Water Monitoring on Great East Lake was carried out last year by Dave Lafond and Chuck Hodsdon. Complete reports will be available at the Annual Meeting. The results once again found Great East to be an Oligotrophic or “Pristine” lake. We hesitate to give strong positive results as we don’t want people to fail to do everything possible to maintain the fine water quality that we have always enjoyed.
However to put our water quality in perspective, our average Secchi disc readings last year in the main part of the lake were over 10 meters. This means that an 8″ black and white disc is visible in over 30 feet of water. Data from 450 of Maine’s 2000 lakes in 2008 found only 8 lakes which had an average transparency of 10 meters or more. Most of these were in Aroostook or Hancock counties where the lakes are likely to see a lot less stress than those in more populated areas. We need to continue doing everything possible to maintain this exceptional water quality.
