It’s a sweltering day and a crew of six Windham teenagers, known as the Youth Conservation Corps (YCC), are digging out small channels in the sides of a winding dirt road with shovels, the sweat dripping off their brows.
Their crew leader Troy Holston, a student of USM, is directing them in the effort to create these “swales” that lead off the road in what are known as “turnouts.” The hope is that when the next rain comes, all the water will slope off the road and down these swales carrying sediment and water off in the woods through the turnouts.
“It’s more of a slope than a depth,” Holston explains.
Since the beginning of the summer, Holston and the team have dug multiple turnouts on several dirt roads around Windham as a preventive measure against the drainage of sediment into Highland Lake.
Since 2000, the Highland Lake Association has teamed with Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation to hire area high school students to do this labor-intensive environmental work during the summer season. In addition to digging swales, the crew plants vegetative buffers (i.e. trees, bushes, gardens, etc.) on property around the lake. These buffers absorb the water run-off and prevent the shoreline from eroding by holding the soil in place with their roots.
“People get a little squeamish when they hear ‘buffer’ because they think they’re going to lose their view of the lake,” says Kathryn Andrews, on-site coordinator for the YCC. “Usually, it’s just what the homeowner wants. We have to be very flexible.”
For the most part, residents around the lake have been “extremely respective” to the YCC’s work, said Andrews. The residents sometimes clap in passing or thank them or, on occasion, have bought the crew lunch.
The lakeshore residents are also well educated, Andrews said, to problems that can be caused by sediment run-off or erosion of soil into the lake.
“There’s a total maximum daily load, amount of phosphorous a body of water can handle,” Andrews said. “Over the past couple of decades, that TMDL has been on the rise.”
This has led to a process known as “eutrophication” where increased phosphorous from the ground soil causes algae blooms which spread over the lakes and decreases the oxygen in the water, killing off fish. This is both detrimental to “the way of life on the lake as well as the ecosystem” said Andrews.
That is precisely what happened to China Lake where algae blooms turn the lake in “pea soup” during the summer and kill off populations of cold water fish, says Tamara Lee Pinard, Watershed Program Manager for Cumberland County Soil and Water Conservation.
Because of the YCC efforts, the lake’s water quality seems to be improving, said Pinard.
“We can’t say for sure as for the water quality, but three years ago we were seeing a statistically negative trend in water quality and, starting last year, it looks that the water quality is stable,” Pinard said.
Just this week, Cumberland County Soil and Water received additional federal grants to fund YCC projects on Little Sebago and Long Lake for next spring. The Highland Lake YCC is currently funded by grant money as well as donations from the towns of Windham and Falmouth and the Highland Lake Association. A YCC committee from the Highland Lake Association acts as the adminstrative body, with Rosie Hartzler as the program manager, that selects teenagers interested in the work for the each year’s crew.
As well as fulfilling an active service to the lake community, the YCC serves as a summer job that the crew members are enthusiastic about.
“I live on the lake so it affects me,” says Nick Kimball, a junior at Windham High School who has come back to work for his second year with the YCC. “And I enjoy working outside.”
And after sweating long hours in the sun, the YCC crew members sometimes get to take a lunchtime dip in the lake, which is a bonus most jobs don’t afford.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
