The Antrim Select Board is set to decide whether to lower the level of Gregg Lake to mitigate erosion after a public hearing on Monday.
The Board opted to solicit public opinion following a January meeting with the Gregg Lake Watershed Management Plan Committee, which recommends maintaining the winter water level year round.
“Lowering the lake level is one of many steps we’re trying to take to improve the water quality in Gregg Lake,” committee member Joan Gorga said.
The lake’s water level rose after its dam was reconstructed in 1982, she said, and has been eroding its banks to establish a new shoreline ever since.
Lowering the lake level 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.
In some spots, the shoreline has receded fairly close to some private landowners’ cabins, and there’s concern about water coming in contact with old septic systems associated with those properties, Gorga said.
The water has undercut the shoreline in several spots, particularly along the causeway by the public beach, and the stretch where Gregg Lake Road comes close to the shore of the lake. In places, the water sometimes extends three feet under the bank, she said. “You can stick a half a kayak paddle in.”
A year and a half ago, one of the town trucks fell into the lake by the causeway when the unpaved shoulder collapsed, Gorga said. Although the erosion has not yet affected the integrity of Gregg Lake Road, Gorga said installing gabion baskets or other means of structural reinforcement could be necessary if it continues.
“Nobody would want to lose their private beach access,” she said, and dropping the water level has the potential to save the lake frontage for the private landowners along the road.
Some owners of lakefront property might be excited to regain the beaches and land lost on their properties when the water level rose, but other stakeholders might not be as enthusiastic.
“Boaters like it deeper,” Gorga said. “They have valid points.”
At a lower water level, remnant pieces of the old dam currently submerged in the outlet channel would be more exposed, making it more difficult to navigate a boat through the space.
“We’re trying to deal with that,” she said.
Property owners with docks or other structures might have to make adjustments to accommodate the lower level too, she said.
The town owns the dam, and according to the Department of Environmental Services, that means the lake level is the town government’s decision, Gorga said. Antrim’s highway department is already at work to implement some of the other recommended water quality improvement measures, she said.
“We believe the water quality of the lake is important to property values all over town,” she said, and that realtors regularly tout Gregg Lake’s oligotrophic status, meaning low in nutrients with abundant oxygen.
The hearing is scheduled for Monday at 7 p.m. at Town Hall, and Gorga hopes the Select Board will make a decision on the issue after receiving public comment.