June 29, 2021
The “Why?” and the “When?”
In a couple
of weeks I’ll push off from Cleverdale to row to Hammondsport on the south end
of Keuka Lake. And the more I read about what the Keuka Lake community has done
to advance the protection of their natural resource, specifically as it relates
to septic and holding tanks, the more I ask, “Why?” or, more ominously, “When?”
The “Why?”
is essentially “Why can’t we do this, too, and sooner rather than later?”
The “When?”
is a curmudgeonly premonition that if we are to keep our lake sustainably
clean, the “when” may not happen until a succession of HAB’s and other
unfortunate man-made “events” convince us that we have to act, united and in
unison, if we are to save and then recover what we have.
Oh, I hope
I’m wrong.
I apologize
in advance for all the cutting and pasting, but here in a nutshell is what I’ve
learned…..
In the 90’s,
Keuka Lake was facing severe water quality issues. (From here on out I’ll
provide (bolded) excerpts from the
Keuka Lake Association (KLA) website (Keukalakeassociation.org ) to help me
tell the story….)
“The KWIC or Keuka
Watershed Improvement Cooperative was formed by
inter-municipal agreement in 1993 after more than a decade of discussion and
debate by the eight Keuka Lake towns and villages to ensure uniform
regulations and enforcement (my
emphasis) of wastewater systems to
protect the purity of the lake.”
(Keukalakeassociatoin.org)
Every Keuka lakeside
municipality signed on because they recognized that if they weren’t all in, the Lake would suffer. This
unity was essential, and when I get to Keuka I’ll want to learn more about how
it was accomplished. The early conversations with my new friends out west
suggest that things were going downhill fast in the 90’s but, still, this kind
of municipal collaboration is a beautiful thing, right? (My own Big Question
for later, and yours, too, perhaps, is whether we’ll be able to do the same
thing before things get out of hand?)
Folks, I
can’t help but opine here that a) Happily, we already have a lake-wide agency – The Lake George Park Commission-
established to do some heavy lifting here if we’ll let her and push her and
enable her, and b) Is our latest HAB a harbinger of more severe events to come,
the evidence of overstress of the kind that Keuka Lake saw coming in the 90’s?)
As a retired
English teacher (Walden, Common Sense,
Silent Spring…you get it, right?), I’d like to think that it was simply good
stewardship and their love and respect for nature that moved the Keuka Lake
community to act, but the KLA is candid in recounting their motivation in the
90’s:
“The municipalities
formed the KWIC because they recognized that a major responsibility of the
towns and villages is the protection of clean water, both groundwater and lake
water. Local tourism generates nearly $50 million
dollars a year, and real property tax base represents an estimated $1 billion
along the lake (up to 70% of all assessed value in many towns). Tourism and tax base depend on a clean and
healthy lake, and since septic systems are a primary potential source of
contamination, they must be managed properly. The municipalities also
recognized that there was no uniformity in regulations and enforcement…”
(Keukalakeassociation.org)
Yeah, it had
to do with money. Sounds familiar, right? Yet very good things can come from
this kind of pressure, and it certainly did in this story.
I’m not a
scientist and I’ve never held a public office, and I confess here that what I’ll
write in the following weeks may come from a place of naiveté and boyish
enthusiasm, but as I read the Keuka Lake history, I come back to, “Why not us,
too?”
Here’s what
happened at Keuka Lake…again, from the KLA website:
“In
the early 1990's, each municipality formed local study committees and
recommended a "watershed-wide" approach to address septic systems.
The common themes of agreement were:
Pollution does not abide by political boundaries: if one town
pollutes, all suffer!
Therefore,
a watershed approach is needed:
·
Uniform regulations and
enforcement
·
Local control, maintaining
"home-rule" power
·
Control costs
Keuka’s subsequent success has hinged
on their unity and uniformity of commitment to standards, monitoring, and
enforcement. It can’t have been pretty, especially in the early going. Again,
from the KLA website:
“The
first step was to develop and pass local uniform septic system regulations. After nearly a year and 7
drafts, a model wastewater law was passed in each town and village. The law
provides local authority for both new and replacement construction of septic
systems, as well as the Zone 1 and Real Property Transfer Inspection Program.
