Polinishero of Fryeburg, ME Al is absolutely right.
Camp roads are the least of China Lake's problems.Constant high lake levels are eroding thousands of cubic yards of marine clays and silts into China Lake in addition to wrecking of the lake's all important filtering wetlands. About 5 years ago a Congress of Lake's Association member and DEP were successful at preventing lake shore owners from restoring the pre 1970 Lake level regime that mimicked natural ranges and fluctuations at a China water level hearing.
The good news is that we are steadily informing people about the unfortunate mistake that has been made with all kinds of damaging unnatural water regulation. Checkout to see what unnatural lake regulation has done to what once was the world's finest inland lake beaches.report abuse

Gary of Waterville, ME S DB of Anytown, if it were as simple as a lawn fertilizer issue all they would have to do is stop fertilizing. I don' believe that most people who own waterfront apply fertilizers on their lawns anyway. Most know better. That's a flimsy excuse to place the costs on them IMO.

Al Althenn of China is correct. Each lake and pond is a unique situation that should be looked after by a local organization that knows that particular area. The DEP doesn't have the resources to give every lake and pond individual consideration and one big band-aid won't fix anything.

As far as the dirt roads go; some simple water diversion could prevent a lot of the pollutants from reaching the lakes like Gary Veill said.report abuse

Al Althenn of China, ME Please go to depu.org and see what the rocket scientists at the Maine DEP did to China Lake and have been blaming on others ever since.

When you raise a lake 5 feet, (so you can license sewer plants without holding a public hearing) flooding ten thousand year old wetlands to the point the plants die from too much water during the growing season. Those plants cannot hold the peat deposited in them bit by bit since the ice age formed the lakes, you get sudden and massive algae problems, much of it because of the loss of the wetland ecology.

Add to that an organization like the DEP where its more important to protect careers from the sting of past bad decisions than it is to protect our lakes and you get what is happening at China Lake, Sebago Lake and I’m sure others. You get bank erosion, algae blooms, fishery collapse from no oxygen to support deep water game fish (algae is a net consumer of oxygen in the water) and endless excuses like camp roads being the reason for the disaster.

Get the DEP away from our lakes. Let the people who really know each lake run them. Having over paid paper shufflers in Augusta deciding what the problems are is NOT WORKING.

Putting in place people who are not trying to protect themselves from stupid decisions they made while FRESH FROM SCHOOL, newly employed at the DEP years ago and still there to protect themselves from facing what they did is also, NOT WORKING.

These self serving public employees refuse to even TRY placing China Lake back at its pre 1969 level and fluctuation regime to give it a chance to heal itself from their mess ups.report abuse

S DB of Anytown, ME Bole - it's not so much the dirt that hurts the lake, it's the phosphorous, nitorgen and chemicals (some found naturally and some applied to lawns) that "stick" to the dirt and end up in the lake. Remember high school chemistry - s*** likes to stick together.
Fertilizer used on lawns doesn't get "sucked up" by the plants, it sits in the soil and when it rains, gets washed into the lake - so we're pretty much fertilizing the the plants in the lake, which makes them real happy and they grow into the green junk you see on china, cobbossee, androscoggin every year. So in my opinion, yeah waterfront owners SHOULD be required to mitigate the effects their home, camp, driveway have on those lakes that are considered a public resource. You gotta pay for the priveledge of polluting - whether it's lake water or the air we breathe, or some other public resource.report abuse