Pollutant lurking In Our Back Yard
What is the largest pollutant to Maine lakes? You might be surprised.
It isn’t bacteria and nutrients from municipal sewage plants or industrial wastewater discharges. Fortunately for Maine lakes, very few such discharges ever went to a lake and only one or two remain.
It isn’t septic systems, but they can be a problem. If your system hasn’t been pumped out in the last 3-5 years or installed in the last 25, it may be polluting the lake.
Lawn chemicals including fertilizer and bug and weed killers aren’t good for the lake either but they aren’t the largest pollutant. However, if you are using these products, consider reducing or eliminating their use.
Have you figured it out yet?
It’s soil erosion! Hard to believe something as natural as soil can be the greatest threat to the water quality of our beautiful Maine lakes, but it is.
Soil carries with it a number of hitchhiking pollutants such as phosphorus, spilled oil or gas, fertilizer, and pesticides. Phosphorus helps plants grow on land and in the water. Phosphorus is the reason lakes turn green with algae blooms.
The worst cases of soil erosion in the watershed of lakes are primarily roads, ditches and driveways. Surprising? Just think about how many roads, and ditches, surround our lakes and how many driveways, too. Poorly maintained ditches, culverts that are too small, gravel roads that aren’t properly shaped and made of the wrong road materials all lead to erosion problems. Driveways add to the problem, especially unpaved ones on slopes that direct stormwater right to the lake.
On the other hand, proper road maintenance protects local clean water and ensures the road will be free of potholes, ruts, and other problems that make a road dangerous and difficult to travel on. To do this, the road needs to be designed and maintained to shed water from its surface into nearby wooded areas.
So how can we reduce soil erosion and soil pollution from roads and driveways?
If the road is a state or municipally owned road, contacting either the Maine Department of Transportation or the municipal public works director with your concerns is a good start. Support municipal efforts to correct road problems during town budget votes.
For private roads, often referred to as camp roads, a good place to start is by forming a road association. Road association members can work together to set priorities and raise the needed funds to properly maintain their road in order to protect their lake. For more information on forming a road association, check out the new manual by Maine DEP at www.MaineDEP.com and click on the Camp Road Maintenance link.
If a private road already has a road association, using the new Gravel Road Maintenance Manual to help guide decisions and pick good road management practices can help. The manual can be found by following the same link. An effective camp road maintenance program is a major step towards helping protect your local water.
Together we can reduce the largest pollutant to Maine lakes and help protect lakes for future generations.
This column was submitted by Kathy Hoppe, an environmental specialist with the Maine DEP’s Bureau of Land and Water Quality. In Our Back Yard is an informational column of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. E-mail your environmental questions to infodep@maine.gov or send them to In Our Back Yard, Maine DEP, 17 State House Station, Augusta, ME 04333.
