on that, let me say, here's the dam that we all know, the circular dam. This is a cross-section of the dam, Route 495. This is the culvert. Route 495 goes north. south, right over the top of this box culvert.

It goes south and then north.

I'm pretending it goes...

But the dam is here.

Yep. The dam is there. The dam is on your left as you're going north. The dam is on your right as you're going south. It doesn't really matter. You're going north and south. So this is a dam that's under study. And it's six feet high, so it cut off the

Yeah, I was just making it bigger so people could actually see it.

Things are too for the point.

It's not that critical, but the concept with the proposal was what they're talking about is taking out the entire dam, including the base. And you can see how the base runs all the way to the culvert. So this is dam one. If they take out the base... Let me just also show you, this is the river bed. This is the bottom of the river, Beaverbrook. And so you can see...

Which is upstream, which is downstream.

Upstream.

Yeah.

Downstream.

So where you're pointing, that's the pond.

This is the pond. This is the dam that holds back the pond.

But they call that river bed, even if it's in the pond?

Yeah. Yeah, it's a hopeful stream. Sure, there'll be a river there. And... Because there was a river there first. So this is, the dam is six feet. So when I go through the culvert, I'm always wondering why I'm standing in two feet of water. That's actually almost 30 inches as you walk through here. Because you would think the water would come over the dam and it would just be a couple of inches deep. But, so this is dam one. If they take the dam out, now the bottom of the culvert is a box culvert. So it's concrete bottom, top, and the sides. They take this down, the mouth of the culvert is going to be one of the dams. So in other words, forget about this down here for now. They took out the dam down to the base. The water could be this low, and then it would be held back here by the base of the culvert. But the third dam is actually down here. This, once again, is the base of the, this is the riverbed, and there's a hump after the exit of the culvert on Route 45. It's actually two feet. So that's why when you walk through here now, this is actually holding back two feet of water. This is a hump downstream. So when you take down the six foot dam, you're only going to get four feet of drop in the lake because this dam is holding up the other two feet. I call it a dam, but it's the riverbed. It's a riverbed. But it's animated that way? I mean, it was... Yeah, I don't know why they sunk the culvert down that low. I don't know. But I just know, effectively, this holds back mill pond. This is the dam we're all talking about. The culvert will hold that mill pond once they take the dam down, because if they take the base down and the new river bottom is here for the lake, then the culvert will be higher than the riverbed, and that will hold that back. But this is the big one.

So it looks like the lake bed itself is even two feet higher than the downstream river bed. Well, would they take that out?

This is like sediment. This stuff is going to wash out. And this isn't that far back. This is just, I don't know how many feet. I don't know what these numbers are here. But it gets lower as you go. The deepest part of the lake is back here. So we always knew there would be a pond. Right. The point is they're going to take this six foot dam out, but they're only going to get a four foot drop.

They would take that dam. That's what they're talking about.

Yeah. This is the dam they're talking about eliminating, but there's still a dam down here. So what that's going to do is just create a smaller pond than what we have now, that middle pond. It will never be a river because of the deeper spot there, but we also, we could get it lower. Except for this, there's two feet more. And two feet in a shallow lake spreads out a pretty good horizontal distance.

Is that two-foot hump over there, is that sediment that would wash away too?

So that's what I brought up at the last meeting. I said, does anybody do an analysis of this? Is it like gravel? Is it mud? And the boss said something about not part of our, we're looking at this dam here. That's not part of our study. So we don't have water flowing? Yeah, there's water flowing through here, and it goes over the top here. So where's the water level? The water level will be like a couple of inches above here.

Just inches? Yeah.

Yeah, because the stream is very shallow here.

Okay, but that would make the culvert underneath the highway maybe three feet deep. Nope, two feet, right here. Here's the top of this third dam. The water's high enough to pass over that last hump. It would have to be two feet above that long.

Two feet and a few inches. Right, so it's going to be two feet through here. It'll be two feet and a couple of... It's going to be exactly what it is right now. Okay, so that's the bottom. The dotted line is the bottom. The bottom of the culvert. I got it. So, in other words, it's going to be exactly the way it is right now, the culvert. And what you're going to get is, if you take this whole dam down, I'm not sure why they would consider taking this down, because this is an apron that goes all the way to the bottom of the culvert. It's only going to give us four feet. So that is something that, and we've seen what that looks like. They have a diagram, which we'll see as soon as they release it. And it's not that much different. If you were hoping for something more like a stream, people have talked about bringing beaverbrook back to its natural habitat. You're not going to get that as long as this hump remains. So if this is gravel, so what I brought up is what if there is a hundred year flood after this is taken down and it takes out that gravel it naturally augers through there could easily happen then we sort of be misrepresenting what the lake would look like because after that the lake would be two feet lower and then a very shallow lake that would be a much smaller pond at this point

What is their feeling about this? Are they not making any conclusion? They're just saying this is...

Even though this is their chart, they were not that concerned about this. They're just more concerned about...

So would they recommend removing the dam? That's what I'm wondering.

They don't make a recommendation. They say, here's the feasibility, here's the logistics.

Here's how you could remove the dam. essentially, and here's what would happen.

I mean, not considering that thing down there gives a more optimistic view of what the lake would be like afterward, right?

Well, optimistic is a... That's a valid judgment. But it sounds like they're going to have to recommend it before anything actually happens. There should be some further study to identify it. What is that really?

And it might come out in the final study, because I kind of made a deal about it at the last meeting, and even though the boss was saying something to Susie from the DER and state sort of... Yeah, so Jared at home is two feet above the culvert, but it's at the far left of the screen that's at the level of the culvert? Yes. And I don't know, like I said, I wish I knew how many feet this was, but Walking in, I know that this is probably about 50 feet. And then when you get back to the shallow water, it's probably about 50 feet.

But that hump has presumably been there for 60 years.

Since, I don't know, but since the culvert went in in 1975, they redid the culvert. So, originally in 1962 when they built the dam and route 495 there was a break in the middle of the culvert and you could see the water would be going north and south down lanes and i don't know this from looking at the old maps so in 1975 because there's a date of 1975 on the culvert here and a guy from the study said i thought he said this was built in 62 and i said yeah i have no idea why i said that but anyway i looked it up and they I don't know how to do with redoing the exits on 495, but they ended up covering it over. So I don't know if this culvert went in in 62 or if they just plugged up the middle part of it in 75. I don't know, but it's built like this. But the dam itself dates to like 1958 or something. 58, 62.

But I mean, any flooding action wouldn't be affected by the dam. the same flow would be going through there, whether the dam's there or not.

