An Associated Press release on August 1 would lead readers to believe that New Hampshire Fish and Game (F&G) can start cutting the trees on the shore of Lake Sunapee and build their proposed boat launch. Not quite true.
It is true that F&G has received three permits from NH Department of Environmental Services (DES):
The Shoreland Permit allows for significant cutting of trees and removal of stumps in the shoreland buffer zone (that no private citizen would be allowed to do).
The Alteration of Terrain Permit allows for the removal of 9,600 cubic yards of earth from this small 3 acre site. (This amounts to somewhere between 500 and 1,000 truckloads of material to be hauled away).
The recently issued Wetlands Permit allows the placement of a dock and material on the lake bottom for a double boat launch. This is the most benign of all three permits and interestingly the only one for which there was a public hearing.
It is also true that all three permits have been or will be appealed by the Lake Sunapee Protective Association (LSPA) and by the Town of Newbury. Pending the decisions, an appeal to the Supreme Court can be initiated.
Lake Sunapee is a public water supply for the Town of Sunapee and many shorefront owners take their drinking water directly from the lake. In order to comply with the Clean Water Act of 1970, the Army Corps of Engineers (ACOE) must issue a water quality certificate prior to the construction taking place. Often, the ACOE defers this responsibility to a state agency, but in the case of Wild Goose, the ACOE could investigate.
Under NH law, F&G has the responsibility and authority to establish public access to lakes the size of Lake Sunapee. F&G would lead you to believe that this means a double boat launch. In fact, the law defines access in many ways, and simply a view of or a path to a body of water is considered access. F&G also says that Lake Sunapee needs more access. According to F&G’s own website, Lake Sunapee has three access points for trailered boats. One, the State Beach, charges a fee. The others do not. According to the same website, Lake Winnepesaukee also has three public access points for trailered boats, and two charge a fee. Lake Winnepesaukee is ten times the size of Lake Sunapee.
What are the concerns?
LSPA maintains that shoehorning this double boat ramp and extensive parking area into this small and steep area will damage the lake both during and after construction. Independent engineering experts agree. Excessive nutrients will enter the lake and add to a situation that DES (the same DES who granted the permits) maintains threatens the health of the lake.
The Town of Newbury is concerned about the traffic safety issues. For anyone who doubts that there is a problem, he is welcome to try it out now, as F&G has no plans to improve how Birch Grove Rd is entered from or exits onto NH 103. Newbury is also concerned about other unfunded mandates relating to patrolling and road maintenance.
Citizens with and without lakefront property do not understand why laws that are intended to protect a natural resource may be ignored by state agencies, when private citizens must comply. This is a referendum on the Comprehensive Shoreland Protection Act.
Those who favor this boat launch have characterized it as a “have vs. have not” situation. They want people to believe that those “rich” folks who have a place on the lake want to keep everyone off the lake. This could not be further from the truth.
LSPA has been involved from the very beginning and in fact paid for the surveying of the original 115 acres of land acquired by the Department of Resources and Economic Development nearly 20 years ago. Then the 3 acre parcel was sold to F&G for $1 without the necessary town approval. At that time LSPA opposed a trailered boat launch at that site for all of the same reasons that they oppose it now, but did support F&G’s own plan for a cartop site that was developed in 1999. At the same time LSPA fully supported F&G’s proposed trailered boat launch site at George’s Mills, but the residents voted it down. F&G was also offered another area in Newbury which would have been more suitable, but they turned that down.
If it were not for LSPA and over 100 volunteers, Lake Sunapee would be choked with invasive weeds. LSPA works with the surrounding towns to try to mitigate stormwater runoff that is a root cause for increased levels of cyanobacteria which threaten Sunapee and other area lakes. LSPA works with DES on controlling invasive plants and animals and commenting on construction activities that are in violation of the law. LSPA works with F&G to study what is going on in the streams in an effort to maintain the health of the fishery. LSPA opposes the scale of the proposed boat launch because of what it would do to lake quality.
F&G Commissioner Glenn Normandeau has given his word that not one tree will be cut until he has all the approvals he needs to move ahead. Yet another point is, in these economic times, that a state agency proposes spending over $1.2MM, where less expensive, less harmful solutions can be found.
Date published on web site:
08-08-2009
|
