The rules as written do not address the main cause of lake pollution; road salt. These are from my written comments:
“The proposed regulations don’t accomplish what they set out to accomplish in so far as they exempt State, County and Town highway crews from cutting drainage ditches and clearing surface vegetation along their highway right of ways. Washington County Route 6 has a steep grade down the mountain until it reaches Huletts Landing.”
“During the summer of 2008 and in previous years, Washington County cut drainage ditches from their highway rights of way over our property directly into Fairy Creek. Their rationale was that this helped drainage along County Route 6. In doing so, all salt and petroleum runoff from the road, which studies show are very damaging to the lake, now go directly into Fairy Creek which in turn flows into Lake George. The Washington County highway workman in charge of this job in 2008 stated that the Lake George Park Commission had no jurisdiction over Washington County or any governmental entity and that the County was free to cut drainage ditches into any stream they wanted to. The proposed regulations do nothing to address this and place an unfair burden on private property owners. The proposed regulations, with a loophole this large, given the extent of public roads in the Lake George basin, are inequitable to private landowners and entirely negates the intent of the proposed regulations.”
What can we do? What must we do? We will release our ideas for improving water quality in Lake George tomorrow. Unlike these proposed rules, our ideas should gather support from all sides.