And this is the point that the engineers brought up, is that barring a 100-year flood, it makes no difference if the water's going over the dam in a marine, and then perhaps scouring this out, or if the dam's down, it's going to be the exactly same effect of the same amount of water flowing through, scouring this out. So an air sample that hasn't happened since 1960, it probably is not going to happen. because my question was is it bedrock under here is just something that can move out well two years ago people were pretty flooded right i mean it was over the banks in the spring not this year the year before and if it's there now then so if that's the way it's looking if this is going to stay then it's going to be four feet lower and they have a They have a map of what that's going to look like. The other thing I brought up when I was talking to the highway department about the Harwood Avenue. These guys are saying you might want to redo the culvert. So there's one, two, three, four basins. But the basin zero is the one behind the white apartments. The apartments. What do they call that? The mill ponds? Yeah, yeah. And that pond is a mess. You could probably walk across it. But there's a square box culvert there. And when this lake goes four feet lower, the culvert is only, is going to be higher. So the water will trickle down and if there's an erosion, you want to put rocks up. And it's the same thing over on Harwood Avenue. It was just a pipe that goes through. So when basin one goes down, basin two, there's going to be no effect at all to upstream. But when I was talking to the highway department about it, is because they're talking about redoing Harwood. And so now you're going to have that Harwood Avenue and the road you live on, Mill Pond Road, are going to act like dams now because there's going to be a higher water level where the other basins are and lower. And I was just wondering what the effect of the hydrostatic pressure is. Is it going to infiltrate through the dams? Usually when they build an earthen dam, they put like, clay down the middle of it so the water can't flow through. So if you have a four-foot difference, it's the water going through.

And the state would advocate removing any dam just because it's an impediment.

So we talked about this last time that the goals of removing the dam are to enable the ecological flow of water animals to go back and forth. And the other was to protect the industry downstream. which is, yeah. And I don't really know what industry they're talking about. And like we just said, this is not a flood control dam. So the amount of water that comes in goes out over the top. So taking the dam out won't give you any more flood control than you have now. So I don't know why somebody wrote in protecting industries downstream, but that's one of the recommendations. And this is what we'll have to talk about with the, You know, if we go forward.

Well, the Department of Transportation owns that dam? Yeah, they do. Okay. So it's ostensibly tied to 495.

Oh, yeah, yeah. So they were at the meetings as well. As management. Five or six people from all different guilds of engineering. And, you know, they were saying that if people want to take the dam down, they don't seem to have an issue with it.

They didn't say why it was put in?

Why the dam was put in?

Yeah. Well, probably just because it was there before to maintain the pond as it had been.

I read it a couple of places.

At one point in time, earlier than this, the dam was further downstream.

On the other side of the... That was when it was used for power.

Mm-hmm.

So it was recreation and something else that they put the dam in for, but it's mainly recreation.

Wasn't it ice?

I mean, at the time they put the, presumably at the time they put the highway through, they had, they didn't, it was a problem for the dam to be where it was. So they moved it and they put it in again to maintain the status quo.

Right. Somebody must have asked them and they figured they had to do that. leave it the way they found it, right? It must have been the clean waste committee back then. Yeah. So anyway, this is the interesting part of the dam. We're looking at this dam, but there are really three things blocking the water flow before it goes to the brook.

And for all we know, that's a buildup of sediment when the dam was further downstream to start with. But, you know, They didn't investigate it because that's not part of their... Well, when you walk through here, it's rocky. Okay.

Where was the dam when it was further downstream? Was it on that diagram?

I believe it was right where Mill Road makes that 90-degree turn. Okay. Right where the Lake Water now is where Carlees was. The end of Carlees where the driveway goes out.

So that would be downstream of that hump?

I think it was right where 495 is now because the mill needed the dam above it and the dam we have now.

It's really hard to imagine because can you imagine this place without 495? But when you look at the old maps, there's a dam there and there's that sharp turn for Mill Road. Yeah, interesting.

I saw a map the other day from like late 1800s and the Mill Pond area was just jumping with activity. Yeah. You know, other areas that are popular now, of course, there's no train stop, uh, you know, where the, where the current train station is. Uh, it was the Littleford station. And, uh, but that whole area, that whole end of town was far more, um, developed with industry, with companies, with, uh, with, uh, with manufacturing.

Well, with a lot of recreation. That's how I got called Lake Warren because, uh, somebody bought it and they wanted to call it a lake instead of a pond so they could sell more houses. There you go. And there were summer houses. Just like Long Lake went down. Shredback built those ponds.

From a pond to a lake.

Right. But it sounds better. Anyway, so this is one of the overriding things that I think if the study does, what we look at, and this is going to be a cost associated with it, you're only going to get four feet, not six feet of Well, it looks like much ado about nothing.

I mean, just leave everything the way it is.

What about the culverts? Who owns those? And is that part of the dam or is that considered separate? Like if you take the dam down, do you have to take the culverts down?

Well, you can't take the culverts down. They're holding up from four to five. Okay. And these are box culverts. These are 10 feet tall. I mean, they're huge and there's two of them. Wow. So that's going to remain. The state wouldn't allow it to mess with anything. And so this is what people said you couldn't. The last time they looked at this, they said you couldn't remove the study, the Corps of Engineers study. The state said you couldn't remove it because it's holding up Route 495. When they looked at it a little further, they said, no, you can cut the dam. So there's a circular horseshoe. There's two abutments before the horseshoe starts, and we just cut it with this big saw. That's what they're talking about using. and sawing through it. If it only should leave those abutments, then the highway will be fine. It doesn't need the dam. What it needs is the abutments, the dam and the highway. But I specifically asked, I said, why are you taking this out? Why are you taking the base out? They just said, that's what we always do. In this case, right now... To do a complete job. This is like an apron that connects to the base of the culvert. That's true. what use there is if you're never going to get below this point at the bottom of the culvert.

I would think you'd leave it there to keep the, from washing out under the culvert.

Yeah, I'm thinking of that too, because if you get, if the water starts permeating underneath here, then it'll start actually scouring it out. But, you know, we'll see at the final, maybe that's what they came up with. The last time we got together, last review, this was a discussion point, and We'll see what the final is.

So the schedule going forward is what?

They're supposed to have it out in the fall, right? Well, I've been telling everyone in the fall, but at the end of June is when we're supposed to, they're going to release it to the people who put it in. That is like water. And then from there, we've got to figure out who's going to do what on this.

So in another week,

Yeah. If you wanted to improve conditions for fishing, what would we do with the dam? You wouldn't necessarily need to remove the dam, but you were talking about water coming from beneath the dam rather than over the dam so it was cooler?

What you'd want to do is have this water flowing faster, not be like a big kettle out of the sun, heating it up, making it more like a stream, and it's covered by trees and whatnot, and that would keep this work. The other thing I found, when I was coming up through the culvert, where they did that work, I guess, in 1975, there's this little spring coming out. The water must be like 50 degrees. It's coming out of this little spring. It's a little pipe right in the middle. Do you mean it's from a pond? I think it's just groundwater coming into the stream. And I believe that happens once you go down out the culvert on Mill Hill. During the spring, there's lots of little culverts coming down and lots of little rivulets coming down. And I believe all summer long, you're getting spring water off that hill. So it's running off from some spots. It's underground. Cold water. Ground water, yeah, because Mark knows there's all those wells up on top of the hill there, and they're all filling down. But actually in the culvert, there's a little spring that's coming in as well, a little sandy spot there. So for trout, that's a good place to hang out in the summertime when the cold water is coming. Yeah, so you want to get this to turn, but it doesn't look like in any case that this is going to be a river. It's going to have a pond of some sort, and probably because that's the way it was in the 1900s.

