WATERFORD — The Bear Pond Association, along with its partners, the Oxford County Soil & Water Conservation District (OCSWCD), Lakes Environmental Association (LEA), Camp Wigwam, Fiddlehead Environmental Consulting, Portland Water District (PWD), Maine DEP and the town of Waterford, are sponsoring a watershed erosion survey on Bear Pond on Saturday, May 11.
It is largely a volunteer effort and involves a volunteer training session from 9 to 11 a.m. at Camp Wigwam. The session will be followed by a day of walking the watershed, looking for and documenting sources of erosion on areas around the pond as well as state, town and private roads.
The volunteers will be divided into groups of three or four and be led by an experienced team leader as they walk or drive their assigned section of the watershed. To join the group, contact Stan and Carol Rothenberg of the Bear Pond Association at scroth@roadrunner.com.
Information collected during the survey will not be used for regulatory purposes, but will be used to help landowners and road managers recognize and find ways to solve erosion problems.
These types of surveys are usually followed up with a grant funded “implementation” program, which provides some funding to fix the issues identified.
Similar watershed surveys and implementation programs have been done in the past on Keoka Lake and McWain Pond Watersheds and have reduced the amount of erosion. Funding for this project, in part, has been provided by the U.S. EPA under Section 604b of the Clean Water Act. The funding is administered by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection in partnership with the EPA.
Oxford County SWCD Project Manager Michele Windsor is coordinating this watershed survey and invites interested individuals to participate. She is ready to answer questions related to the project.
Recently a mailing went out to landowners in the Bear Pond Watershed informing them about the survey and explaining what it was about. If landowners would like to have their properties excluded from the survey, they should contact Windsor at 743-5789, ext. 101.
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