From the president's desk

MLCI board president Bill Ferdinand has sent along the following interesting article, of interest to the lake community. See the whole story here.

The story describes the battle against invasives as just that - a war. It details some of the methods that are used to combat the weeds, bugs, and other critters and green things that aren't native to Maine lakes - and that are taking over in some places. A key weapon in the battle is volunteer monitoring and education efforts that help boaters understand why they need to check their boats before launching. Just a small piece of some invasive plants can infest an entire lake. Says a DEP environmental specialist quoted in the piece,

"It's not a huge stretch of the imagination to assume someone came in with that on a boat prop or attached to a trailer," Gregory said. "It's incredibly easy for that to happen."

This year the front line is a lake in the Belgrade Lakes - MLCI's new
neighborhood. The story of that pond's 'last resort' treatment is detailed
in the story. It's definitely worth a read.

It's not a lake, but...

The Penobscot watershed has many, many lakes and ponds within its boundary. In fact, the Penobscot is the largest watershed in Maine, covering over 1/3 of the state. The second annual Penobscot Riverfest happened Saturday on the waterfront in Bangor. The story is front-page news in today's Bangor Daily - read all about it here.

The watershed includes some highly developed lakes, ringed by camps, and some of the most remote lakes in the eastern US, like the nearly impossible to find Pamola and Klondike ponds in Baxter State Park. The river incoporates the 'signature' of all the various activities happening within the watershed - from human-driven change to natural processes.

The BDN article recalls times when the river was so obviously polluted that it stank. Our environmental issues now are not so obvious, perhaps, but equally deleterious. The same issues of point-source versus non-point-source pollution affect Maine's lakes, and since the water all flows downhill, eventually ends up reflected in the signature of one of these large rivers.