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Protecting Sebago Lake Should Become Top State Priority

July 15, 2009 - FRYEBURG — Greater Portland's most valuable natural resource, Sebago Lake, is deteriorating alarmingly.

The Portland Water District recently stated that the water quality has "significantly declined since 1990." If the trend is not reversed, additional drinking water treatment could cost future generations dearly.

As global climate change and pollution threaten freshwater supplies worldwide, it is time to give Sebago Lake the study and respect such a valuable resource deserves.

Since 1987, Sebago Lake has been subjected to highly unnatural lake regulation, which has ended the natural timing of seasonal water level fluctuations. Prior to 1987, the dam owners captured maximum power output by adhering to a more uniform outflow policy.

As a result, lake levels were precipitation-driven and mimicked the annual pattern found in natural lakes. Shorelines and ecosystems remained in healthy equilibrium, and nature protected the stunning purity of the lake water despite earlier watershed runoff pressures of intense logging and farming.

The post-1987 changes in lake management have harmed Sebago Lake's water quality. The now more constant near-full pond levels and storm action have eroded once protective beaches, exposing uplands to accelerating erosion. Since 1989, on southwest Frye Island the lake has encroached 40 feet into the bluffs, polluting the lake with phosphorus-rich clays and soils.

Using rock for shoreline armoring to protect property and highways has replaced the beaches. Just in the eight years from 2000 through 2007, the state issued more than 100 rock-armoring permits as property owners rushed to protect their shorelines.

Beach sands, with the beneficial bacteria and microorganisms that cling to the vast surface area of the sand grains, are a great natural filterer of organic matter. This natural filter is vanishing along with the beaches.

Perhaps the most insidious threat to the water quality of Sebago Lake is the deterioration of its wetlands. With the constant high summer lake levels, the organic debris that accumulates in lake wetlands can no longer dry out and safely decompose. As a result, harmful changes in the wetland biology and soil chemistry cause releases of polluting nitrogen and phosphorus into the lake.

The water, stained brown from the constant rotting vegetation, is flushed into the lake during significant precipitation, runoff or snow melt. It is no wonder Sebago Lake water now often resembles tea instead of its historic gin clarity.

Most of the water from the watershed enters the lake through wetlands, and in their present degraded condition, they are unable to process and safely remove the phosphorus and organic nutrients.

The damage we are inflicting upon Sebago's water quality will be increasingly difficult to repair if we do not return soon to natural lake level cycles and fluctuations.

The current lake level management plan also wastes potential hydropower production that could increase America's energy independence.

Maintenance of continuous high water means that there is no capacity to store the rainfall and runoff. Whenever we receive significant precipitation, such as this June, immense spillage through the dam gates is essential to prevent flooding.

As heightened national interest grows to reduce our dependency on foreign oil, cut fossil fuel emissions and safeguard our water resources, the present lake management does not make sense.

To restore Sebago's water quality, leadership is needed that will rise above the politics and fear of economic retaliation. Scientific work, analysis and solutions must be uncorrupted. The sand in the hourglass is running out for Sebago Lake because the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission will soon set present water level management into law for the next 50 years.

The delay is due to the Maine Department of Environmental Protection, which is conducting Presumpscot River water flow studies to determine how much more Sebago Lake outflows can be reduced yet still maintain the bare minimum amount of dissolved oxygen to support life.

This is appeasing powerful special interests who demand to have the highest elevated lake levels possible during a summer drought. The importance of maintaining Sebago Lake's water quality for drinking water, recreation and fisheries will increase as climate change and rising population pressure deplete the freshwater resources of the world.

The Maine DEP should abandon its current position, endorse a management plan that will reverse the deterioration of Sebago Lake and work with FERC to set a plan that will actually work to protect water quality.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Roger Wheeler of Fryeburg is a midde school teacher who is president of Friends of Sebago Lake.

Monday July 13th, 2009

by Roger Wheeler
Portland Press Herald op-ed


Lakes: Sebago Lake
Regions: Sebago


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