Category: Lake George

Jennifer Waterhouse Cooper has been named to the Board of Directors of the Lake George Land Conservancy.

The Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) is pleased to welcome Jennifer Waterhouse Cooper as the newest member of its Board of Directors.

Ms. Cooper has a bachelor’s degree from Pace University and comes to LGLC with a strong financial background. She worked for her father, Lawrence Waterhouse, Jr., full time from 1988-2001 as a broker, manager, and lastly, executive marketing manager at the family business, Waterhouse Investor Services (later sold to TD Bank and then became known as TD Waterhouse, a subsidiary of TD Bank, and now currently known as TD Ameritrade; the company is still known as TD Waterhouse in Canada).

Her connection to Lake George runs deep; Ms. Cooper has spent every summer of her life on Lake George, and continues to summer at the lake at her family’s home in Bolton Landing.

“My family has a deep love and respect for Lake George,” said Ms. Cooper. “I am honored to be asked to become a board member for The Lake George Land Conservancy and I hope I can bring value to this endeavor.”

Ms. Cooper’s grandparents bought a home in the Rainbow Beach Association on Basin Bay in the 1950’s. In 1993, her father bought a home on Northwest Bay, where she enjoyed summers with her four siblings until 1999, when her father purchased their current family home in Bolton Landing.

“We spend a great amount of time on Lake George and it is a treasured place in our family,” said Ms. Cooper. “My children enjoy the lake and it is with great hope that the love of Lake George is being passed down to my children and their cousins.”

Ms. Cooper lives in Pleasantville, NY, with her husband, Perry, and two children.

The recent cold has seen the lake freeze.

With the webcams experiencing technical difficulties, I know people have been interested in seeing pictures of the lake.

Ice in occurred about a week ago (around 1/14/2015). There was about 6″ of clear black ice this past weekend, which was perfect for ice skaters. There were fisherman out on the lake and even one four wheeler.

All is pretty quiet with very low temperatures.

If venturing onto the ice, please be careful. Not all areas are exactly 6″. Please use caution.

(Click images to see full-scale. The top picture is a high resolution panoramic view which shows the lake in detail. )

Jamie Brown has been announced as the New Executive Director of the Lake George Land Conservancy.

The Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) is announcing its new executive director, Jamie Brown. Brown officially began January 5, 2015, following the retirement of current Executive Director Nancy Williams.

“Nancy has built the Lake George Land Conservancy into a strong and solid land trust,” said Brown. “I am humbled, honored, and excited to be LGLC’s next Executive Director.”

Brown has worked in the land protection field for over 10 years, most recently as the director of land protection for Ducks Unlimited out of their headquarters in Memphis, Tennessee. Prior positions also include conservation director at the Frenchman Bay Conservancy in Hancock, Maine, and land preservation specialist at the Morris Land Conservancy in Boonton, New Jersey.

In addition to receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree from Boston University and Master’s degree from the University of Maine, Brown has a law degree from Seton Hall University School of Law. As an attorney, Brown practiced law for five years in the areas of real estate, land use and municipal law.

This is a critical time for land conservation on Lake George, and Brown is joining LGLC at a peak of activity. As Williams prepares to leave LGLC, several major conservation projects are either just closing or in the process of coming to fruition. Brown will need to jump in with both feet, taking over land negotiations as well as major fundraising campaigns, and meeting many of LGLC’s key supporters and community members.

“I am really moved by the obvious dedication of LGLC’s donors to protecting the lake,” said Brown. “So many people have generously supported LGLC, in the form of providing the extra bit needed to move specific land protection projects forward as well as the annual support that allows LGLC to fulfill its mission. But what has really impressed me is their collective connection to the lake. I find these close ties to the lake and the community to be such an important part of our work, and I really look forward to visiting with donors and hearing their stories about time spent on and around Lake George. I also look forward to hearing their ideas for how we can continue to build on what they and LGLC have already accomplished.”

Brown is not a stranger to the Lake George region. Having grown up in rural northwestern New Jersey, he frequently visited the Adirondacks as a kid, and later would often stop to admire the lake on his way to his wife’s family farm in Addison, Vermont.

