Lake Carey contracts with engineer

BY ROBERT L. BAKER

Wyoming County Press Examiner

Members of the Lake Carey Cottagers Association met Sunday morning to wrestle with the issue of a potential sewer system and left deciding to hire an engineer to represent the best interests of the lake.

Actually two engineers.

As a part of dealing with routine business, LCCA president Alan Thatcher told about 50 persons gathered, that the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection had sent out a letter regarding the safety of the present dam which DEP had suggested might be unsafe.

"The gist of the letter is that they want us to replace the dam," Thatcher said.

But Ed Hetzel said that the dam didn't really need to be replaced.

DEP was concerned that during heavy storms, "we have to come up with an alternate method of getting more water over the dam," he said.

The group unanimously approved a motion to spend up to $5,000 to hire an engineer to study the impacts of lowering the spillway.

Then Hetty Baiz, representing a Citizens Advisory Group put forward a couple of resolutions that dealt with Lake Carey's septic systems.

The resolutions grew out of concerns about information shared at an August 27 meeting in which representatives of Lemon and Tunkhannock Townships discussed the ramifications of failing on-lot systems and the possibility of making application for a more sophisticated system that would take care of all the properties around the lake.

About 65 persons, including some not at the Aug. 27 meeting, got together subsequently and attempted to come up with an alternate proposal that would not be as far-reaching, but might be better.

The first resolution said that cottagers need to have their septic tanks pumped and inspected every three years, and that would go a long way to helping clean up part of the problem until a larger system could be studied further.

That resolution passed unanimously.

But resident Bucky Kelley noted "Septic tanks are not the only issue."

He said some damage had already been done and maybe what should be looked at includes drainage fields.

Baiz put forward a second resolution which was more far-reaching and suggested that a large system as had been talked about Aug. 27 would among other things be a magnet for development and also cause nutrient loading that, in fact, would damage the Tunkhannock Creek, and the Susquehanna River it flowed into, and the Chesapeake Bay which the river flowed into.

Cathy Keefe said there were way too many points to be put in one resolution.

Minturn Smith argued that to him it also appeared that the lake was being held hostage to a zoning issue which might or might not be resolved in the time that was needed to make application for PennVest monies to go toward an estimated total cost of $8.3 million.

Resident Burt Sharp said that he believed the proposal would tear the cottagers association to pieces.

"When you vote to do it, we'll have a number of people who will leave and not come back," he said.

Consultant Harley Davis shared a timetable that would be necessary if the townships wanted to move forward with a plan by the end of the year.

But others felt that zoning needed to be addressed along with the plan.

But Davis reminded them that zoning and sewage backup are two very different things.

"Everything here has to be done with wisdom and forethought," he said.

Baiz acknowledged that "everyone loves the quality of life around this rural lake. How do we continue to work together as a community to preserve that?"

A motion was made to table the second resolution she had put forward, and it passed 25-20

A resident offered that what was needed was an engineer who can knowledgably talk about the best interests not just of the cottagers but of the lake itself.

A discussion followed and Walter Broughton put forward the possibility of the cottagers hiring Stephen Sousa of Princeton Hydro, whom already had spoken to the group earlier in the summer about quality of life issues.

A motion was made to hire Sousa for a fee not to exceed $7,500. It passed.

It was agreed that in Ed Hetzel's words, "We're hiring an engineer to be able to represent the best interest of the lake regardless of what the townships do."