Experts and politicians have had plenty to say about the condition of Owasco Lake, but the people who live on the lake offer a valuable first-person perspective. Some are quite worried. Others hold out hope. Some think problems
are slightly overblown. All agree, however, the lake has changed through the years.
venice
Bill Hall is a fly fisherman, which he says is a little bit strange for a lake. His brown lake cottage in the hamlet of Cascade is within sight of the Owasco Inlet and just a short walk from where he used to fish as a child at his grandfather's cottage.
The inlet is one of his fishing spots. He's “a little bit troubled” about the amount of sediment at the southern end of the lake. He jokes the best farmland in Cayuga County is under Owasco Lake's water.
But his engineer's mind is also careful to not jump to dire conclusions about Owasco Lake's health. Without concrete data, he won't claim that the water is more shallow or that there are more weeds than there used to be. He loves data-surfing to find out how deep he should sink his hand-made lures - data about the lake's depth from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and data from the Owasco Lake buoy about the depth of thermal breaks, sharp differences in temperatures.
He retired a few years ago from a 35-year career as a software engineer. He's Moravia born-and-bred with several relatives in Moravia, and he came back to the area as a part-time resident three years ago when he bought his cottage situated on Fire Lane 1 in the northeast corner of Venice. New Hampshire is home for the rest of the year.
He is worried about heavy metal toxins from a coal-powered plant threatening water quality near his New Hampshire home. But Owasco Lake's troubles are not ones of industrial waste, he said.
“That's why I am not scared to eat what I catch. I invite others to share it with me without guilt. It's terrific waters to grow fish in. It's terrific waters to grow weeds in. You're not going to scrape up a bunch of carcinogens in it. You're going to scrape up dirt and weeds,” Hall said.
But still, he is regretful that the inlet is not as free of sediment as a stream he knows in Homer, a classic cold water stream with ideal fishing for trout. “It's a beautiful thing,” Hall said.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
Fleming
Carolyn and George Hiza think it's the collective actions of the Owasco Lake watershed community that result in harm to Owasco Lake - and the collective actions of the community that also sustain and restore it.
“It's no one person's fault,” George said.
“If we have the technology, the philosophy, there should be no reason we're having any problems with the lake,” Carolyn said.
For their part, the Fleming lakeside residents have become engaged with lake groups like the Owasco Lakefront Owners Association and the Owasco Watershed Lake Association. They're planning to buy phosphorus-free fertilizer for sale at the Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District and participate in the weed sampling being orchestrated through the owners association.
After summering with relatives who have a cottage in the Indian Cove vicinity, they bought their Fleming retirement home in October 2004 and they moved into their blue cottage with a livingroom picture window overlooking the lake in May 2005.
Just in that short time span, they've experienced increasing turbidity in the water and an encroachment of weeds on their dock, located across the span of state Route 38 from their home.
George thinks of the tiny lake he grew up on in Rensselaer County that died from fill-in.
They're concerned about the property value of their home and what the lake will be like if no action is taken to address increasing levels of phosphorus, sediment and nutrient loading in the lake.
George said the lake can clean itself with its turnover every couple of years - if the village of Groton's plant institutes more treatment and if farmers and other property owners control soil runoff and other nutrient loading.
“We came because it was a good place. We'd like it back the way it used to be. This is going to be our retirement home and the place we live for many, many years to come,” Carolyn said.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
Owasco - lake shore
There used to be a game Charles Williams played and his children after him played in Owasco Lake.
They would throw a golf ball down from a raft anchored in the lake and dive through the clear depths to retrieve it.
There used to be no weeds “hundreds of feet to either side of us. Just rocks,” Charles said.
“And the rocks were clean and you could pick one up and find a crayfish under it. Now it's all gone,” said his wife, Nancy.
Instead they find zebra mussels. Three years ago they obtained permission from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to lay down a tarp on the lake floor for a few weeks. It blocked sunlight and inhibited weed growth, but when they brought it up the bottom was entirely covered with zebra mussels.
Their cottage in Owasco has been in Charles' family since 1941. They've been actively using the cottage as their summer place since 1978.