What's all this map you've seen of that area, and what did it look like?

Somebody somewhere from the 1880s.

I know that. Well, the dam went up in 1785. It's hard to get much of a picture before that.

So how much of a pond, I mean, if the pond average is only three feet deep and you're dropping at four feet right now, much of a pond, right?

Well, the dam is up to eight to 10 feet in the deepest spots. I'm sorry, Mill Pond is up to eight and 10 feet in the deepest spots. Now, these guys didn't go out past like 50 feet in front of the dam. But if you go to the Corps of Engineers study, they did the bathymetrics of the areas.

But that was 20 years ago.

If, on average, it's three feet deep, then after you drop it four feet, the surface area of it, you could argue, would be cut in half.

The shoreline would come in. OK. So if everything was symmetric, there's probably humps and bumps. Anyway.

But if there's places that are 8 or 10 feet deep, lowering at 6 feet is still going to leave ponds. 4 feet. Well, if you took out the other side, it's 6, right?

Yeah, the other side. But if you took out the other side, you wouldn't have the two feet here. And you'd always have a pond somewhere. You're going to have natural depressions, basically. Okay, good to see where it comes out. Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Jerry. Thank you, Jerry.

And you're saying the stuff on the other side of hardwood would no longer flow in?

It will flow in, but it will be as high as the culvert. So it will not be any lower than it is now. Unless they dig it up and lower it and put it right behind us. If they leave the culvert the way it is, There'll be a four-foot drop between one side and the other side of the harbor. And then, yeah, the upper part will be pretty much like it is now, as will that pond behind it. Well, it won't be worse than it is now because it'll be more stagnant, right? No, it'll be the same amount of water flowing through. There's no change in the water flow.

The flow is set by the rain and the watershed.

Depending on where it comes from, I mean, if there's a barrier that separates, you know, two lobes right now, but there's no flow coming through that lobe on its own, that would be stagnant.

Yeah. And have they got a drawing of what they anticipate the size of Basin 1 would look like? If the dam wasn't there? Yes. Substantially smaller or? Surprisingly not. Really?

Yeah. But, you know, I say the finals are not in yet.

Right.

But I don't think there'll be any change to that. And you saw it, didn't you?

It's not the fall that I kept looking. Sorry, Jerry.

No, it's not going to be all that much different. So I was over there the other day. It develops quite a smell in the summertime, doesn't it?

Maybe I'm blocking it out. When we first moved there, everybody talked about it. There was a dead swan once with his legs sticking up and that was like in the newspaper, but we don't use that in the newspaper.

So no one cares about the smell anymore.

This is a good time to have a discussion because all you've got to do is go to Mill Pond where the Mill Pond Road crosses and It really looks like it needs some TLC.

So you would believe that it would be improved if we were to lose the dam?

Yeah, that's my question too.

It would be a step in the right direction because it would be an hour stream, river, set of ponds, and water would flow faster.

So it would potentially be deeper in the areas that it's left?

No. It's not like it's going to be fast enough to scour, but it will just be an hour pond and it'll be less sun warming it up.

Less residence time in the area.

Yes.

Yeah. But the ponds won't be refreshed very often. Just as they are now. The same water is flowing in and flowing out and just flowing through an hour channel and so it will move faster.

You're going to have less residence time.

Yeah. Well, you know, when the grant went in, they said it was for two reasons. So fish could swim up it. And so it would take things downstream. So, you know, that's the measuring stick. They didn't say anything in there about making this on snow better.

Or having a trout, a better trout fishing.

Is there any idea about what it would cost to remove the dam? Yes. I shouldn't say the number now.

Oh, okay. It varies wildly. I'm sure. But they will have a number in there. But it will be on the big end. It will be on the big end. The question is who's going to pay for that?

Sure. Well, who would be motivated to remove the dam? Really?

Yeah, that's a good question. But it would seem like the state owns it. They would need to take the dam down and we could give them the money, but they're not going to let us, they're not going to let I think they'd want to control the dam coming down the state because they currently own it. They'd want to have some. Oh, sure. And so I don't know where the money would come from, but the state will be involved in it.

The state has funds for name removal.

You're right. So there's the next phase after the feasibility study is you have lots of meetings and then you go in and put in a grant for actually removing it. And the

If the town decides they want to remove it, then you'd go to that soon.

Yeah, so the question is, who is the town is number one. Number two is, I think we've got to really come up with a good reason. It doesn't appear to be the reason that we put in the feasibility study grant. If somebody could come up with some industry downstream that would be protected by a dam that was never a water control dam, never a flood control dam.

But why would taking the dam out help protect infrastructure downstream?

I don't know. This was never a flood control dam. It would just return to its original state.

If you've got the same amount of water flowing through it downstream, whether the dam's there or not.

Right. So my thought was that if that's really the thing we want to protect, then what we should do is get the state to replace the lower outlet, and we should regulate the lower outlet so that it If there's a 100-year flood coming, we close the floodgate and let it fill up the dam and reduce it slowly. So at the bottom, there's this rusty gate that goes up and down. If that makes sense to me, I brought that up at the last meeting, and the state was not in favor of it because they have these numbers about what kind of fish can flow up against what kind of current, and they said that certain kinds of fish could not flow against that would be too strong for...

But that would just be used during flood conditions.

Well, it would be used... No, the thought would be leave the flood gate open all the time.

You leave that gate open and then you'd close it if there was...

If there's a flood coming or a lot of rain is coming, then you would close the gate partially so it would back up behind the dam and then after the flood.

I don't think you'd even have to close it. It would just, there would be too much flowing into the pond to come out there at the same rate and it would just build up.

I agree.

It's like the pension ponds you've got all over the place. They work the same way. Yeah.

And given that there's two feet of water because of that hump downstream, that floodgate really opens underwater. It's currently underwater now. So I think, um,

they could re-look at whether fish could swim up that being that it's... Well, if it's only two feet square, though, the water's speed through it is going to be quite high.

Yeah, but I meant like they don't have to jump up into it like a salmon or something. They could go in, they'd be starting in water, and they'd get a big hit in school.

I don't know.

They can throw a buddy in front of them, and the buddy gets washed downstream, and you get just sprayed in.

So we've got to figure out why we want the dam removed. I don't think we can feasibly study.

I hear nobody in the neighborhood in favor of it. Well, I'm not surprised.

I wouldn't say nobody, but we haven't got a good feel for that, I know.

No, no, there's been no survey.

No, the guy who was here last time started weighing everything, thinks that it may be an improvement to what there is now.

I mean, it sounds like it's worth seeing what they come up with, the diagrams look like. How would that change? Could we envision something different for that community, that part of the community?

Is there a plan for how, once the report is public, is there a plan for how the community would be apprised of what has been determined? Are we involved with that?

No.

Should we be? No.

