With all the talk about Higgins Lake water quality, there are several observations that never float to the surface, so to speak. Many years ago, before the 1850s, the entire watershed of the lake was mostly covered with pine trees. There were fewer deer and fewer broadleaf trees, but that all began to turn around when logging felled all that tall timber and shipped it off to towns and villages around the state.
When pine trees shed needles every year to make way for new growth, they never get bare like our oaks and maples and aspens, and their needles are like apples – they don’t drop far from the trees. The deciduous trees, on the other hand, release their leaves and the wind often carries them far distances in a stiff breeze, often straight into the lake.
So, what does this have to do with the price of pristine water? If you go out onto Higgins Lake and dive to the bottom, or scratch the bottom with fishing lures and downriggers, you realize how much decaying organic debris coats the lake bottom. All the same trees that now predominate the landscape around the lake contribute untold tons of foliage annually, layer upon layer. When careless leaf blowers groom waterside lawns they launch even more organic debris from fallen leaves onto the lake, where they accumulate in windrows, become waterlogged and spiral to the depths of the of the lake.
Why is this a big deal? One of the complaints of the sewer promoters is how much organic material is reaching the lake. I have never heard a single spokesperson for GLUA suggest that we should remove all these now predominant deciduous trees and replace them with native conifers. Not a whisper. Science tells us that this broadleaf litter contributes phosphorous to the lake water and depletes dissolved oxygen in the process of decaying.
Even Mr. Google quickly admits that “spikes in nitrogen, phosphorus, and other plant nutrients can result in eutrophication (excessive nutrient inputs into aquatic ecosystems) and harmful algal blooms, which can lower oxygen levels and release toxins.”
So, when someone talks about the eutrophication of Higgins Lake, let’s be sure that septic systems don’t get all the blame for this so-called ‘dilemma’. Much of that misinformation has been debunked in the Tip of the Mitt Watershed Council preliminary report, which concluded that those accusations are far from accurate, but, nonetheless, here comes a highly questionable multimillion dollar pork project to the rescue, courtesy of your lake township ‘representatives’.
When you plant or remove the next tree from your property, consider conifers rather than oaks and maples. They are actually very beautiful and may be more lake-friendly, and they don’t cost millions upon millions of dollars.
Phillip Robinson
Higgins Lake
