SWANVILLE, Maine — Residents and camp owners on Swan Lake can’t remember seeing the water this low, and they aren’t alone, according to a group of volunteers that track the conditions of hundreds of Maine lakes and ponds.
Marty Stout, president of the Swan Lake Association, said Tuesday that some boats and docks are resting on dry land. Boat owners are grappling with how to get their craft out of the water before winter sets in without dragging them over the rocks to get them to shore.
Stout has lived part of the year on this lake for the past 42 years, and this is the lowest he’s ever seen the water. He said a “perfect storm” of factors played into this year’s low water. Last winter saw little snow and relatively high temperatures, so less snow and ice melt made its way through the watershed in the spring.
This spring and summer have been unusually dry, especially in the central and southern parts of the state. The lack of consistent rainfall prompted the state to convene a drought task force in August, the first time the group had assembled for more than a decade.
The entirety of central Maine and part of southern Maine are abnormally dry, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Drought Monitor. The bulk of southern Maine is listed as either under a severe or moderate drought.
In addition, Stout said a dam on the lake was left open later than usual this spring, releasing a large amount of water even before the drought conditions set in.
“Yeah, things are bad here, but I hear they’re bad in other parts of the state,” Stout said.
Scott Williams, director of the Maine Volunteer Lake Monitoring Program, agrees. The program tracks conditions at some 450 Maine lakes and ponds across the state.
“There’s no question, the water levels are down almost everywhere, with very few exceptions,” he said Tuesday. “We really have had one of the driest spring and summer seasons on record.”
However, there is an upshot to the unusually dry weather, Williams said. The lakes and ponds, and the waterways that feed them, have been unusually clean.
When rain falls, it picks up pollutants, soil and other debris and carries them to lakes and ponds. Those pollutants can cloud the water and promote algae growth. When it doesn’t rain as much, fewer contaminants make their way into bodies of water.
Williams said that volunteers monitoring the water in lakes and ponds say the water is “exceptionally clear,” and generally better quality than it has been in years.
Prolonged low water levels have created other problems, however. Native plant life generally found in shallow water has, in some cases, dried up because of receding water levels. That, in turn, affects wildlife habitats of fish, frogs and other animals that spend time on the shore.
In the short term, the lack of rainfall has helped improve the water quality in Maine’s waterways, but in the long term, there could be more severe consequences, Williams said.
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