Since the early 1980s, they have seen the spread of lake vegetation and the increase of sediment.
They would like to see lakeside towns pass more ordinances controlling building permits, the amount of allowed impermeable surfaces, the regulation of septic systems and the clearing of vegetation.
“The public won't like that. They want to buy 50 feet of lakefront and do whatever they want. But that doesn't do the lake any good,” Nancy said.
As more and more people live in the area of the lake and increase human impact on it, they hope lakeside owners will make elimination of the nutrient loading in the lake - and the subsequent feeding of the weeds - part of their household routine.
For their property, they've maintained shrubs and trees that hold back soil from eroding. They remove leaves and grass cuttings from their lakeside bank. They do not use any fertilizer or pesticides.
When they remove vegetation from their shoreline, they put the seaweed on a compost woodpile in their woods.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
owasco - outlet shore
Walter and Sylvia Wasserman's serene lawn stretches through mature ash, maple and oak trees to greet the Owasco Outlet and the seawall they paid for to prevent the erosion of soil into that water body.
Beavers gnaw at trees close to the shoreline. The couple were recently visited by a doe and her two fawns.
They built their Owasco home in 1978 on a parcel that had been the overgrown backyard of a house farther up on state Route 38A. The outlet water rushes around a bend, eroding banks that run behind the Auburn High School.
They're concerned that the outlet's levels have been higher in recent years, eroding soil above their sea wall on their 185 feet of waterline and licking at the boathouse they built. The outlet was dredged in the 1960s, but they are seeing more and more siltation in recent years. Walter plans to have the Soil and Water Conservation District installers of the sea wall back to shore it up.
They're also concerned that the outlet has brought weeds from the lake to their shoreline for the first time since their retirement. Walter was formerly an agricultural economist at Cornell University and Sylvia was formerly a preschool teacher.
The water is deep enough most of the year to motor their boat onto the lake to visit the Owasco Yacht Club, swim from the boat or fish. The first thing that their adult sons and their grandchildren want to do when visiting is to get into the lake.
They're also concerned that the outlet's levels have been so low in the late summer and early fall that they can no longer navigate to the lake late in the season. Both are happy that there is a current political push to protect the lake and its watershed.
“There's more of a concern about protecting the lake and keeping it well,” Sylvia said.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
moravia
Bob Siebert remembers water -skiing and swimming anywhere he wanted in Owasco Lake with his four sons 39 years ago.
“We never had a bit of problems and the water was plenty deep,” Siebert said. “Today, you can forget it. It's hard to swim and impossible to water ski.”
Of all the Finger Lakes, Siebert, of Moravia, chose to live on Owasco because of its small size. They have lived in their lake home full-time for 11 years.
Over the past 39 years, Siebert and his wife, Bev, have grown to love the lake's “neighborly and homey” atmosphere but have found the growing amounts of silt in the lake a nuisance in their area of the lake.
“Most of the Finger Lakes are too big. In Owasco it used to be easy to get from one place to another,” Siebert said.
Siebert said the lake suffers from a combination of problems, but in the southern end silt filled with nutrients causes more plants and algae to grow.
“Yesterday the lake looked green and soupy,” Siebert said. “It's no where near as pristine and beautiful as it was 30 years ago.”
Siebert has watched the lake's condition progressively decrease over the past 20 years.
“All of a sudden you wonder what happened to the beautiful lake,” Siebert said.
The lake is filling in and the shallow buoy markers have moved out further from the lake's edges.
Siebert thinks even though the problem is all over the lake, it may be too late to help the southern end.
Three years ago the couple joined an organization to help Owasco Flats and the Owasco Lake Homeowner's Association. Siebert said the homeowner's have been a great voice for their concerns.
“I'm afraid it's getting too late. I just wish our politicians and towns would get together and try and do something,” Siebert said.
- Kristina Martino
scipio
Before buying a home of his own on Owasco Lake in Scipio, Ron Curvin grew up spending summers with his grandmother who lived on the west side of the lake.
Owasco Lake was then an upstate summer escape for Curvin, who started loving fishing and boating on the lake when he was young.
