Dear Friends of Lake Waramaug — Spring 2021
Have you ever wondered where the roughly six billion gallons of water in Lake Waramaug came from? Some very pure water surely comes from underwater springs over the Lake’s approximate square mile; and there’s rain, of course, about 50 inches of relatively clear water in an average year. But the vast majority of the Lake comes from the watershed, the topography surrounding the Lake — with sixty percent of the entire Lake from Sucker Brook alone! It’s from here and other runoff that the difficulties arise; with phosphorous, sediment and nutrients of various sorts introduced by brooks, catch basin outflows, driveways and lawns all flowing into the strata of the Lake and creating the conditions that promote cyanobacteria growth.
It’s axiomatic to say that it’s way easier and more efficient to stop these elements from entering the Lake than it is to remove them once they are in, and that’s why, over the years, the Task Force has increasingly focused its efforts on the watershed:
• We’ve spent and continue to expend enormous effort and resources working with our farming friends to reduce the amount of runoff from their fields.
• We’ve remediated many spots along the various brooks feeding the Lake to reduce erosion along their banks, with many more sites to do.
• We’ve installed sediment collection basins toward the bottom of four streams to collect sediment before it gets to the Lake and have periodically excavated those basins clean, removing many hundreds of cubic yards of sediment.
• And, we’re in the process of surveying every catch basin around the Lake to identify those that are contributing pollutants to the water with the intent of finding and removing the sources of those pollutants.
These efforts, along with our in-Lake cyanobacteria and invasive weed controls, have combined to create one of the most pristine lakes in the region. The contributions of our donors have been critical to our efforts and we thank each and every one of you very much. With your continued support we’ll keep working to keep our billions of gallons of lake water clean, clear, and swimmable. Best wishes for a glorious summer!
Peary Stafford Chair, Lake Waramaug Task Force