Well, I don't know. We are a mill pond subcommittee. So I think subcommittee should have a, with the people who live around the pond, that's what I was saying to Mark, you know, with select boards, we get involved, but do we give the people who live around the pond two votes? Everybody else in town, one vote? Because they actually have to live around the pond and

Or is everybody just getting one?

Or, well, I don't know. You know, most people don't go to it unless something's hitting them right in the face. You know, like, I don't get it, whatever. So, it would probably just be people who do not like it. Because I don't think most of the people in town, even though Milbon is there, it's not a place you go swimming. They don't swim there.

I think it's a destination. The summertime is not a

So I think somebody's got to hear people out before we get the feasibility study.

It's not the Clean Lakes Committee who is the party that's expected to convene the community around the lake and and hear their interests.

Oh, no, I have no problem with a follow-up discussion, but it's not our report, and it's not, it's the state. It's through the Water Department. The Water Department will release the results, maybe through Watson Drops or something, I don't know.

It's not our purview. Well, there should be a forum to be able to present it and discuss it, but people can, you know, provide public comments.

It depends, right? I agree with John. The water department did the survey. They're the ones that...

But we're a stakeholder, I would think.

We didn't have... We have no stake in this. I mean, it's... You misunderstand. What I'm saying is, if the water department decides... that they want to pursue it, removing the dam, then we become involved. If they don't want to pursue it, then it's unless this committee decides that they want to pursue it, even if the water department doesn't, then we get involved. But there's no point if the water department looks at it and says the dam should stay, that there's any action on our part. Yeah, there's no reason to do anything then.

but we can certainly share the results.

If the water department decides they want to pursue it, we decide whether this committee decides whether we're advocating for it or against it at that point, right? Or you, or while, when they're making a decision, we can advocate with the water department for what their decision should be.

And what was the water department's impetus in the first place for doing this?

Well, they wrote the grant and there were two reasons why. It was those two reasons. The industry downstream and the ecological water animals going up and back.

So there was no statement about it smells stinky for the residents who live around it.

Oh, but we do have a situation where we have a dying lake or dying series of ponds. And after having pursued this for 15 or 20 years, I'm sure that the town is, well, the water department especially, is interested in bringing this to some sort of fruition. I mean, some kind of conclusion. Is there a better way? Should we have been pursuing removal of the dam from the outset? They also have two wellheads that are probably affected too.

Sure.

Yeah, I think that it is in our purview. I think we could even go as far as if we wanted to advocate for dam removal to make that, to try to influence the water department.

Or if I didn't want to advocate for it.

Likewise. I'm making a case right now that I would say that I'm interested in dam removal. I'm not sure how to pursue it or how enthusiastic I am for it, but I know that it's, it's just frustrating because it's, um, uh, there's no other solution in hand and it's, uh, a failed lake. So as the clean lakes committee, you know, and I don't want to just have it, have it be a narrow definition that we're only interested in things that have an outline like this and are flat across the top filled with liquid water. I think that our mission is about water quality and quality of life for the humans and the wildlife as well. So a case would definitely be made for dam removal. That's probably a very strong one. So I don't think we should shy away from that. Well, I think we need to see the results of this study.

Number one, it's not our study. It was conducted by the state through the Water Department, but once it becomes public information, I think we can take it and run with it, regardless of whichever way we come down on it or whatever.

That's, I think, the relevant point. Regardless of whether we decide to advocate or oppose, it seems to me there's a role for the Clean Lakes Committee because there isn't anybody else to do it. in just sharing public information so that the public knows what's going on with this important wildlife in the town.

I mean, when you come right down to it, our foundation was primarily based on cleaning up Mill Pond. That's why we came together in the first place. Really? Yes. Hmm. There were three or four people there. We are going to clean up this lake. Why not? We need help from the water department. We need help from the Army Corps of Engineers. Let's get it. And that was the big push.

So I'll reach out to the water department, figure out what they're planning on doing once they get this, and ask them not to make any decision without having a meeting with us. I have one more question.

So you said that they didn't feel like it was part of their purview to look at what would happen with that hump in the topology downstream. Were they similarly not worried about what would happen to the wetlands downstream in terms of the silt moving out of the lake that it's in now?

No, they were very interested in that. They had a lot of calculations from historical dams removed before about how much sediment would go downstream. It's not much.

But I would say that this... I would expect, anyway, that the sediment in this pond would behave probably differently than a lot of lakes because it's only been there for 20 years.

And it's, it's, um, there's a huge volume of it.

Well, yeah. And it's, it's still made up of this, uh, um, plant material that's probably still decaying. Right. Uh, as opposed to sediment that's been deposited over decades and decades and decades.

It's been here for hundreds of years. Not moved it back. A lake isn't in that much of a different position than it was.

Well, it's different. I don't know, 30 years ago it was like 12 feet deep, and now it's like 3 feet deep, because all the nutrients coming from verifying created so many plants there, and the plants died and fell down, and it just built up. So it's quite different than other lakes. I mean... It is. It's the process of eutrophication, but it was very rapid eutrophication. I think it's been a longer period than 12 years. I didn't say 12. I said like 30.

I've been there 20 years.

120 years.

Is the depth the same now as it was? I love swimming, and I've never swum there. I lived there. It was called Deep Deep. I would have swum You know, and it's, the bottom hasn't changed a whole lot in my time.

15, 18 years ago, when we had a few meetings with the residents of the Mill Pond, there was one woman there who said as a child, she went swimming.

Bartlett told us that last time, that when he was a kid, he went swimming with his father.

He walked off the dock.

In the late 50s.

In the other lake.

Yes. Before they built that dam. Right. Lake Warren, that's why people went there.

The interesting thing for us when we started doing the research and the Army Corps was involved, they were saying if you go down 8 or 10 feet, you've got sort of a gravel bottom. that has since been covered with all sorts of sediment and runoff and silt that's come downstream and so on back up from the dam. And the idea was we would dredge down to that original gravel surface and then deeper in some areas to really create some diversity for fish. But it was pretty well established that there's a big layer of on top of what used to be a relatively stable base. How deep it all is, I don't know. It's still an ongoing issue and we'll certainly be involved. So thank you for attending. I got a heads up on the release, probably the same email you got with the preliminary results. but I didn't look at it soon enough, so it expired.

That was still close hold. I sent that out as a preliminary, and that was actually after our second meeting. But anyway, when we get the final one out, we'll stand by what Mark has to say. I don't know if we want to run with it until we find out what the Department's going to do.

Yeah. Well, I was curious to see the results and I'm sure it'll be, well, it's public information. So.

I agree. It's kind of awkward. What if our, you know, it wasn't really, you know, it will know more next time we meet. I think we will.

That's great. Thank you. Appreciate it. That's great. Um, Invasive mitigation. Close?