“The lake is still great water for swimming and boating, but it needs help,” Curvin said.
In 1972, while working on Wall Street in New York City, Curvin decided to buy a summer home across the lake from his brother, who lives in Niles.
A few years ago, Curvin permanently moved to his lakefront home from Long Island.
Since then, Curvin has become a member of the Scipio Lake Property Owner's Association, a group dealing with local water problems and property tax issues.
Curvin now spends many of his days boating and fishing on the lake.
The first visible sign of the lake's worsening conditions this year was a large carp fish die-off in the southern end of the lake.
“I was talking to a fisherman and he said there aren't any more carp in the southern end of the lake. There used to be a lot,” Curvin said. “I've never seen a fish die-off like this before.”
Curvin has also noticed a higher water level in the southern end of the lake. Some of his neighbors no longer have small beaches like they used to.
- Kristina Martino
niles
Joan Calder has loved fresh water since her childhood playtime at a family cottage at Burtis Point. Now at her Owasco Lake home in Niles, she exercises by swimming up to the Camp Y-Owasco and back.
She and husband, Don, boat when they spend the rest of the year in Florida, but she finds it special to be on this lake.
They bought their lake home in 1969 on a parcel carved up from the Wide Waters estate once owned by muckraking journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams, whose writing inspired food and drug regulations.
The cottage is close to the shore, down a long lane bound by hedgerows that could be set in the English countryside. It was their weekend respite from their New Jersey home until their retirement a decade ago, and now it's their full-time summer home that is open to their children and their grandchildren.
They are beginning to see more and more weeds in the lake. “I'm glad people finally got on board because by the end of last year the lake really smelt bad,” Joan said. “I hope people stay on board so something gets done.”
They don't fear for their safety from the lake's water quality. It's the future state of the lake and the increasing levels of nutrient loading that concern them the most.
They had their water tested and it came back at an acceptable level, Don said. “We enjoy the lake. We do think it's in a good condition,” Don said.
They hope that recent attention to the lake, including the meeting organized by state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, and the subsequent state funding he secured, will inspire people to pursue better land management practices, including using phosphorus-free fertilizers.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
venice
Bill Hall is a fly fisherman, which he says is a little bit strange for a lake. His brown lake cottage in the hamlet of Cascade is within sight of the Owasco Inlet and just a short walk from where he used to fish as a child at his grandfather's cottage.
The inlet is one of his fishing spots. He's “a little bit troubled” about the amount of sediment at the southern end of the lake. He jokes the best farmland in Cayuga County is under Owasco Lake's water.
But his engineer's mind is also careful to not jump to dire conclusions about Owasco Lake's health. Without concrete data, he won't claim that the water is more shallow or that there are more weeds than there used to be. He loves data-surfing to find out how deep he should sink his hand-made lures - data about the lake's depth from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and data from the Owasco Lake buoy about the depth of thermal breaks, sharp differences in temperatures.
He retired a few years ago from a 35-year career as a software engineer. He's Moravia born-and-bred with several relatives in Moravia, and he came back to the area as a part-time resident three years ago when he bought his cottage situated on Fire Lane 1 in the northeast corner of Venice. New Hampshire is home for the rest of the year.
He is worried about heavy metal toxins from a coal-powered plant threatening water quality near his New Hampshire home. But Owasco Lake's troubles are not ones of industrial waste, he said.
“That's why I am not scared to eat what I catch. I invite others to share it with me without guilt. It's terrific waters to grow fish in. It's terrific waters to grow weeds in. You're not going to scrape up a bunch of carcinogens in it. You're going to scrape up dirt and weeds,” Hall said.
But still, he is regretful that the inlet is not as free of sediment as a stream he knows in Homer, a classic cold water stream with ideal fishing for trout. “It's a beautiful thing,” Hall said.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
Fleming
Carolyn and George Hiza think it's the collective actions of the Owasco Lake watershed community that result in harm to Owasco Lake - and the collective actions of the community that also sustain and restore it.
“It's no one person's fault,” George said.
“If we have the technology, the philosophy, there should be no reason we're having any problems with the lake,” Carolyn said.
