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Date: 10/6/2021
SOUTHWICK — The Lake Management Committee will consider a new protocol for boating bans after Tropical Storm Ida silenced motors on Congamond Lake for a whole week last month.
When the water level of Congamond Lake rises enough, the waves caused by boats can severely erode the shoreline. In those circumstances, officials will enact a no-wake order, essentially imposing a lake speed limit of 6 miles per hour. If water levels rise high enough, as they did just before Labor Day weekend this year, the town will ban motorized boats altogether.
Lake Management Committee member Dick Grannells said that the no-wake order is nearly impossible to enforce on a water body the size of Congamond. Because of this, he said that the no-wake protocol should be removed, and the only restriction should be a total ban on motorized boats when necessary.
At a recent meeting, the committee largely agreed with Grannells’ suggestion, though there was disagreement over what the lake level should be to trigger a motorized boat ban. When Ida hit the region on Sept. 2, it rapidly rose the water level from its nominal level of 224.4 feet to 225.67 feet above sea level. Though the difference appears small, the rise in water put many lakeside residents’ docks underwater, and brought the waterline further onto people’s lawns, causing an erosion risk.
Lake Management Committee member Deborah Herath expressed concern that human-caused climate change will bring more severe rainstorms, prompting more temporary lake restrictions. Fellow member Eric Mueller said he agreed that climate change is taking place, but that it will be impossible to predict whether the region will endure heavy rains, or something like a perpetual drought.
Mueller said that he would run a simulation of the lake to determine how low the water levels could be artificially set to avoid a rapid rise in water level in the first place. The water level of the lake can be artificially changed, to a certain degree, using weir gates.
Mueller also said he wants to include some sort of provision in the new protocol that would allow residents to pull their boats from the water if a motorized boat ban were to take place at the end of boating season, which coincides with hurricane season.
The Lake Management Committee will likely vote on a new protocol at its next meeting, after reviewing Mueller’s findings from his simulation software.
Since 2011, motorized boating bans have been implemented three times on Congamond Lake. The lake water had also risen above motorized boating ban levels twice outside of the normal boating season, in the colder months.