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Dam Repairs Temporarily Lower Water on Lower and Upper Pleasant Ponds in Litchfield

May 07, 2010 - LITCHFIELD -- There's been a least one good by-product of low water on Upper and Lower Pleasant ponds: repaired public boat launch sites.


The state and the town of Litchfield have pitched in to repair concrete-plank ramps that allow boaters access to both ponds.


"They done a super job," said Norman Daigle, who can see the northside ramp from his property.


Daigle was one of the people who asked the town of Litchfield to request the repair, saying the low water level needed for dam repairs had also exposed the damaged public boat ramps.


"I called the town about a week and they said they didn't own it," Daigle said Tuesday. "I knew better, 'cause I've been here 16, 17, 18 years. They didn't think they owned it until the state boys said they did."


Daigle, 78, watched the repairs himself through the screens in his garage protecting him from voracious black flies.


George Powell, director of the Boating Facilities Division of the Maine Bureau of Parks and Lands, said the ramps are owned by the town, and that they were put in with a grant in the mid-1980s.


State workers from a nearby maintenance facility repaired the southside ramps Friday and returned Monday to assist the town's three-man public works crew with the north side.


"We were worried the water level was going to rise and we would lose the opportunity," Powell said.


Powell said the ramps are made of concrete planks, 10 feet long, 11/2 feet wide and 6 inches deep, and are all bolted together.


"We reconnected the planks, removed broken ones and put down clean gravel to make an easy transition from the concrete ramp to the lake bed," he said.


Powell had no cost estimate for the work, saying it took staff time and state-owned equipment.


Michael Byron, Litchfield town manager, said he's received several calls and an e-mail from grateful boaters and anglers.


Daigle said he's seen the water level come up a few inches since the weekend.


"Right in front of my house, I have 40-foot aluminum dock just barely touching the feet in the water," he said.


Wendy Dennis of the Cobbossee Watershed District, which manages water levels and monitors lake quality, said the repair work on New Mills Dam in Gardiner was completed last Thursday and Friday.


"Some water was being held back in Cobbossee Lake prior to the dam repair," Dennis said. "That water is being released now to help with this refill."


Dennis said the work required that the water level in the pond be dropped 4 vertical feet below full pond.


"In some places, that was some places 300 feet from shore," she said.


The level at full pond is 135 feet above sea level.


Water levels were affected along 131/2 miles of Cobbosseecontee Stream and 51/2 miles of shoreline along Upper and Lower Pleasant ponds.


Dennis said Wednesday the water had come up about 10 inches at the New Mills Dam since Saturday. She said there's about 3 feet more to go.

by Betty Adams, May 7, 2010, Kennebec Journal

Lakes: Pleasant Pond
Regions: Belgrade


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