Say what about Forge Pond? At Forge? Right. So we've got two things going on. The more immediate one is our herbicide treatment. We are in the next day or two should be getting it signed by both Littleton and Westford. um a couple days ago westford select board reviewed everything and they um they are fine with the memo of understanding and my understanding from mark and warren um is that middleton is fine with memo of understanding so warren Would have taken it over to Jim today, but she was working at the law department. So by early next week, that should be signed. Westford approved a purchase order from the conservation department. And they accepted an offer of funding from Prince George Pond to help fund part of the Westford contribution. So the PO should be going out in the next day or so. We had hoped to have the treatment early next week, but talking with Solitude today, that's not going to be feasible. So it looks like it'll be beginning of the next week, right after the forth. And we will be coordinating the notification, putting up signs, sending out emails and letters, putting it on websites. uh, in time for everybody to be aware of it, uh, ahead of time. Um, and, um, the, um, it's Priscilla core for milfoil. Um, uh, the week and a half ago, they did the, um, pre-treatment, uh, plant surveying. We got the results last night. Last year, we had 60 acres of milfoil. And so the quote that we asked Solitude to provide was up to 70 acres. And what they found last week was 90 acres. So we're not going to be able to do all of that. So the next day, we're going to work with Solitude to figure out which parts won't be treated, which is unfortunate because that means that there's 30 acres of milfoil that'll stay there. So this, where it's treated, it should eliminate it for three to four years. Probably could last that long if you do spot treatments where it starts to come up. But now if there's a third of it still in the lake, it's probably going to be less effective than being able to treat all of it, which is unfortunate.

You can hit it next year.

I don't know. Yeah. But better than last year. Right. So, yeah, so that's... And thank you for your help with Memo of Understanding. Mark was very instrumental.

Well, you've been instrumental yourself. The document looks pretty amazing.

Oh, yeah. Well, so anyway, that's where that stands. So in the next two weeks, hopefully we can have the treatment. The other thing that we have going on is that water chestnuts have been found in Beaverbrook. And one of our neighbors that was hunting on Beaverbrook told us this winter that he had seen some last fall when he was over there hunting. And so we started the process of getting permits to take it out because it takes months to do it. So we started the permits when we didn't have any confirmation that it was there. But several of us went a few weeks ago and confirmed that it is there. We chose a section of Beaver Brook from Orange Pond all the way through Westford. I think it's in Westford. And then Littleton from the Westford town line over to where it for the first time crosses I-495. So that's a couple of miles long. And the idea is get approval for all of that now, and then try to keep an eye on, you know, is it showing up here or there or whatever. Water chestnuts, each plant can produce 10 or so seed pods. And each seed pot, when it falls and lands, ends up in the stream bed, the lake bed, can last for 12 years. So these things can, even if you get all the plants out now, they can keep coming up for another decade or so. And so if you don't deal with it, they can quickly, you know, take over.

So it's a nasty.

Yeah, yeah. So we're... That was the idea. Get approval for the whole area and then take it out where we see it and then keep an eye on it and see if it shows up anywhere taken out.

Do you have to get approval then?

Well, so we submitted notices of intent to Westford and Littleton Conservation Commissions, submitted our notices of intent to the northeastern and central regions of the EP. We had to submit it to Natural Heritage because there are some endangered species there. And so we've been through that. It cost like $700 to submit these things. So it's considerable. And it took several months. And we've had a first hearing with each of the conservation commissions and they're supportive, understandably. And they haven't been able to issue anything yet because we're still waiting for the DEP numbers to come from DEP. The biggest complication is that we need to have anywhere that we're going to actually do work in the stream. We need to have permission from the owners of the land that that portion of the stream lies within. And so in this section of of the Beaver Brook, there are 25 properties. And so far we have received permission from half of those. And in order to get the notices of intent before the commissions, what we had to do was revise the request to only those properties that we actually have permissions from at this point. And so there we can bring it forward. Everybody that, you know, would be affected has approved. And then the idea would be to get approval from the, you know, in orders of conditions, which say that we can only do it, remove the plants on those parcels where we have permission And hopefully we can get an order of condition that says, if we have additional properties where we have new subsequent permission, we can work with the conservation agents to add that in, rather than having to go through the whole process again.

What if they just float on the water, or if they have roots in them?

The plants have roots. They're rooted plants. They grow up to the surface. They have a set of leaves, about a dozen leaves or so that could be more.

And it's hand pulling?

So we would be planning to hand pull it. You have to be careful to get the whole thing. You have to, you know, lift it carefully to loosen the roots so that they come with it. And the seed pods are down, with the roots.

The chestnut.

Yeah. Yeah.

Why are they making this so hard for you guys? I mean, it's invasive, right? And so what's with all these permits? Why did this go in?

Well, you could say the same thing about drawdowns, about herbicides, about echo harvesting. It's trying to maintain the ecology of the lake, but that's the way the Wetland Protection Act is set up.

Is there... Are there water chestnuts, like, up in Mill Pond? Like, it must be coming from somewhere.

Not necessarily. I mean, they can be brought in by birds and things like that. I mean, the seeds have, I don't know, four to five barbs on them, and so they can get attached to waterfowl and be carried that way. They can also float along. When we were doing oars, that last weekend when you were out and we were out. We were at South Bridge in Concord and some water chestnuts were floating by so we grabbed them. And they've got a big problem upstream of South Bridge there.

Yeah, I've seen water chestnuts in the Nashua River.

Yeah, we had one of the Friends Forge Pond directors participated in a one of their removal efforts a couple of weeks ago in Pepperell. And they, that was, that was instructive in terms of logistics and that kind of thing. They also had one week before in Bedford, they had 20 boats, 170 bags of water chestnuts removed. We don't have that many. Sometimes, I mean, in Pepperell and the National River, their plan was places where it's not as infested, remove them by hand. Other places, they do use herbicides to get rid of them. We would be planning to use kayaks and canoes and both by hand.

But are there any landowners there that are objecting to this?

None have objected so far. They just, a lot of them, half of them haven't responded.

We sent out a blast to all of them, and we got responses from some.

Yeah. Okay.

It's not a reluctance necessarily.

Well, I think there's probably reluctance to, you know, is this valid? Is this, you know... a scam? Is it, you know, what am I signing here? I have, there are two properties where the infestation we've found resides. And I've talked to the property owners of those, their businesses. And one of them, when I talked to them recently, they signed it. The other one has to move up the chain to But to begin with, we sent to the mailing addresses listed for the properties. And in these two cases, one was Connecticut and one was a PO box in Arlington. So anyway, the thing is we want to get the approvals where we need it. So they start to drop these things and you're not going to be able to get them out. They're not going to be able to take out the seeds around the end of July. So we got a few weeks to hopefully get approval and get the numbers from DEP and be able to go in and do it.

Well, let us know. Yeah.

We think if we get the permissions from all the authorities and everything that was a concerted effort in one day, we can get the bulk of it.

Wow. Only ones we saw, I don't know, several hundred plants. How many hundred?

500? Maybe 500 in the area where it's maybe a couple of acres.

Yeah.

But accessible?

Moderately. It's not easy to get to.

You can get to it easy enough, but then if you're trying to move out buckets and buckets of plants you've collected.

That's going to be... We can only do a few.

