LIBERTY, Maine — The waters of Lake St. George are blue, clear and clean — and a small army of children have been learning how to keep it that way.
For the ninth year in a row, the Citizen’s Association of Liberty Lakes has held the free Lake Keepers Camp for one week each summer so that kids with an association to Liberty can learn about lake ecology on the green shores of Lake St. George State Park.
Greta, 9, of Liberty, said Friday that she lives on Stevens Pond in Liberty and loves swimming in the summers. It is camp policy to not share the last names of the campers.
“I’ve learned a lot,” she said on the final day of the day camp. “I’ve learned about invasive fish and invasive plants and erosion.”
Satisfied camp officials said they hope children like Greta will remember what they’ve learned, and bring the information home to their parents, too. Phil Mulville of the Maine Lake Society has come every summer since the camp’s founding with his floating classroom, a 30-foot pontoon boat equipped with technology like the Ken-a-Vision microscope. With this, the kids can get an up-close-and-personal look at lake critters like water striders, damselflies and leeches.
“If you go to the water and don’t find any of this stuff, what does it mean?” he asked the group.
“It’s not good,” a couple of children chorused.
“If we don’t take care of the lakes now, when these kids get older, and they have kids, there’s not going to be a clean lake,” Mulville said.
This year, 17 children, ages 9 to 12, took part in the camp, which also recruits former campers as junior and senior counselors. Over the course of the week, they study the water cycle, build boats out of natural materials, learn about the food web and build an erosion buffer. They learn why it’s a bad idea to allow water runoff containing phosphates to enter the lake — because it will increase the risk of algae blooms, camp officials said.
The campers also heard how important it is to check their boats to make sure their families and other people are not accidentally introducing the invasive plant milfoil to the lake environment. The plant already is present in 27 Maine lake systems, but has not spread to Lake St. George.
Linda Breslin, president of the lake association, is one of the camp’s directors.
“About 10 years ago, we discovered that really there was no formal way for children who live in town or come here summers to learn how they can maintain what is really a pristine lake environment,” she said.
Adults who love the Liberty lakes figured that a camp would be a good solution to that problem, and they realized they needed to provide it for free, so all kids could go, she said. A local man named Ray Smith donated $1,000 each year for five years for the camp. Money now is raised through individual donations, Breslin said, adding that it’s worth it.
“I’ve been coming here since 1969 from Brooklyn, New York. The lake is an environment that not only allows people to use it for recreation but also for reflection,” she said. “We need to make sure that everybody who uses it knows how to keep it the way they want it to be.”
Caleb, 13, a junior counselor from Vernon, Connecticut, said that it’s his fourth year at the camp. He was helping a group of younger children collect larvae in nets from the lake shore.
“A lot of people take the lake for granted,” he said. “We’re lucky to have a lake like this. I like that you get to learn about how to keep the lake nice and clean.”