The Antrim Select Board postponed their decision on whether to drop the water level of Gregg Lake after a packed hearing last Monday night, citing a need for more information and alternatives. They opted to resume the hearing on March 23.
“It’s a tough decision,” Gregg Lake Watershed Management Plan Committee member Joan Gorga said. “We respect the Select Board’s decision to put off making a decision.” Maintaining the lake at its lower winter level year-round would make it so most of the wave action, which chews away at the shore, is moved down to where the flat bottom of the lake meets solid rock, she said.
The Select Board wants more information on whether dropping the water level of a lake has successfully mitigated erosion before, and other alternatives to maintaining the water quality of the lake, Select Board Chair John Robertson said, and that he personally does not think the measure would help to reduce erosion on the lake.
“There’s really an awful lot of information there,” Gorga said, referring to the Watershed Management Plan the Gregg Lake Watershed Management Plan Committee developed over the past three and a half years. The plan includes the recommendation to keep the water in Gregg Lake at its winter level year-round. The proposal would drop the summer levels by a foot, mitigating shoreline erosion that’s been occurring ever since the lake’s level rose when its dam was rebuilt in 1982.
The state Department of Environmental Services has read and approved all the recommendations in the plan, Gorga said, and the group received additional guidance from the Fish and Game commission and environmental consultants throughout the process of developing the plan.
Many attendees at last week’s hearing commented on how lower summertime water levels would expose boats to more rocks, Robertson said, estimating about 50 people, both landowners and lake-users, attended the “jammed” hour-long hearing. Gorga said that the people who appeared most strongly opposed to the proposal had invested in fairly large motorboats to use on the lake. “We understand that,” she said, but also noted that the wakes from those boats themselves contribute to shoreline erosion and stir up sediment.
Gorga said it was clear to her that most attendees of Monday’s hearing had not been to previous informational meetings about the lake’s watershed plan.
“We understand… they may not be informed,” Gorga said, “but we’ve tried pretty hard to make it very public.” Details of the lake’s watershed management plan can be found at http://glwmp.antrimlimrik.org.
The hearing will continue at the Select Board meeting on March 23 at 7 p.m. in the Antrim Little Town Hall.