Well, I would say that we're lucky that the area we founded is accessible. Because some of the areas that we're proposing to inspect are not very accessible.

Is it accessible by airboat or is this really kayaks and canoes?

Kayaks and canoes. Airboat would get hung up in the reeds. It's very narrow. It's very windy. Some places are open, right? But have you inspected everywhere you're hoping to do? No.

How close are the houses?

Like it doesn't look like they're not right now. None of them are anywhere near.

It's strange that you have to get permission because is the stream even owned? It's not.

So some of the properties come right down to the stream.

Yeah.

Some of them are just encompass the stream, you know, big areas. So, fortunately, there's, you know, the Wetland Protection Act is written so that if you're, you know, normally you'd have to, you know, do the whole wetland and, you know, butters and that kind of thing, not permissions from all of them, but there's a part of it that says, you know, you can work within 100 feet off the site. And so, you know, from pretty much all these properties, that stays within this property that's actually, you know, containing the stream, which limits.

Probably some of those property owners are like, what? There's a stream back there? I don't even know.

Well, I think some of them may be concerned that we're actually planning to, you know, go across their property. I mean, we went and looked at one site in Westford. And when we came out from looking at the stream, there was a welcoming committee of a dozen people, you know, ready to, what are you doing here?

And they were ready to call the police and prosecutors for trespassing.

My goodness.

Well, they've had problems with other similar situations. Um, so once we explained that they were, they were fine on the other hand, uh, they have yet to sign off on it. So for the most part, that's okay right now, because those other areas don't right now that we know of have law commitments. And hopefully over time, we'll get the permission and then we can work toward finding. So that's the report. There we go.

Well, when the time comes.

Yeah.

We all need to dive in. Send the word. What do you think? Empty canoes? And then you fill the canoes with bags of...

I think we, I mean, even, you know, like I'm thinking, so a lot of these have used like laundry baskets. because the plants are big enough that they don't fall through, but they let the water out. Or, you know, you could use lawn, you know, lawn bags, you know, that are porous. You could just put them in the canoe, but then you got the problem of, you know, which that would probably still work.

Water would drain out of them into the canoe. Of course.

Which is probably okay. You'd have a sponge and

Yeah.

But it'd be hard to have a lot of boats there because it's a congested area to get to.

Oh, I think it just, that seems to be the biggest sticking point. Once, once we can get in it. Yeah.

We went in with canoes, two canoes. And the length of the canoe is a difficulty. So it's shorter. wouldn't be on a kayak, would work better. But nowhere to put anything. Well, boogie along your basket or something on the front and toss your stuff in. Let the water drain out. That's true. But you see, there's a challenge here to do this efficiently and not spend all your time ferrying back and forth to unload.

Toe some inner tubes with the things on your...

Get a pneumatic pipe over to the show.

Yeah, right.

Little cannon. Bob's got some wildlife here. I got the latest update at Long Lake from Lauren today, who said that there's still a little back and forth between the town and, Mark, maybe you know about herbicide treatment at Long Lake. A little back and forth between the town and Solitude. And maybe we haven't quite got results of the sampling yet to see how things look. But within days, not this month, but, you know, probably within the first week or second week.

Planned survey has been done.

Survey is not complete, I think.

It's been done, but it hasn't been assessed.

I know that 100%.

Well, my field testing... And I've been out swimming. I've seen, I think it's, is it, I think it's Curly.

Curly Pondweed.

So that's what I'm seeing. And it's higher than I've ever seen it. And you go out from the boat ramp and you swim out to that first buoy and there's, there's, the weeds are going to the surface.

That's Pondweed. That's just going to be around the literal foam.

And that's like, it's farther out than I've ever seen it. And even swimming between the buoys, I've felt.

I think they have some nuisance weeds there.

But I think it's curly pond leaf. I mean, I've looked at it and I- I- I- That stuff doesn't grow there. Ah, it's tall stuff. And it starts at the beach and it goes out and it's denser than I've seen it. But that was before Camp T started. So they hadn't pulled, I don't know if they pulled there when the kids start coming. Yeah. But I was just surprised to see such tall weeds out so deep. That was unusual.

Yeah. Usually we're concerned primarily with the portion.

Yeah.

30 feet offshore or something like that.

And I've taken pictures of it. We'll see if I can find it.

But it's just, it's the baggage for it. It's like, yeah. And this is the Conservation Commission that's managing the... And they're going back and forth between Solitude and whoever they hired for the... TRC. Was it TRC? Probably. I don't know.

Yeah, I heard it was a couple weeks out.

So it just occurs to me that Westford Conservation Department has endorsed the Friends of Forge Pond effort to pull the water chestnut and is co-applicant on our application to the Conservation Commission. In Littleton, would it make a difference if the Clean Lakes Committee voted, we endorse the Friends of Forge Pond effort to pull mitigate the invasion?

I don't think we need to. I mean, the commission was supportive already. The reason we had to do that for Westford is that we applied as a municipal project to avoid having to pay the fees for submitting it. And the northeast region of DEP took exception to that and said, this looks like Friends of Pudge Pond is doing it, not the town. Oh, I see. So Matt provided a letter that said, we are co-applicants on this. We fully support this. We appreciate the fact that Friends of Pudge Pond did took the initiative to do this and it improves some of the land is conservation land and they pointed out that it improves some of the land in Littleton is conservation land some of it is water department land and the conservation department has provided their permission to do this on their land the Hartwell conservation area. It's a big area. It goes to that. But we haven't heard any issue from the central region of DEP about that. So there hasn't been a need to do it yet. Okay. The conservation commission was very supportive. Good to hear.

I think the RFP for the lake management plan is out soon for Long Lake. Deforged plant is behind that as they have to wait for the IMA, which will probably hopefully be done next month. So we did the MOU with Westbrook. Now we're doing an intravenous full agreement. Oh, right.

That's what I am.

IMA. So, and that MOU is the quick and dirty to get something done this year. The IMA will be, I think it's a five year agreement. It's a longer term thing. So it's been drafted conservation and Littleton has looked at it. And I believe conservation Westford has it, but I don't know what the status is from the Westford side. The site board has not looked at it in Littleton yet. It'd be nice to know something in Western happened before we did, but we can call it on our, I think it's going to be our June or July 13th meeting, not 100% positive on that yet.

It would need to be approved by the select boards.

Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, that's good. there is still a challenge in, you know, the level of funding support from Westford. Yes, but at least we have an agreement. And for the current projects that we have lined up, we have funding for them. So once we have the agreement in place, we can move ahead. Yeah, the H&H and the Lake Management Projects. plan phase one.

That's great. From an administrative standpoint, this has never been done before. So Littleton and Westford have just sort of co-existed almost, but not really.

I mean, there was co-funding for the, we did dredging of the Outer Channel five years ago. But other things.

But to actually put it together for a five-year period and then anticipate renewing that or revising it or whatever, but going on and on, that's a giant step forward. Yeah. That's real good.

It was co-funding for the echo harvesting, but that was, I think, just separate invoices, I think.

