BASIN, DAVID & TILTON PONDS

WATER QUALITY

We are pleased to announce that BDTPA now has a trained LakeSmart team for David and Parker Ponds. BDTPA Water Quality Officer Deb Cayer is the coordinator of the team.

Learn more about LakeSmart.

We are looking for someone to coordinate plant monitoring on the three ponds, and for more volunteers to assist. See information on Invasive Plant Patrol (IPP) and training from Lake Stewards of Maine (VLMP).

See excellent water quality data for Basin, David and Tilton Ponds on the 30 Mile River Watershed website. This is a scientific resource to help to inform us of the water quality in our three ponds.

Contact BDTPA Water Quality Officer Deb Cayer at debbiecayer@gmail.com 207-320-0379

NON-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS

Lake Smart

An education and reward program run by Maine Lakes (formerly Maine Lakes Society) that assists lakefront homeowners manage landscapes in ways that protect water quality. The program is free, non-regulatory and voluntary.

Audobon Society

Learn more about the Annual Loon Count

Lake Stewards of Maine

Workshops available for invasive plant patrol and can be found on the website.

30 Mile River Watershed Association

Mission: “To preserve, improve, and protect the land and water quality in the 30 Mile River watershed.”

Kennebec Land Trust

From the mission statement:

The Kennebec Land Trust (KLT) works cooperatively with landowners and communities to conserve the forests, shorelands, fields, and wildlife that define central Maine. KLT protects land permanently, offers opportunities for people to learn about and enjoy the natural world, and works with partners to support sustainable forestry and farming.

NO-WAKE MAP FOR BASIN DAVID & TILTON PONDS

“Headway speed” means the minimum speed necessary to maintain steerage and control of the watercraft while the watercraft is moving. It is unlawful to exceed headway speed within 200 feet of shore, or beyond the buoys marked “headway speed”. The operator must consider the effect of the wash or wave created by their watercraft to waterfront piers, floats or other property or shorelines. The map on the right was drawn by the Maine Game Warden.

See more at Maine Department of Inland Fisheries Boating

FIREWORKS ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS

There are growing concerns about the use of fireworks around lakes. As fun and enjoyable as fireworks can be, they may be causing more damage than you know.

UPDATE ON PAST RESEARCH ON BASIN POND

This is an update from research done over the past decade, unrelated to the latest concerns over water clarity at Basin Pond (see newsletter).

As early as 2005, Daniel Frost (Geology), then a senior at Bates College, studied Paleoclimate Reconstruction Using Physical Sedimentology and Organic Matter Biogeochemistry of Varved Sediments, Basin Pond, Fayette, ME. Frosts’s co-advisor was Mike Retelle. In 2013, Professor Retelle and a team of researchers studied the sediments in Basin Pond and other similar ponds in the area. Bates is located just south of “the lakes region” in south-central Maine. Researchers have undertaken numerous projects in courses and in thesis research on many lakes ranging from coastal “isolation basin” lakes that were formerly depressed below sea level to density stratified lakes that contain laminated sediments that archive high resolution sediment records. One of the study sites in central Maine is Basin Pond, a 30 meter deep “meromictic” lake*. The water column in this lake is permanently stratified and has a detailed sediment record of environmental change with annual resolution preserved in the finely layered deposits, similar to tree rings.

* A meromictic lake has layers of water that do not intermix. In ordinary, "holomictic" lakes, at least once each year, there is a physical mixing of the surface and the deep waters. The term "meromictic" was coined by the Austrian Ingo Findenegg in 1935, apparently based on the older word "holomictic".