It defines required permits as well as penalties should a violation occur. The
law uses the DOH/Building Code known as Part 75a as the basis for design and
construction of wastewater systems. It is important to note that this state
code applies to the construction of all septic systems and is not dependent on
the existence of KWIC or the passage of local laws by towns or villages. The
purpose of the local codes is to enhance the management of septic systems
(inspection program) and ensure that Part 75a is followed uniformly in each
town.” (Keukalakeassociation.org)
We’ve made some progress on the “property transfer
inspections” here at Lake George and important progress it is, but it’s not yet
lake-wide. Maybe this is the low-hanging fruit? Maybe this is our first big
step?
But wait. For those of us who root for our lake, this
story about their lake gets better. Way
better. Here’s the Big Step, the Real Commitment…here’s what the Keuka Lake
community committed to do that has made all the difference:
“…..routinely
scheduled inspections are required of all holding tanks, aerobic treatment
systems, and all sites within 200 feet of the lake or its tributaries. These
inspections are intended to assure that those systems with the greatest
potential to impact the lake through failure or mismanagement are upgraded or
improved as necessary, and managed in an effective manner. Oversight and policy for the program is
carried out by a board of directors consisting of one elected official from the
municipalities of Barrington, Jerusalem, Hammondsport, Milo, Penn Yan,
Pulteney, Urbana and Wayne. Staff
for the program consists of the Watershed Manager, responsible for the approval
of onsite wastewater treatment systems, and coordination of the inspection program,
and the Watershed Inspectors, responsible for the various forms of system
inspection required by local law.” (Keukalakeassociation.org)
Isn’t this where
Lake George ought to to go? Honestly, if we are to preserve and protect Lake
George, it’s where we’ll have
to go. I’ve learned that within 200 feet of the shore of Keuka Lake, all
septic systems are inspected once every five years, whether they are “failing”
or not. Holding tanks are inspected annually. Failures are “upgraded or
improved as necessary,” and the funding for those measures takes up a lot of
the time and effort in the surrounding communities. But they’re doing it,
because “pollution does not abide by political boundaries.”
The Keuka
Lake community recognized their responsibility to their lake and legacy by
uniting, codifying, establishing, and then, to their credit, doing the hard
work of monitoring and enforcing waste water measures – the regular, periodic
inspection of all septic systems and holding tanks- for the protection of their
lake.
It’s a fantastic
story. And by all accounts and evidence as tough as it has been to sustain the
effort, it has worked.
Like I say,
I’m not a scientist, and I’ve never held public office, but as I read what our
neighbors to the west have achieved to protect their beautiful lake, I’m filled
with admiration….and hope.
I admire the
way they put aside parochial interests for the protection of their common resource
which is, at the end of the day, their larger parochial treasure. I admire the
patience and perseverance they showed in sustaining the march to an effective
policy and an actionable program. I admire the breadth of shared responsibility
that it all represents, from property owners to service providers to
administrators to sustained scientific monitoring and fact-based decision
making. I admire that they now have a data base born from decades of periodic
testing of all systems around their lake from which to continue to monitor,
adapt, and improve.
And back
here at home, I so greatly admire those organizations and individuals in our Lake
George community who have been doing this work for decades as well, albeit
without and even despite the benefit of the lake-wide unity. You are the ones
who have put us in a position to win before we begin to lose, to prevent before
we have to undertake a major recovery.
I hope we
can do it, too. We certainly have the people, the experience, the underlying
resources, and a presently healthy lake to work with
As they say
out in Hammondsport, “Listen to the lake.”
And our beautiful Lake George…she’s starting to tell us what we need to do,
yes?
More
later…thanks for reading so far!
Now…I’d
better row a bit. Calluses need forming. J
Al