Yeah, right. You mentioned the 13th of July for the Select Board. Do you also know The docks and things? The docks. I believe, yes. Will that be on the agenda? I believe so. Okay.

My understanding from talking to the conservation department yesterday was that was the intent. Is that a select board meeting? That will be a select. I believe it's the 13th or whatever that Monday is.

Yeah, it's a Monday. And it's Does the Conservation Commission have a recommendation for what the select board should?

I believe they have a recommendation, but I don't know exactly what they're planning. The last I heard is they're kind of keeping the status quo on the docks, but there might be more talk about the land size looking along there, right? And I don't know that there's been really an agreement on what should happen there.

I would think there'd be a, consensus among the Conservation Commission and the community and the neighborhood before it goes to the select board. I don't think you're going to get consensus with the neighborhood because I think...

It's very controversial.

Oh, so the Conservation Commission has taken all the public input and they made their decision.

I think the decision they made is to stick with the status quo on the dogs. Mostly. Mostly. Right. But they might require them to have permits now. I'm not entirely sure. But the lakefront itself, I'm not sure what they've decided because that was much more iffy, you know, on how much mowing you could do or what you ought to leave your kayaks on town property and all of that. So I expect that one to still be fairly controversial. Right.

All right. Yeah. I don't know if it's controversial, but... You're allowed to leave your beach chairs down there. Yeah, yeah. No, it's a good question. I think the main focus, as far as I understand, is really for the docks. But, I mean, the people who leave their kayak on a rack or whatever, they have to be removed. What actually becomes of that park land is subject to a great deal of contemplation. It's not a wild piece of property. It's going to be, it's enjoyed on a daily basis.

There's been talks all the way from rewilding it to landscaping it. Sure. To the old homestead thing. Yeah. Even if it rewilds it, it's only like five feet deep, right?

It's not like you're going to have to open it. It varies from about three feet deep to 20, 30 feet, 40 feet. And as you go down Lakeshore Drive, there are different environments. There's almost a beach. There are places.

So there may be suggestions for different sections. Yeah, I'm not sure. I haven't been following it that carefully. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, it's, I don't, I don't, well, I guess, I guess being, uh, under the purview of, uh, of the cons comp, uh, it's, it's up to them to make some sort of proposal, but, uh, uh, I think, I think respecting the, the neighborhood, uh, that has been there as been caring for it for the past 40 years, uh, wouldn't be unreasonable. So I think, I think we can get together on this, but, uh, We'll see.

And then it's like where it actually controls some property along the lake.

Yes, on the far side of the beach. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Okay. We have one dock.

Right, right. But, you know, these are the docks where the boats are that I, you know, ask to borrow when we go and do the water quality sampling.

Yeah, that's the stewarding.

Yeah, right. So I was thinking we use it. Use your boat before we have you remove your dock and the boat. You can't with the boat there either. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I know what you're going to do. This is kind of a ridiculous setup.

I might have to bring in a boat next year.

Might have to actually, yeah, drag a boat on a trailer or something. It seems somewhat absurd to have a lake community and a lake that you really can't. Take a sunfish. What's that?

Take a sunfish.

Yeah, right. Go rent one. What's the matter with you? Play along. So, yeah. It'll be interesting for months and months and months to come. I'm sure. That's that.

I don't think it'll be like my love. I really don't know. I doubt it.

It's one of those wicked problems that seems like it's hard to find.

Well, nothing has been advanced. Past meetings where it has been discussed or was alluded to, it's been tabled. Chase hasn't been around or, you know, just for one reason or another, it hasn't moved any further.

Last time they discussed it. What's that? I mean, two meetings ago.

Only to say, you know, sort of status quo. We'll tolerate docs for now. It's not okay, but it's not.

They're not really making a decision as much as ignoring it. That sounds safe.

Well, I mean, it sounds like... They're not granting permission.

They're not denying permission. Right.

I mean, it sounds like, you know, it hadn't really been... People hadn't been aware that this was, you know, not their, you know, not for them to do necessarily, right? And now it's been brought up and it sounds like they might be saying, let's let this proceed and see how that works. And we can always revisit.

Well, at this point with regard to the docs, there has been discussion of sharing the private docs. The proposal has been made that half of that doc would be the homeowner that has installed dock and the other half would be sort of for public access, but that's, is it workable? I don't know. I have no idea. And so does that allow the town to create some legal situation where that's a legal dock? I don't know. We haven't got a budget right now for town funded docks. So, you know, that you've got this sort of sunset period or something where, you know, okay, current docks are going to be tolerated until new docks can be bought or installed. What's it going to be?

Who puts in the dock that the town owns? The town? There's no...

I thought you said that the town owns one parcel and there's a dock on it.

Oh, no, no. This is a land parcel. There's no dock. There's no town dock.

There's no, but there's a dock on there. There's a private dock. Oh, I see. Somebody across the street has, oh, I see. Right.

That's for the private beach.

Yeah. Right. So, very nice.

It's a little messy.

You can pick it then. No. But it is fascinating. It's unique in that that main parcel of land that goes along Lakeshore Drive is all publicly accessed and it's enjoyed every day. It's not that the people are getting into the water so much. It's just that Lakeshore Drive becomes the path and you just enjoy walking along the shoreline. You can't do that in any other lake. So, you know, there's a lot to be said for that. but I think that the neighbors feel like we are reluctant to have this kind of big brother stepping on us, you know, and managing this because we have put up with a similar situation with Parks and Rec sort of commandeering the park every, or the beach every year to our exclusion. And, you know, it's okay. Ultimately, I guess it's like any kind of vacation community. Pick an island, pick the cape. The population swells just in terms of use. And, you know, everybody who's there year-round says, don't we have some sort of right to something here? I don't know. I finally went over across the street from being weed whacked a little bit. plan to go back and do it again. But rewilding, it's going to take a long time.

Well, and it's a lot of invasives. So across from, it's a lot of bittersweet and not being.

I just, I pull them out and throw them away.

So it's wild, but it's.

It needs constant management. And it's not one of those things that you can just sort of let go back to nature. because of the invasives, because of the nuisance plants, because of, you know, just wouldn't work. It would look crappy, and it would stay that way. We've removed Japanese knotweed, we've pulled out bittersweet, and I'll have to...

It shouldn't be rewild, but it shouldn't look like a lawn either.

Well, there are places where you can make an argument for pulling like a lawn. It shouldn't look like

It shouldn't look like Fenway lawn. I agree with that. It doesn't kind of look like a Fenway lawn. Yeah. And I have for a long, long time.

Yeah.

And that's what they should stop. I would be inclined to agree with that. I don't like grass by and large. I don't like the monoculture. And it certainly isn't conducive to healthy lake. So, you know, that's.

You don't want the invasives, but you don't want the fertilizers. No, no, you don't.

I don't know anybody who says they've ever used fertilizer. Whether they're pulling our leg or not, I don't know. But I would never use fertilizer. I don't even water the grass.

Is there an update on the front line?

Cataldo has been awarded the contract. There's still a Cataldo?

There's still a Cataldo.

There is a Cataldo. And yeah.

