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By Susan Motley,
Friends of Quimby Pond
RANGELEY — Quimby Pond is small, shallow, picturesque and quiet. There are no motorboats allowed here. One can be close to the pond and often hear only the sounds of a loon, the waves lapping on the shore, or if you listen quietly, the sound of a fish rise.
Quimby Pond is categorized as a productive pond, which means the pond supports lots of plant growth. It is 160 acres in area and it takes about two to three years for the water to flow through the pond. The difference between a pond and a lake is related to depth. In a pond, light permeates through to the bottom, but a lake is deep enough so that the bottom is dark. Quimby Pond is a “true pond,” because light shines through the water column to the bottom. Usually.
For nearly 100 years, Quimby Pond has been known for its trout fishing. Trout ponds tend to be bodies of water that are rich in nutrients. These nutrients produce food for the trout (either directly or indirectly), but those same nutrients can also produce an abundance of algae in a pond. Although all lakes and ponds produce algae, when there is an overgrowth of algae, it clouds the water and becomes an algae bloom. Quimby Pond has had algae blooms since 1937, and these blooms have become more frequent over the past 15 to 20 years. What can be done about these blooms? Are they dangerous?
Those questions will be discussed at a round table discussion 10 a.m. Saturday, July 8 at the Town Office. The session is organized as a special meeting of the town selectmen and the public is invited.
Refreshments will be offered at 9:45 a.m. The conference room is reserved for two hours, although the meeting may not last that long. Afterward, there will be a brief meeting of The Friends of Quimby Pond.
Several expert panelists will attend to give explanations and answer questions. The panelists include Dan Buckley, recently retired professor of limnology (lake science) at the University of Maine at Farmington. Buckley has been leading a regional research project on global warming and its effect on cold water lakes and has been gathering data about Quimby Pond for many years.
Also in attendance will be John Boland, a retired department head of Maine Inland Fisheries. Boland has a summer home on Mooselookmeguntic Lake and he has fished and paddled Quimby Pond for years.
Having these two retired professionals is advantageous to us in that each can speak more candidly than a current employee of the state.
Linda Bacon, the head of the Maine Department of Environmental Protection’s lakes division plans to attend. This division is involved in research and evaluation of lakes and ponds, but the lakes division does NOT enforce or report environmental rule infractions. We have worked with Linda and her team for over a decade and she is a wonderful asset to our state.
There are many organizations that have helped us (and all other lakes and ponds), including the Rangeley Lakes Heritage Trust, the Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program, Maine Lakes, the LakeSmart program, the Lakes Division of the Maine DEP, UMF, the town and others. At Quimby Pond, we have taken full advantage of everything these organizations have offered.
The meeting on July 8 is the fourth roundtable discussion about Quimby Pond. The first one was held in the 1980s. A pond association was started at that time, but the association disbanded after a year. We revisited the algae bloom with another meeting in 2008. The Friends of Quimby Pond was formed and the association continues to be an advocate for the pond. The mission of the group is “to preserve and protect the water quality of Quimby Pond now and for the future.”
The Friends of Quimby Pond have done many projects to evaluate nutrient loading into the pond and have made numerous efforts to educate property owners in the watershed. Many owners have adapted their properties to a more “lake friendly” standard.
A followup round table discussion occurred in 2012. Although the pond’s average water clarity has been near stable and sometimes improved, the algae bloom recurred last year. The group continues to encourage owners to adopt “best management practices,” allowing the natural vegetation to grow along the shore, maintain the septic system and direct runoff from structures, paths, and driveways to be absorbed into the ground instead of flowing directly into the lake.
Is there more that we can we do?
All lakes (over many centuries) will eventually evolve into a swamp. At what point is Quimby Pond along this lake-to-swamp spectrum? Are there any feasible treatments? How does the algae bloom affect the trout? Should we anticipate another fish kill, like the one that happened in 1939? Quimby Pond empties into Quimby Brook and then flows downstream to Hunter Cove in Rangeley Lake. What effect does the pond water have on Rangeley Lake?
The public is encouraged to attend the meeting. There are other small ponds at risk in the Rangeley area. Protecting the water quality in Quimby Pond, the other area ponds, and the larger lakes of Rangeley, Mooselookmeguntic, and Cupsuptic is a community-wide issue that deserves community-wide support.