For their part, the Fleming lakeside residents have become engaged with lake groups like the Owasco Lakefront Owners Association and the Owasco Watershed Lake Association. They're planning to buy phosphorus-free fertilizer for sale at the Cayuga County Soil and Water Conservation District and participate in the weed sampling being orchestrated through the owners association.
After summering with relatives who have a cottage in the Indian Cove vicinity, they bought their Fleming retirement home in October 2004 and they moved into their blue cottage with a livingroom picture window overlooking the lake in May 2005.
Just in that short time span, they've experienced increasing turbidity in the water and an encroachment of weeds on their dock, located across the span of state Route 38 from their home.
George thinks of the tiny lake he grew up on in Rensselaer County that died from fill-in.
They're concerned about the property value of their home and what the lake will be like if no action is taken to address increasing levels of phosphorus, sediment and nutrient loading in the lake.
George said the lake can clean itself with its turnover every couple of years - if the village of Groton's plant institutes more treatment and if farmers and other property owners control soil runoff and other nutrient loading.
“We came because it was a good place. We'd like it back the way it used to be. This is going to be our retirement home and the place we live for many, many years to come,” Carolyn said.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
Owasco - lake shore
There used to be a game Charles Williams played and his children after him played in Owasco Lake.
They would throw a golf ball down from a raft anchored in the lake and dive through the clear depths to retrieve it.
There used to be no weeds “hundreds of feet to either side of us. Just rocks,” Charles said.
“And the rocks were clean and you could pick one up and find a crayfish under it. Now it's all gone,” said his wife, Nancy.
Instead they find zebra mussels. Three years ago they obtained permission from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to lay down a tarp on the lake floor for a few weeks. It blocked sunlight and inhibited weed growth, but when they brought it up the bottom was entirely covered with zebra mussels.
Their cottage in Owasco has been in Charles' family since 1941. They've been actively using the cottage as their summer place since 1978.
Since the early 1980s, they have seen the spread of lake vegetation and the increase of sediment.
They would like to see lakeside towns pass more ordinances controlling building permits, the amount of allowed impermeable surfaces, the regulation of septic systems and the clearing of vegetation.
“The public won't like that. They want to buy 50 feet of lakefront and do whatever they want. But that doesn't do the lake any good,” Nancy said.
As more and more people live in the area of the lake and increase human impact on it, they hope lakeside owners will make elimination of the nutrient loading in the lake - and the subsequent feeding of the weeds - part of their household routine.
For their property, they've maintained shrubs and trees that hold back soil from eroding. They remove leaves and grass cuttings from their lakeside bank. They do not use any fertilizer or pesticides.
When they remove vegetation from their shoreline, they put the seaweed on a compost woodpile in their woods.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
owasco - outlet shore
Walter and Sylvia Wasserman's serene lawn stretches through mature ash, maple and oak trees to greet the Owasco Outlet and the seawall they paid for to prevent the erosion of soil into that water body.
Beavers gnaw at trees close to the shoreline. The couple were recently visited by a doe and her two fawns.
They built their Owasco home in 1978 on a parcel that had been the overgrown backyard of a house farther up on state Route 38A. The outlet water rushes around a bend, eroding banks that run behind the Auburn High School.
They're concerned that the outlet's levels have been higher in recent years, eroding soil above their sea wall on their 185 feet of waterline and licking at the boathouse they built. The outlet was dredged in the 1960s, but they are seeing more and more siltation in recent years. Walter plans to have the Soil and Water Conservation District installers of the sea wall back to shore it up.
They're also concerned that the outlet has brought weeds from the lake to their shoreline for the first time since their retirement. Walter was formerly an agricultural economist at Cornell University and Sylvia was formerly a preschool teacher.
The water is deep enough most of the year to motor their boat onto the lake to visit the Owasco Yacht Club, swim from the boat or fish. The first thing that their adult sons and their grandchildren want to do when visiting is to get into the lake.
They're also concerned that the outlet's levels have been so low in the late summer and early fall that they can no longer navigate to the lake late in the season. Both are happy that there is a current political push to protect the lake and its watershed.