With service companies.

Okay. Yeah. And I think the work is to be done this fall. Don't know that for sure. But.

Okay. Great.

Yeah. And that's all I've got. Hello.

Does Leon have anything to inspect upon?

Oh, Leon. Yeah, we did water quality testing this morning with Mike Greger and Lucas. It went well. No big deal. It looks like the fluoridone treatment has nicked the fan work, but it's not completely killing it off. What I mean by nicked is the very tops of the plants are turning white. And that's indicative of the fluoridone treatment taking effect. The only snag was that I had hoped that as we were doing the fluoridone treatment that we would do check on the intrusion of fluoridone into the municipal well. And the plan for that has not been fully accepted by the water department. Maybe one of the snags is that TRC is saying they would need $11,000 to do the fluorodone testing, which was outside the budget. But of course, we're crossing over into the next fiscal year, so the water department may have the funds to be able to do that infiltration testing. And maybe they can even do it cheaper than TRC. $11,000 seems a little high, but 20 years ago, it was very, very expensive. to do this testing.

Would they be testing the groundwater or would they be testing the water that comes into the well?

They're testing the water coming out of their pump.

Why wouldn't the water department do that testing?

Well, yeah, they could, but TRC was supposedly contracted to, under the auspices of their management plan, they were supposed to have come up with this sampling plan. And they have proposed something, but it's $11,000. The water department could easily do it too, but I'm not sure that they're going to be less cost to the water department than it would be for TRC.

Wouldn't they just take some of the water that's coming into the well and test it?

Well, they're going to pump water out and grab a sample of the pumping. Yeah. Now, whether TRC does it or in concert with the water department, I don't know what the plan is there. The real snag again is the cost of doing the analysis and who's going to bear that cost. Okay.

Always something that she wants. Wow. Did the bump up treatment make a difference?

Yes, we were off on vacation for a couple of weeks, but we did notice that the fan wart before we left for vacation a few weeks ago didn't look like it had been nicked. But after two weeks afterwards, it looked like it did get nicked. It's uncertain whether we're going to do another bump up. I think we need another one.

After the first treatment, you really couldn't tell the difference?

No. The problem with the fan wart... is that when we did the first treatment, the fanwort wasn't fully up into the water column yet, which is great because we wanted to get the young plants. So they weren't very obvious in the water column. Now they're more obvious. It was obvious.

I see. Yeah.

Still an ongoing problem there, though.

Yeah, I think I need another bump up.

Yeah.

We'll see what solitude says.

Right. Well, at least we've got action there this year. That's good.

Yep.

No word on the dock?

What dock are you talking about? The ramp. Oh, the ramp. No. Yeah, we do have a plan. I believe that's signed off on. But work's not going to start until in the fall.

That's great.

Yeah. That's good.

That's good. Similarly, I talked with Tim Pearson about the improvements to our current boat launch at Mill Pond. And he said with all the things he's got going on, Might be able to look at that this fall or winter. At least through the engineering at that point.

So, Len, is there a contract for the boat ramp work?

Yeah, there is a contract for that, yes. Okay. In fact, what's Bob Hartzell's company name? CEI. Yeah, they may be Yeah, they're the ones that came up with the plan.

Yeah.

I still need to talk to them because I'm uncertain about how some of the water diversion methods that they're using works. So I may be visiting Bob and his crew here in the near future.

Very good.

Is that the next meeting now? We can do that.

There was that grant that Dave mentioned. Oh, sure. Yeah. I know Long Lake was submitted. The water department might have submitted something for spec bond. I'm not certain. They have not heard anything back. I think there were two lakes in the state that were going to be accepted, so they're not optimistic.

I'm not thinking we're in the top two or three.

But I know that at least, at least Long Lake was a life form.

Conservation commission.

Yeah. Yeah. That's great.

Great.

And thank you to everyone who submitted details and data about. That's good. Yeah. We can look at next month in terms of median date. unless we feel like we could skip July and meet in August at some point, or how do we feel about that?

Always in favor of skipping meetings.

Is there budget planning we have to start thinking about for this fall?

There's always budget planning.

Right. Well, I remember last year we had our, like, we started trying to think about, like, what's the calendar for the year and when do we have to start thinking about things? Or is the budget miraculously planned for the next three years?

There is a plan. Yeah. Yeah. But we surely ought to revisit it.

Yeah.

Based on whatever our results are this year.

And that's all, like, October, November mark that budgets have to go in?

Yeah, so... um the question is if you want money for next spring and we it probably needs to go to cpc um in september october so that you can be on the november one the fall down meeting so our next meeting we should talk budget and for the next year well we should think about that

If things have to go on in September, we should be thinking about it in August.

So do you have, if you have an idea of a budget now, send it to me and I'll get cons.com or the conservation to shoot something back and then we can critique their budget.

Let me update our forms at this point.

Because they kind of took over the budgeting.

Right.

So, we can allow them to continue with that and we can give them a starting point, basically.

Because if things like, if it turns out Forge Pond Matawanakee is 90 acres instead of 60, we should be revising numbers, right? For herbicide treatment, things like that.

Yeah. We have the plan for next year was to do a big echo harvesting treatment. We've got $70,000 already allocated for that. And if we don't use it next year, it'll expire. Depending on how the nofoil is taken out this year, we'll see what there is to be removed next year. It won't all be taken out.

All right.

So, July or August? Instead of saying skip a month and go eight weeks out, we could sort of skip a month but try to be, say, August 12th. Sort of.

So, six weeks. No, I'm not saying. Combine a meeting over two months.

Yeah, it's end of June.

It's July already. It's not unusual for us to take the middle of the summer off. Oftentimes vacations kind of preclude us from getting together in the first place.

So 12th is Wednesday. Okay.

Not good for me.

Any day that week, are you out of town?

I just have a conflict.

The 13th?

13th works.

Any issues with Thursday?

Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be around. You don't necessarily need me. I'm an alternate. Chucky can come.

You're out that week?

Not out, but yeah, it's complicated. That's a big birthday week.

How about the 20th? That's effectively skipping a month.

Yes, I hear that.

But, I mean, if we started talking about budgeting there, like Mark said, if we need something for the spring, we should be submitting it to CPC in September, which if we're meeting in August would give us the ability to do that.

Well, we're going to have to review what We're going to ask the conservation agent what to submit. Yes.

Oh, you're saying actually who submits it? Yes. Yeah.

I could do the 19th.

I think I could do the 19th. The Wednesday night?

Yeah.

Should we target that?

Sure.

Six weeks, kind of. Yeah.

I'm a maybe. Oh. Going broke again? I busted a vacation bank at work, so I don't know. I'd like to be unavailable that day. What do you play? What broke band? Yeah. Yeah. Broke music. Those are Monday nights. Double A season? Yeah.

Leon, any possibilities you're available August 19th?

Yeah, we're good.

Oh, that's excellent.

That's just great.

Well, let's stick with that for the time being and call this meeting to a close.

Okay. Move to adjourn.

And second. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Thank you all very much.

Appreciate it.