Province Lake
Congratulations to the Province Lake Association and its partners on successful completion of the Province Lake Watershed Management Plan! The Plan provides a comprehensive description of the lake’s water quality conditions, watershed characteristics, watershed build-out projections, and offers specific recommendations for improving water quality.
Concerns about the lake’s water quality led to the watershed planning effort. Residents around the lake noticed reoccurring cyanobacteria blooms and sensed the blooms were becoming more intense and frequent. Water quality monitoring results indicated high levels of phosphorus and chlorophyll a in the lake. In an effort to better understand these issues, the Province Lake Association stepped forward to lead the watershed planning effort with hopes that the outcome would lead to on-the-ground water quality improvement actions.
The Plan is the result of several years of hard work led by the Province Lake Association along with an extremely dedicated group of partners including the Acton Wakefield Watersheds Alliance, FB Environmental, the NH Department of Environmental Services, the ME Department of Environmental Protection, the towns of Effingham, Wakefield and Parsonsfield, the Province Lake Golf Club, the ME and NH Departments of Transportation, Towle Farm Road Association, UNH Stormwater Center, UNH Center for Freshwater Biology, watershed residents and business owners. The Plan simply could not have been completed without the kindness, dedication, and expertise of the project partners.
Now that the Plan is published, the project partners are ready to implement shoreline erosion prevention projects, road repairs, and septic system evaluations. These projects will reduce the amount of phosphorus pollution reaching the lake which will improve water quality making fishing, swimming, boating, and wildlife habitat and better for all.
To download the Province Lake Watershed Management Plan, click here: http://des.nh.gov/organization/divisions/water/wmb/was/documents/province-lake-plan.pdf
The Province Lake watershed planning project was funded in part by a Watershed Assistance Grant from the NH Department of Environmental Services with Clean Water Act Section 319 funds from the US Environmental Protection Agency.