The late, great Vinne Ha Ha boat landing

Hi Brian and Frank,

Here's a few pictures of how miserable things are in our neck of the woods. 8731 and 8734 are of Charlie trying to get a canoe in the water on July 4 or 5. Note the depth of the muck he's trying to wade through. 8736 and 8740 are of our neighbor to the north's dock. From counting sections, I think he has over a hundred feet of dock out there, although I'd have to measure to be sure. Earlier in the season when the water was higher he had it wash out two or three times. Now, as you can see, most of the dock is over exposed mud flat, and he has almost no water at the end. 8738 is of the landing and the area to the south.

It's so discouraging. No one wants to launch a canoe like this. We used to go for a paddle at sunset almost every night, and we love to look at birds and other wildlife on the shore. Now the canoe and the sailboat and the motor boat are sitting in the garage. It makes me want to cry.

Feel free to use any of these as part of a slide show. We'd love to show other people what we're up against.

Unfortunately we won't be able to be at the annual meeting because we'll be at the surprise 70th birthday celebration of our best friend from our Cooperstown, NY years (and will also be picking up our grandkids in DC.) We sure hope everything goes well - and I sure pray the DNR gives us back our lake, at least for a few years until it fills in some more.

Evelyn Payson

P.S. I think dredging areas like ours is going to have to be part of the ultimate solution for the lake (and it has to be dredging large areas, not narrow channels. Dredging a narrow channel is like making a ditch through maple syrup - it fills up right away.). What's been happening is that the lake's been filling in - that the bottom has, in essence, been coming up. Obviously that's a disaster when the DNR insists on keeping the top low. (I'm not going to say what I think of their failure to analyze what's been going on, or their attitude towards people who tell them the truth about the shallowing of the lake.)

The core samples that we and Dr. Peter Jacobs at UWW took as part of a research project sure look as if, between 300 and 600 feet off shore, there's been a foot and a half of sedimentation coming in since the first dam, and about 9 inches since it was raised in 1918. We're trying to get Peter to come over to sample in close to shore off one of the piers near us so that we can get a sense of how much that's filled in. I hope we can have some numbers and some core pictures to you before the annual meeting. So much for people who think you can go back to the 1840's.

Another problem is that our part of the lake is full of what I think is milfoil. This quite probably makes the rate of sedimentation increase by reducing turbulence and letting sediment settle out more rapidly.