SESSION C:

Title: Saving Highland Lake

Author: Keith Williams
Highland Lake Association, 48 Lantern Lane, Windham, ME 04062-4414. 207-892-8391

Abstract:

Highland Lake (Falmouth/Windham, Cumberland County) is a moderate size (254 hectares.) lake in a developing suburban watershed (22 sq km) having water quality typical of southern Maine, but whose water quality was experiencing a gradual, erratic, but statistically significant decline for several decades, due to land development activity, up to the breech of the dam due to extreme rain in October 1996. The water surface level was kept low for three years while the dam was reconstructed. During that time Falmouth began enforcing a Highland Lake watershed protection ordinance to control erosion and sediment transport from new development, and shortly after Windham began enforcing a surface water protection ordinance. In 2000 the Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation District began implementing the Highland Lake Project with a large grant (over $200,000 including matching funds) from the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, that conducted erosion stabilization projects on watershed roads, and began the Highland Lake Youth Conservation Corps, which performs projects primarily to stabilize shore erosion and ditch erosion within the watershed. Though new land development projects are build each year, control of pollution transport from those projects, and annual projects to correct old pollution sites, and stabilization of the lake elevation, appear to have brought a halt to the decline of the lake water quality, and it appears to be stabilizing. This presentation will show the facts and figures of the saga, and procedures from biostatistics to uncover the interactions of the many factors influencing the lake water quality.