“I am thrilled to be returning not just to the Northeast, but to such an amazingly beautiful and familiar place. I am looking forward to seeing my young son, Isaac, and my wife, Laura, enjoying themselves out on the lake or hiking on one of LGLC’s wonderful preserves.”

Gatherings will be scheduled over the next few months for the public to meet Brown; the public is also welcome to visit any staff at the LGLC office at 4905 Lake Shore Dr. in Bolton Landing, during regular business hours, Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

The Lake George Land Conservancy (LGLC) is now accepting applications for two Stewardship Assistant positions. The positions are full time but temporary, to be filled late May through mid to late August.

The Stewardship Assistants will work together and primarily conduct field work, including trail maintenance and new trail construction, boundary posting, and monitoring of conservation easement properties. They will also lead public hikes and educational outings, and assist other staff as needed with summer events.

Should local knowledge, experience and training make it appropriate, one Stewardship Assistant will be offered the position of Lead Stewardship Assistant and will be given additional leadership responsibilities.

Application deadline is March 6. For more information about the positions, including full job descriptions, visit lglc.org/about/#jobs.

Last month the Lake George Association finished up a demonstration project that was the first of its kind on the shores of Lake George. The Friend’s Point Homeowners’ Association had contacted the LGA about a problem area on their property along the Lake. Due to the clay soils and southern exposure, a section of shoreline approximately 150’ long was eroding into the lake, causing turbidity in the usually clear waters. Concerned about the situation, members of the homeowner’s group reached out to the LGA for help.

“We were really excited to partner with the Friend’s Point homeowners on this project,” said Randy Rath, the LGA’s project manager. ‘They had considered other approaches such as rip-rap – but they were really interested in doing what was best for the Lake. Bio-engineering is not new. But we haven’t seen a lot of it around here just yet. So this is a very important demonstration project for our area,” said Rath.

A view of the Friends Point shoreline before the work commenced. (Click all pictures to see full-scale.)

Bioengineering uses vegetation for shoreline stabilization. Rather than traditional ‘hard’ or ‘structural’ approaches such as concrete walls, bulkheads, or rip-rap, bioengineering approaches typically have lower costs and longer-term benefits to the shoreline and water quality, making these methods a great choice for Lake George. The bank and shoreline are stabilized, and fish and wildlife habitat are also improved. However, more structural type approaches are often chosen because people are more familiar with them. While effective, they tend to be more expensive, need replacement over time, and can have detrimental environmental impacts.

The shoreline being stabilized with native vegetation.

“At the Friends Point location there was significant wave action, so we couldn’t just plant some plants on the shoreline and expect that to hold up to the forces of Mother Nature,” said Rath. “We used a stormwater product called ‘Grow Soxx’ made by the company Filtrexx. Essentially, we recreated a shoreline for the plants to grow on. But we had to be sure that our new shoreline wouldn’t be washed away like the old one. So we anchored it using a geogrid and large duckbill anchors into the ground. Then, once the new shoreline was in place came the fun part, planting it with native vegetation. The hope is that in a few years the shoreline will look natural again. You won’t even know that we were there.”

Lake George Association staff worked to create the shoreline buffer.

In addition to the shoreline work, on the same property there was also a drainage culvert in need of repair. Runoff coming out of the end of a pipe was badly eroding soil out into the lake in addition to the erosion problems right along the shoreline itself. The LGA again worked with a similar material for a solution to this problem as well. The gully being created from the stormwater runoff was graded, and then lined with the ‘Ditch Chexx’. The ‘Ditch Chexx’ were filled with a compost mix and grass seed, which will grow and stabilize the culvert. This should stop any future erosion from this location as well.

The new ‘Ditch Chexx’ culvert.

“We are really pleased with the results of this project so far,” said Rath. “We will go back to the site in the spring to check it and see how it all fared through the winter. We hope to start to do more and more projects using similar bioengineering approaches. It gives us the best bang for our buck in terms of protecting water quality and a healthy lake ecosystem overall, so we hope to get more property owners on board with this type of technique.”

Photos courtesy of the Lake George Association.

This is a bit dated, having happened about 10 days ago, but it’s worth noting because the current of Lake George flows south to north.

From the Albany Times Union.