It is said that a picture tells a thousand words.

Well I am no Ansel Adams or or some whiz at creative infographics.

But I would like to attempt through 22 pictures to show something of what caused the situation with our water supply these past weeks.

All of the photos were taken last Friday the 10th.

I did not take any photos when the situation was building, it was inevitable and was only dealt with towards the last of the snow melt.

Moderate rain then added to the run off.

To be fair there was most likely nothing that could have been done at that time. Any mitigating should have been foreseen and a larger effort done to minimize the mud, dirt, silt from reaching the dam back last fall.

Pictured top right are scenes from the brook that runs into the dam from higher sources. It is virtually untouched by man so it does not pick up much silt and muck in the early spring run off. It then clears to pristine water come summer.

The pictures at left show the original construction efforts to "minimize" silt and dirt heading towards the dam. You can see how large amounts of slit and mud were washed down towards the dam.
The first half of the road to its height naturally runs down towards the dam, so it was inevitable that large run off would occur come spring.

Luckily we did not receive a large snow fall, but enough to make the mitigating efforts all but useless.

The NICG did some digging and fixing early last week to divert some of the run off that was heading into the dam.
You can see one of the culverts blocked with plywood at right.


Water run off channeled through former sand pit to the brook below the existing dam. This then flows down stream to the older dam then on into the harbor.
It seems that the intent was to run much of the run off from the construction this way, alas mother nature intervened with lack of snow and freezing of culverts etc. preventing this.