Duck Lake friends and neighbors:

It’s been quite a summer here on Duck Lake. Beautiful weekends, warm temperatures, and plenty of sunshine for all.  Unfortunately, there have also been some unwanted side effects that we have been working to overcome the last few months: weeds and lake level issues.

Let’s talk weeds first.  We had a very “soft” winter.  The cold and ice typically kill off or otherwise negatively impact weed beds.  We also had a very wet start to the month of May.  Many of us are doing our spring cleaning and yard maintenance at that time, and with that comes fertilizing.  A lot of what we apply to our yard washes into the lake, fertilizing the weeds.  Then the warm weather hit us quick and hard.  This led to an accelerated growth of the weeds.  Finally, the timing fell right near Memorial Day.   Aqua-Weed’s policy is to not treat around holidays, so as to not interrupt holiday plans on the lake.  They were able to come out after the holiday and treat some of the heaviest areas.  Weeds seem to back at normal levels.

You can help by staying at least 30 feet away from the lake edge when fertilizing.  If you use a lawn service, it would be good to ensure they do, too.

The second issue is our lake level.  The pump failed towards the end of last summer-early fall.  This caused the lake level to drop to the winter level much earlier than normal.  This lead to many of us having difficulties trying to get our boats out of the lake for the winter.  The Water Resource Commission (WRC) chose to completely replace the pump rather than fix the old one that was going on 50 years old.  This work was done and completed in January.  However, the contractor had set the pump to max pull to help refill the lake from the winter level.  This led to repeated circuit breaker trips that shut down the pump unexpectedly.  While we were slightly above legal level early in the season, we are now over 2 inches below legal level.

The new pump is now operating correctly.  However, our well is not a lake “filling” well, it is a lake “maintaining” well.  That means the well can maintain our current level but we need rain (weekdays only!) to bring the lake level up.  In the meantime, you can help by only running your sprinklers in the early morning hours to minimize water evaporation.  It’s also better for your grass.

We appreciate all of your patience and help while we have been working through these challenges.  Here’s to a second half of the summer being just as good as the first half.

Cheers,
Ryan Charlton