Vassalboro select board told weather cause of poor lake water quality

by Mary Grow

Webber Pond Association President John Reuthe brought Vassalboro select board members information and recommendations on the lake’s water quality, at their Nov. 10 meeting.

The water quality this past summer was very poor, he said, back to where it was in the 1970s and 1980s, with algae blooms and toxins that were a threat to children and pets.

Vassalboro resident and Department of Maine Resources staffer Nate Gray expanded on Reuthe’s report. The main causes of the problems in Webber Pond, and Three Mile Pond, and to a lesser extent China Lake, were weather-related, he said.

All three lakes have high background phosphorus levels, due to years of accumulation from run-off from surrounding lawns, fields and roads. A warm, sunny summer encouraged algae, which depend on phosphorus, warmth and light to grow.

Several years of low rainfall, less snow and earlier ice-out extended the warm season. Hot summer days evaporated surface water, increasing the concentration of algae close to the surface. Surface water temperatures reached 88 degrees in Webber Pond and Three Mile Pond and 84 degrees in China Lake, Gray said.

Reuthe cited the economic importance of the pond and its alewife fishery. His list of recommended actions started with a meeting of stakeholders, which would include area lake association members and town and state officials.

He asked for money to buy more complex equipment to test water quality; more attention to codes enforcement around water bodies (though he recognized Vassalboro’s problem with frequent changes of codes officers); and a building atop the Webber Pond dam, which is owned by the association, to shelter the gate controls.

One topic that might be discussed at a stakeholders’ meeting is whether the town wants to continue to own the dam.

Select board chairman Barbara Redmond asked Gray how much money the town might need to improve the situation.

“Oh, they don’t print it fast enough,” Gray replied.

Specifically, he said, the easy-to-use monitoring equipment Reuthe recommended would probably cost about $2,000, and would provide useful information.

Select board members are minimizing new commitments until they finish the process of hiring a town manager to succeed Mary Sabins, who is retiring at the end of the year.

They therefore postponed any action. Redmond suggested the stakeholders’ meeting might be scheduled in January, before area towns begin developing 2023-24 budgets.

In a related matter, select board members unanimously extended the contract with Ronald C. Weeks, Sr., to harvest alewives at the Webber Pond outlet for another five years.

The second proposal presented at the Nov. 10 meeting, for a Vassalboro dog park, was also postponed, mostly to give proponent Vivian Flamm time to gather more information.

Flamm was representing a number of residents – and a few people from China, she added – who would like to see Vassalboro develop a dog park. Her idea is that the town would buy land, fence it, provide benches and do whatever other development is needed. Three possible sites had been suggested, she said.

She expects interested local people would help create the park and would show their appreciation for it by keeping it clean.

Board members and Sabins suggested approaching the Vassalboro Sanitary District trustees about a possible site; asking the City of Augusta for guidelines; preparing a cost estimate; and other preliminary actions Flamm’s group could take before returning to the select board and the new town manager.

In other business, Sabins reported she had a request to ask the state Department of Transportation to lower the Quaker Lane speed limit from 45 to 25 miles an hour. Board members unanimously agreed to forward the request.

They agreed by consensus to cancel their second November meeting. It would have fallen on Thanksgiving Day, was tentatively rescheduled two days earlier and, they decided, could be eliminated. Their next regular meeting will be Thursday, Dec. 8.