“There's more of a concern about protecting the lake and keeping it well,” Sylvia said.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
moravia
Bob Siebert remembers water -skiing and swimming anywhere he wanted in Owasco Lake with his four sons 39 years ago.
“We never had a bit of problems and the water was plenty deep,” Siebert said. “Today, you can forget it. It's hard to swim and impossible to water ski.”
Of all the Finger Lakes, Siebert, of Moravia, chose to live on Owasco because of its small size. They have lived in their lake home full-time for 11 years.
Over the past 39 years, Siebert and his wife, Bev, have grown to love the lake's “neighborly and homey” atmosphere but have found the growing amounts of silt in the lake a nuisance in their area of the lake.
“Most of the Finger Lakes are too big. In Owasco it used to be easy to get from one place to another,” Siebert said.
Siebert said the lake suffers from a combination of problems, but in the southern end silt filled with nutrients causes more plants and algae to grow.
“Yesterday the lake looked green and soupy,” Siebert said. “It's no where near as pristine and beautiful as it was 30 years ago.”
Siebert has watched the lake's condition progressively decrease over the past 20 years.
“All of a sudden you wonder what happened to the beautiful lake,” Siebert said.
The lake is filling in and the shallow buoy markers have moved out further from the lake's edges.
Siebert thinks even though the problem is all over the lake, it may be too late to help the southern end.
Three years ago the couple joined an organization to help Owasco Flats and the Owasco Lake Homeowner's Association. Siebert said the homeowner's have been a great voice for their concerns.
“I'm afraid it's getting too late. I just wish our politicians and towns would get together and try and do something,” Siebert said.
- Kristina Martino
scipio
Before buying a home of his own on Owasco Lake in Scipio, Ron Curvin grew up spending summers with his grandmother who lived on the west side of the lake.
Owasco Lake was then an upstate summer escape for Curvin, who started loving fishing and boating on the lake when he was young.
“The lake is still great water for swimming and boating, but it needs help,” Curvin said.
In 1972, while working on Wall Street in New York City, Curvin decided to buy a summer home across the lake from his brother, who lives in Niles.
A few years ago, Curvin permanently moved to his lakefront home from Long Island.
Since then, Curvin has become a member of the Scipio Lake Property Owner's Association, a group dealing with local water problems and property tax issues.
Curvin now spends many of his days boating and fishing on the lake.
The first visible sign of the lake's worsening conditions this year was a large carp fish die-off in the southern end of the lake.
“I was talking to a fisherman and he said there aren't any more carp in the southern end of the lake. There used to be a lot,” Curvin said. “I've never seen a fish die-off like this before.”
Curvin has also noticed a higher water level in the southern end of the lake. Some of his neighbors no longer have small beaches like they used to.
- Kristina Martino
niles
Joan Calder has loved fresh water since her childhood playtime at a family cottage at Burtis Point. Now at her Owasco Lake home in Niles, she exercises by swimming up to the Camp Y-Owasco and back.
She and husband, Don, boat when they spend the rest of the year in Florida, but she finds it special to be on this lake.
They bought their lake home in 1969 on a parcel carved up from the Wide Waters estate once owned by muckraking journalist Samuel Hopkins Adams, whose writing inspired food and drug regulations.
The cottage is close to the shore, down a long lane bound by hedgerows that could be set in the English countryside. It was their weekend respite from their New Jersey home until their retirement a decade ago, and now it's their full-time summer home that is open to their children and their grandchildren.
They are beginning to see more and more weeds in the lake. “I'm glad people finally got on board because by the end of last year the lake really smelt bad,” Joan said. “I hope people stay on board so something gets done.”
They don't fear for their safety from the lake's water quality. It's the future state of the lake and the increasing levels of nutrient loading that concern them the most.
They had their water tested and it came back at an acceptable level, Don said. “We enjoy the lake. We do think it's in a good condition,” Don said.
They hope that recent attention to the lake, including the meeting organized by state Sen. Michael Nozzolio, R-Fayette, and the subsequent state funding he secured, will inspire people to pursue better land management practices, including using phosphorus-free fertilizers.
- Amaris Elliott-Engel
The Citizens' Say
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